additional staff members to handle the increased work load of state

and local cost estimating.

Although the extraordinary attention to budget matters has put a great strain on our staff, I am on record to this committee that CBO would not seek additional positions unless more responsibilities were mandated by the Congress. The recently passed State and Local Government Cost Estimate Act of 1981 expanded CBO responsibilities by requiring us to make state and local cost estimates for pending legislation.

After consulting with the Congressional sponsors of the legislation and after thoroughly analyzing our needs, we are requesting eight additional full-time positions to perform that task. Seven of these would be for professional analysts. The eighth position would provide clerical support.

In summary, the resources we are requesting for permanent positions would fund our currently authorized staff level and would allow us to bring on the staff required to implement the provisions of the State and Local Government Cost Estimate Act of 1981.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, our budget request is designed to maintain CBO's current services to the Congress, to meet increased costs of and demand for ADP, and to enable us to carry out the responsibilities in the State and Local Government Cost Estimate Act of 1981. We believe that it is a reasonable request, particularly in view of our constrained funding levels in the last two years and the increased demands by the Congress for CBO services.

EFFECT OF FUNDING AT 1982 LEVEL

Senator MATTINGLY. Let me commend you for the outstanding job you have done in the last year in providing the Senate the information it needed. I am sure you provided the same thing on the House side.

As you know, my aim as chairman of the subcommittee is to recommend a total for the legislative branch appropriations which is no higher than the fiscal year 1982 level, including supplementals. This would permit some variance between accounts in reaching the overall fiscal year 1982 level. Your total for 1982, including supplementals, is $13,276,000. How would you have to limit your operations to live within that level?

Dr. RIVLIN. Very, very severely, Mr. Chairman. I don't know how we could fit this new responsibility for State and local government cost estimates into what we now do. That is a complicated new responsibility. It is harder to make cost estimates for State and local governments than for the Federal Government, at least if you sit in Washington and have access to Federal data.

The task involves making estimates about very complicated situations in 50 States and all local jurisdictions. That is something that we can't do without additional resources.

On top of this, we have this extraordinary explosion of work connected with the cutback in the Federal Government-the Congressional Budget Office has been required to provide additional analysis, additional computer services, additional estimates. I see no way we could live with the 1982 level, except by cutting back very severely on what we are able to do for the Congress, just at the moment when the Congress seems to want more from us, not less.

1981 APPROPRIATION

Senator MATTINGLY. What was the 1981 appropriation? I don't have that handy. I wondered if you might have it.

Dr. RIVLIN. In 1981, the actual spending was $12,366,000. The appropriation was $12,603,000.

PURCHASE OF EQUIPMENT

Senator MATTINGLY. Your budget request includes $712,000 for rental of copy equipment, computer equipment, as well as telephone and mail. Would the purchase of any of this equipment be more cost effective?

Dr. RIVLIN. We have examined that carefully recently. We have just gone through an intensive exercise with the assistance of the House information services to examine how we use editing equipment and what would be the most cost effective things to do.

We have come to the conclusion that an arrangement with Xerox whereby we would initially lease word processing equipment would be the best thing for us to do.

Senator MATTINGLY. Leasing is cheaper?

Dr. RIVLIN. Leasing with accruals toward purchase works out better than immediate purchase.

Would anybody like to amplify on that?

Mr. GREIGG. Mr. Chairman, we are in the process now of analyzing the whole word processing contract. There seems to be some merit in starting out at a very slow pace doing some leasing but eventually going to purchase of the equipment if the money is available. It seems that is cost effective in what we have seen to date.

Senator MATTINGLY. I think that is also true in some types of copying equipment.

Mr. GREIGG. Yes, sir. I think that is right.

Senator MATTINGLY. Having come from that private business sector, I think if you spread it over about a 3- or 4-year period of time, then do you think some of the purchase contracts you have now are better?

Mr. GREIGG. We are taking a very careful look at what we can do within our budget. There is considerable merit to the outright purchase. Senator MATTINGLY. Have you purchased any of it yet or are you just still looking at it?

Mr. GREIGG. We have not purchased any yet.

STATE AND LOCAL COST ESTIMATES

Senator MATTINGLY. You make the comment about estimating State and local government costs. Is that what you are referring to, the new federalism impact that it may have, or what are you referring to there about the increased burden of the analysis that you are doing?

RESPONSIBILITIES

Dr. RIVLIN. No; in a sense it is independent of the new federalism, although I think the interest may grow out of the same source. The original legislation under which we operate-the Budget Act of 1974requires us to make estimates of the Federal cost of all bills reported. That is one of our major responsibilities, and it takes a fair number of people.

Now in this last session of Congress a new responsibility was added. The State and Local Government Cost Estimate Act of 1981 requires us to make estimates of the cost to State and local governments of Federal legislation. This is a new responsibility. The movement for this, the discussion of it on the Hill, antedated the New Federalism by several years. There has been discussion on both sides of the Hill, greatly pushed by State and local government authorities themselves and by the various Government associations in counties and localities.

