Organization and Staffing

Director

Keith Hall became the ninth Director of the Congressional Budget Office on April 1, 2015. He has more than 25 years of public service, most recently as the Chief Economist and Director of Economics at the International Trade Commission (ITC). Before that, he was a senior research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Chief Economist for the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, Chief Economist for the Department of Commerce, a senior international economist for the ITC, an assistant professor at the University of Arkansas, and an international economist at the Department of Treasury. In those positions, he worked on a wide variety of topics, including labor market analysis and policy, economic conditions and measurement, macroeconomic analysis and forecasting, international economics and policy, and computational partial equilibrium modeling. He earned his Ph.D. and M.S. in economics from Purdue University.

Deputy Director

Mark Hadley became CBO’s Deputy Director in June 2016. Before then, he was CBO’s General Counsel for nearly eight years. In that capacity, he oversaw the agency’s legal work, ethics program and acquisitions. He had advanced from the post of Deputy General Counsel. Before that, Mark Hadley was a transactional lawyer with Jones Day, a large international law firm, where he specialized in structured finance and derivatives. Prior to his legal career, he was an associate analyst at CBO for five years—during which time his areas of responsibility were aviation, deposit insurance, and commerce—and a financial specialist with the Small Business Administration. Mark Hadley has a Master’s degree in public affairs from the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin and a J.D. degree (with high honors) from The George Washington University Law School.

Associate Director for Economic Analysis

Jeffrey Kling is an economist who joined CBO in July 2009. He has conducted research on public housing, incarceration, retirement security, Medicare’s prescription drug program, unemployment insurance, and other aspects of public policy in the United States. His work has been published in the American Economic Review, Econometrica, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and elsewhere. Previously, he was the Joseph A. Pechman Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution. From 1998 to 2005, he was a faculty member at Princeton University. In earlier government service, he was a special assistant to the Secretary of Labor and an assistant to the chief economist at the World Bank. He earned his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his A.B. from Harvard University.

Associate Director for Economic Analysis

Wendy Edelberg is an economist who joined CBO in 2011. In 2016, she became Associate Director for Economic Analysis, having served as the Assistant Director for Macroeconomic Analysis almost five years. Just before coming to CBO, she was the executive director of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which released its report on the causes of the financial crisis in January 2011. Previously, she worked on issues related to macroeconomics, housing, and consumer spending at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers during two administrations. Before that, she worked on those same issues at the Federal Reserve Board. She received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago, an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago, and a B.A. from Columbia University.

Associate Director for Legislative Affairs

Leigh Angres joined CBO in 2007 and worked in a variety of positions before becoming Associate Director for Legislative Affairs in 2015. Before assuming her current post, she served for more than five years as a special assistant to the Director, in which capacity she was responsible for preparing the Director’s presentations, managing CBO’s blog, and performing research projects on various budget and economic issues. During that time, she coauthored two reports: Choices for Deficit Reduction (November 2012) and Choices for Deficit Reduction: An Update (December 2013). Before joining the Director’s office in 2009, she was an analyst in the Budget Analysis Division. There, she prepared cost estimates for legislation involving deposit insurance, the U.S. court system, and Department of Justice programs. In earlier government service, she worked as a budget analyst in the Department of Justice’s Civil Division, preparing the agency’s appropriation requests. She earned her M.P.P. from the University of California at Berkeley and her A.B. from Duke University.

Associate Director for Communications

Deborah Kilroe joined CBO as the head of its communications office in April 2011. Before coming to the agency, she spent five years working in communications in the Federal Reserve System. Most recently, she was a vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where she oversaw media relations and public affairs, and she previously worked in the public affairs office at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C. Before joining the Federal Reserve Board, Deborah Kilroe spent 15 years as a journalist, during which time she specialized in covering economics, monetary policy, financial markets, and politics. Her journalism career began at States News Service in Washington, covering the Congress and the Administration. She went on to be a staff writer at The Record, in New Jersey, focusing on municipal government. She later became an economics reporter at Bridge News in New York and at Dow Jones Newswires in Washington. She also worked as a senior producer for AOLTV and has been an on-air contributor to CNBC, MSNBC, and PBS’s Nightly Business Report. She holds a B.S. in journalism from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

General Counsel

T.J. McGrath became CBO’s General Counsel in November 2016. Before then, she was CBO’s Deputy General Counsel for nearly eight years. As General Counsel, she oversees the agency’s legal work, ethics program, and acquisitions. Previously, she was an Associate General Counsel for TRICARE Management Activity (now the Defense Health Agency), where she analyzed current law, advised the agency about new legislative initiatives, served as the Senior Ethics Attorney, and oversaw the administration of the appeals and hearings process for TRICARE. She served on active duty as a Judge Advocate in the United States Air Force for more than 12 years and is a Colonel in the Air Force Reserve. She has a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and a J.D., cum laude, from the John Marshall Law School in Chicago.

