Cliff Stearns: “my point in coming to the well this morning is to talk about CBO and OMB. These are Beltway terms, I know. The…”

“my point in coming to the well this morning is to talk about CBO and OMB. These are Beltway terms, I know. The Congressional Budget Office is the CBO; and the Office of Management and Budget Office is the OMB. OMB is used by the White House. That is their in-house accounting firm. The CBO is our in-house accounting firm here in Congress. We use it for out budget analysis. I wish every Member had an opportunity this afternoon to listen to what I have to say because it brings great bearing on our debate today on the budget and for the remaining 2 or 3 months. In March 1996, with only 6 months left in the fiscal year, OMB projected that the deficit for fiscal year 1996 would be $154 billion. They were wrong, overestimating by almost 44 percent. Now let us look at CBO. In May 1996, just 4 months remaining in the fiscal year, CBO anticipated the budget deficit for the year would be $144 billion. They too were wrong, overestimating by more than 34 percent. We went from 6 months to 4 months. Now let us go to 1 month and see if these folks are accurate. With 1 month left in fiscal year 1996, both CBO and OMB estimated that the budget deficit for the year would be around $117 billion. The actual deficit for the year was $107 billion. Both agencies, despite the short period of anticipation, were off by 10 percent. Mr. Speaker, in other words, neither CBO nor OMB could estimate the budget deficit for the year just 30 days, 30 days, prior to the end of the fiscal year.”