Senator MATTINGLY. Are those analyses being done for the Congress or for those people also?

Dr. RIVLIN. They are to be done for the information of the Congress as they vote on a bill. The idea is that, when the Congress votes on the floor on a bill that will put costs onto the State and local governments, the Members ought to know what those costs are in the aggregate. There is, of course, great interest in the State and local governments in having that information themselves.

Senator MATTINGLY. Have you already begun doing some of the tasks under the New Federalism, too?

Dr. RIVLIN. We have done that as well, yes, at the request of the Congress.

POLICY OF RESPONSIBILITY TO REQUESTS

Senator MATTINGLY. Last year you indicated it was not the policy of the Congressional Budget Office to respond to questions from individual Members of Congress unless the request is for a copy of an item that has already been prepared. Does that continue to be the policy of the Congressional Budget Office?

Dr. RIVLIN. Yes; it does. We endeavor to be helpful to individual Members of Congress as much as we can as to providing information we already have or that can be obtained very easily. It is our understanding, however, that the Congress wants us to respond to committees and subcommittees and that we are not to be responsible for doing research for individual Members. The Congressional Research Service does that, as well as other agencies.

Senator MATTINGLY. Who else?

Dr. RIVLIN. Who else? I believe the General Accounting Office often responds to individual Members, but I am not familiar with their practices entirely.

Senator MATTINGLY. Are you the only support organization which does not respond to individual Members?

Dr. RIVLIN. I don't know what the practice of the Office of Technology Assessment's is on that. I just know that it is the policy we have worked out.

Senator MATTINGLY. How long have you had that policy in effect?

Dr. RIVLIN. We have had it since the beginning of our operations, although we only formalized it about 4 or 5 years ago.

Mr. GREIGG. 1977.

Senator MATTINGLY. The same time you started indexing.

Dr. RIVLIN. Right; not related. [Laughter] I think it is a necessary policy. Otherwise we would be swamped with legitimate but time-consuming requests.

CALCULATING THE IMPACT OF FEDERAL LEGISLATION ON STATE AND LOCAL

GOVERNMENTS

Senator MATTINGLY. How do you plan to implement the Congressional Budget Office's new responsibility to calculate the impact on State and local governments of Federal legislation?

Dr. RIVLIN. We will expand our staff, we hope, by eight people to allow us to have the capacity to do that new responsibility. This will not be a separate staff that sits over in a corner and worries only about estimates of costs to State and local governments. It will be an amplification of our existing staff that is concerned with, say, health programs. We already have people who estimate the costs of health programs to the Federal Government, and we will add to that capacity so that these same people can estimate the cost of the health programs to State and local governments. The situation will be the same for housing and other programs that impact State and local governments.

These cost estimates are very complicated to make. We are already communicating with the various agencies of State and local governments, getting their input. Some States have agencies with comparable responsibilities-a State agency required to estimate the impact of State legislation on local government, usually known as fiscal notes. They have some experience in doing that sort of work, and we have been communicating with them about that. We are also grappling with the problem of the data base and how to organize that.

Senator MATTINGLY. That was going to be my next question. Last year we discovered that not everybody had the same data base. It seems like that would be one of the first things to institute in all of the 50 States and get some agreement between their common data bases, too. I think that would head off the concern about fairness and equity in the new federalism. I am just asking you a question. That may be something you can send out to States and localities to see if they are using the same data base. I don't know. You know more about it than I do. Dr. RIVLIN. That is basically right. We will be endeavoring at least to make clear what the numbers are that we are using and to have as much commonality as possible between us and what the State and local governments are using.

INTERN PROGRAM

Senator MATTINGLY. I see you use an intern program at the Congressional Budget Office.

Dr. RIVLIN. Yes.

Senator MATTINGLY. How many interns do you use?

Dr. RIVLIN. We currently have 20 summer interns.

Mr. GREIGG. That is right.

Dr. RIVLIN. And we have 10 we call semester interns, who come at various times during the year.

RETENTION OF SENIOR STAFF

Senator MATTINGLY. You noticed when we lifted the pay cap that the brain drain on the Congressional Budget Office and other levels of Government stopped?

Dr. RIVLIN. I don't know whether it is that or the high level of unemployment.

Senator MATTINGLY. In other words, the brain drain slowed down, or do you have the same number of people still getting out of the Congressional Budget Office or other agencies? I will just ask about the Congressional Budget Office.

Dr. RIVLIN. The Congressional Budget Office is a small agency. I think it really depends on what is the hot subject of the moment as to how many people we lose. Recently we have had the most trouble retaining our senior people in the defense area, because that is the growth industry at the moment. We have lost several of our senior people to the Pentagon and to defense-related activities. But raising the pay cap certainly helped. We have at the top of our organization a great many people who could earn more doing something else.