Senior Advisor

Robert A. Sunshine is a senior advisor to the Director, a post he assumed in June 2016. Before then, he was the Deputy Director for almost nine years, serving under three different Directors—and he served as Acting Director from November 2008 to January 2009.

Bob Sunshine has been with CBO almost from its inception. From 1999 to 2007, he served as Assistant Director for Budget Analysis. In that capacity, he supervised the preparation of cost estimates and intergovernmental mandate statements (which identify the costs of federal mandates on state, local, or tribal governments) for legislation being considered by the Congress; the preparation of CBO’s multiyear projections of federal spending that constitute the “baseline” for the Congressional budget process; and the agency’s annual analysis of the President’s budget. In 2003, he received the James L. Blum Award for exceptional and distinguished accomplishment and leadership in public budgeting from the American Association for Budget and Program Analysis.

From 1995 to 1999, he was the Deputy Assistant Director of the Budget Analysis Division. From 1978 to 1994, he served as Chief of the Natural and Physical Resources Cost Estimates Unit in that division. For the two years before that, he was a principal analyst in the Budget Analysis Division, covering transportation issues. Before coming to CBO, he was a senior associate with Simat, Helliesen and Eichner, Inc., a transportation consulting firm.

Assistant Director

Theresa Gullo is the Assistant Director for Budget Analysis at CBO. She guides and contributes to analyses that are critical to the legislative processes of the Congress—including projections of federal spending for the current year and the next 10 years under current laws and policies for about 1,000 budget accounts covering all federal activities; tallies of federal spending throughout the year; and about 600 formal cost estimates (most of which include estimates of the cost of federal mandates on state, local, and tribal governments) each year for legislation approved by committees and thousands of informal estimates each year for legislation under consideration. Ms. Gullo has worked at CBO since 1985. She served as an analyst in the Natural and Physical Resources Cost Estimates Unit, where she handled land and water management issues. She also helped create and managed the State and Local Government Cost Estimates Unit until 2007, when she became the division’s Deputy Assistant Director.

Before coming to CBO, Ms. Gullo worked at the Urban Institute, conducting research on a variety of public finance issues, including infrastructure investment and state implementation of federal block grants. She graduated from Scripps College with a bachelor’s degree in American studies and received a master’s degree in public policy from the University of California at Berkeley.

Deputy Assistant Director

Holly Harvey is one of two deputies in the Budget Analysis Division. In that capacity, she works with BAD’s Assistant Director to manage the division’s work in the areas of health, income security, and education. Ms. Harvey rejoined CBO in 2007, having been an analyst in the division from 1986 to 1991. Before becoming Deputy Assistant Director, Ms. Harvey worked in the division’s Health Systems and Medicare Cost Estimates Unit, where she focused on issues in the health care delivery system. In her earlier spell at CBO, she was responsible for developing baseline projections and cost estimates of legislative proposals related to Medicare payments for physicians’ services.

In between her times at CBO, Ms. Harvey held positions at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the Department of Health and Human Services; and in the Domestic Social Policy Division at the Congressional Research Service. She graduated from the University of California at San Diego with a bachelor’s degree in political science and received a master’s degree in public policy from the University of California at Berkeley.

Deputy Assistant Director

Sam Papenfuss is one of two deputies in the Budget Analysis Division. In that capacity, he works with BAD’s Assistant Director to manage the division’s work on a wide array of topics, including Social Security, income security, education, immigration, defense, international affairs, veterans’ issues, and natural and physical resources. Mr. Papenfuss joined CBO in 1999 as an analyst of military and veterans’ health care. He was responsible principally for the cost estimates and baseline projections for Tricare for Life (the health care program for military retirees who are eligible for Medicare), but also for work involving bioterrorism and international affairs. In 2007, he became the head of the Income Security and Education Cost Estimates Unit in BAD. In that post, he oversaw cost estimates and baseline projections for Social Security and for programs providing unemployment insurance, nutrition assistance, and student loans. He also was the primary coordinator for all of the division’s work related to immigration. Mr. Papenfuss graduated from Brigham Young University with a bachelor’s degree in economics and pursued doctoral studies in economics at George Mason University, where he completed all of the requirements for his degree except his dissertation.

Assistant Director

Damien Moore became CBO’s Assistant Director for Financial Analysis in March 2012, having been the division’s deputy assistant director since its inception in 2010. Starting as an analyst at CBO in 2005, he began working with colleagues in the Budget Analysis Division, Macroeconomic Analysis Division, and elsewhere in the agency on a range of federal financial issues, including estimates of the cost of federal credit and insurance programs and analysis of federal actions taken in the wake of the recent financial crisis. Damien Moore has written on CBO’s budgetary treatment of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and on policy options for federal student loans and the housing and mortgage markets. He has made major contributions to the agency’s analysis of a wide range of federal financial activities, playing a key role in formulating and applying analytical techniques that have been used in baseline projections, cost estimates, and reports. Before joining CBO, Damien Moore was a lecturer at the University of Sydney Business School. He also worked as a consulting economist for the Australian firm Access Economics. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from Northwestern University and bachelor’s degrees in economics and commerce from the Australian National University.

