House and Senate Budget Committee Chairmen Tom Price (R-GA) and Mike Enzi (R-WY) announced today that Mercatus Center Senior Fellow Keith Hall will be the next director of the Congressional Budget Office.
Hall, who was appointed to be commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics by President Bush, will replace the current director Doug Elmendorf, who served at the left-leaning Brookings Institution before coming to CBO.
Hall ran the BLS from 2008 through 2012 and served as Chief Economist on President Bush's White House Council of Economic Advisors before that.
While at Mercatus, Hall authored numerous papers on the United States labor market including a 2013 working paper titled, "The Employment Costs of Regulation." "[T]here is evidence that high levels of regulation can affect the economy dynamically and at the macro level," Hall wrote. "With respect to labor markets, this means that regulations can affect job creation, wage growth, and workforce skill mismatching with available jobs."
As the official scorekeeper of legislative proposals, the CBO is a key Washington institution whose cost estimates have a significant impact on how laws are drafted.
“[Dr. Hall] has dedicated his career to managing teams focused on strengthening the economy by providing policy makers and the public with superior economic analysis and information," Enzi said in a statement. "I thank Mr. Elmendorf for his service and look forward to working with Dr. Hall as Congress begins the difficult task of addressing our nation’s chronic overspending, which threatens America’s future.”
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