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Jeremy Miliken, Reporter
Spending for health care is the leading cause of the growing federal deficit and debt. It costs $1 trillion dollars annually, is the largest category of federal spending, and is also the largest tax expenditure.
At the Fall Symposium, Edward Brigham, a former federal executive from the Department of Transportation, moderated The Budget Impact of Health Reform. Speakers included Dr. Donald Marron from the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute and Dr. Leighton Ku from the George Washington University School of Public Health. Both speakers reviewed the options to reform health care that were pending in the Congress and discussed how they would affect the budget.
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Melissa Merrell, President
Dear AABPA members,
As you can see by the special banner under our logo, we are celebrating our 35th anniversary this year. AABPA was established to elevate the profile of public budgeting and policy professionals at all levels and to meet important needs for professional networking and mid-career training.
We were fortunate to have six of our founding members: Audrey Dysland, John Garmat, Emilie Heller, Al Kliman, Herb Persil, Benson Simon, join us at the Spring Symposium on May 18. These individuals and all our founders were forward thinking practitioners who recognized the need for an organization dedicated to the education and training of the budget and program workforce. We have created a 35th Anniversary Page on our website and I encourage you check it out for details and updates regarding this milestone.
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Gema K. Gonzalez, Reporter
New systems and guidelines introduced by both the Department of the Treasury and the Office of Management and Budgeting (OMB) are about making government more efficient. Moderator, Holden Hogue, from the Department of the Treasury, opened the session by stating the more we understand about the transactions being made, the more efficient all the agencies will become and therefore the more efficient our government will become.
He cautioned, however, that not all government agencies are ready to fully integrate these new systems and guidelines. Learning any new system takes time and practice, lots of practice, according to Teresa Tancre from the Budget Review Division of OMB. This is the same for the current project to realign the SF 132, SF 133 and the P&F schedule that currently share common data so that, to the extent possible, they use the same structure, format, and data definitions.
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Frank Justice, Reporter
Doug Elmendorf, Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), kicked off AABPA’s Fall Symposium with a painfully realistic outlook for the federal budget and economy. His discussion touched on short- and long-term budget projections and the pace of the recovery in output and employment.
Dr. Elmendorf said that CBO expects the U.S. economy to experience a relatively slow and tentative recovery. The unemployment rate has risen much further than CBO had anticipated, and it will take many years to return to a more traditional rate of around 5 percent. Unemployment is high because more people are getting permanently laid off from their jobs than in the past (as opposed to temporary job losses) and more people are having trouble finding jobs than in previous recessions. This may be due, in part, to a lack of mobility caused by the housing crisis, as the ability of people to move from an area with poor job prospects to an area with good employment potential was greater in the past.
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Mike Glauser, Reporter
Andrew Krzmarzick, Community Leader for GovLoop, led a panel of speakers about Web 2.0 and how it will simplify the way business is conducted in the public sector.
Ideas can originate from a variety of sources. Web 2.0 is the process of using new technology to bring those ideas together. People from any corner of a field may know how to solve a particular problem, so it’s advantageous to eliminate obstacles to the flow of information. This is where new technologies come in. “Web- based tools are drivers of paradigm tools,” said Mr. Krzmarzick.
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