I am both honored and thrilled to become the director of the Congressional Budget Office today. I thought I’d take this opportunity to briefly introduce myself.
But first, I’d like to thank Doug Elmendorf for his outstanding leadership at CBO. The office has an excellent, well-deserved reputation for the quality of its work and its commitment to independent, objective analysis. Doug has only enhanced CBO’s reputation and will be a very hard act to follow.
I have about twenty-four years of service with the federal government. I am, in fact, a second generation public servant as my father spent many years as a career federal worker. Most of my time with the federal government has been with independent agencies. I spent over ten years with the U.S. International Trade Commission conducting studies on international trade and trade policy. I also served a four-year term as the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics during the Great Recession and its aftermath. In addition to working at those two independent agencies, I have served as the Chief Economist for both the White House Council of Economic Advisers and the U.S. Department of Commerce. Earlier in my career, I was at the U.S. Department of Treasury.
Outside of government, I have spent time as a Senior Research Fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center and have served on the faculty in the economics department of the University of Arkansas. I have worked on a very wide variety of topics but generally focusing on the economic impact of policy or on economic measurement. I have a Ph.D. and M.S. in economics from Purdue University and an undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia.
I am looking forward to learning new things from CBO’s talented staff and to building on the strong tradition of high-quality analysis established by my predecessors. I am confident that we at CBO will continue to provide the Congress with timely and objective analytical support as it grapples with the important issues facing the nation.