Assistant Director

David Weaver came to CBO in October 2016, after serving more than 20 years at the Social Security Administration (SSA). During that time, he conducted and supervised research and policy analysis on Social Security's retirement, survivors, and disability programs. Most recently at SSA, he was the Associate Commissioner for Research, Demonstration, and Employment Support. In that role, he led more than 100 managers, researchers, analysts, computer specialists, and program experts in conducting research, policy analysis, and operational activities for Social Security’s disability programs.

Previously, as Deputy Associate Commissioner for Retirement Policy at SSA, Dr. Weaver headed a group conducting research on retirement and other income support programs. In that role, he led efforts to improve the agency’s microsimulation model for analyzing policy proposals and directed and reviewed numerous scholarly articles by research staff on federal programs that provide income support. During his early tenure at the agency, he conducted research on Social Security programs and their effects on the economic well-being of beneficiaries.

Dr. Weaver received his Ph.D. in economics from Duke University and his B.A. in economics from Furman University.

Deputy Assistant Director

Jessica Banthin came to CBO in June 2011, arriving as a senior advisor on health care analyses. She was promoted two years later to the position of deputy assistant director. During her time at CBO, she has written and managed several reports and cost estimates related to the Affordable Care Act. She directs the development and application of the agency’s Health Insurance Simulation model as well as other models used to support estimates of how changes in policy would affect health insurance coverage and the federal budget.

Before joining CBO, Dr. Banthin worked for many years at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), where she directed the Division of Modeling and Simulation. At AHRQ, she helped design and analyze the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, which yields nationally representative data on health care expenditures, premiums, and more.

Her research has spanned a range of health care issues, including trends in out-of-pocket spending, employment-based coverage, eligibility for and enrollment in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the “crowding out” of private insurance by public programs, premiums in the individual market, prescription drug expenditures, and the impact of policy reforms on costs overall, access to care, and families’ out-of-pocket expenses. Dr. Banthin received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland and her A.B. from Harvard University.

Deputy Assistant Director

Philip Ellis returned to CBO in 2013 after working for two years as a Senior Vice President in the Center for Health Reform and Modernization at UnitedHealth Group. He was promoted to the position of Deputy Assistant Director in 2015. Previously, he had worked at CBO for more than eight years in various positions. He served as a leader of the agency’s health team during the 2009–2010 debates on health care legislation, focusing primarily on estimating the effects of proposals affecting insurance coverage. His earlier work at CBO covered a wide range of topics in health care.

Before joining CBO in 2002, Dr. Ellis was a Senior Advisor in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services and worked in the Office of Economic Policy at the U.S. Treasury Department. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and a bachelor’s degree in economics and international relations from Stanford University.

Assistant Director

Jeffrey F. Werling joined CBO in 2016. Before coming to the agency, he was the Director of Inforum, a research unit within the Department of Economics at the University of Maryland, College Park. There, he served as the principal investigator for projects concerning economic forecasts, infrastructure investment, health care, fiscal policy, port disruptions, immigration, and exchange rate fluctuations. For more than a decade, he contributed to the Blue Chip and other consensus economic forecasts. He also taught an undergraduate course in economic development. Previously, he held positions as an international and industry economist with the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation, and Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates (now Global Insight). He received a B.S. in mineral economics from the Pennsylvania State University, and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland.

Chief Administrative Officer

Joseph E. Evans, Jr., became CBO’s Chief Administrative Officer in June 2013, having advanced from his position as the agency’s Chief Financial Officer, which he had held since 2004. As the head of CBO’s division providing all support services for the agency, Joe Evans has broad responsibilities —for human resources, financial systems, information and technology resources, library services, and facilities, as well as for the editing and production of CBO’s publications. During his time as Chief Financial Officer, he handled all aspects of planning and implementing the agency’s budgetary and financial activities.

Before he came to CBO, Joe Evans held increasingly responsible positions at the Defense Intelligence Agency. As the Deputy Chief Financial Executive/Comptroller, he provided fiscal oversight and management of the agency’s multibillion-dollar budget and worked in various ways to improve the agency’s management of resources. Before that, in a number of different roles over the course of about 15 years, he presided over the planning of and systems for the agency’s budget and finances, providing advice and analyses to align resources with needs and priorities. A certified government financial manager, he holds two bachelor’s degrees from the University of Maryland, in business management and accounting, and a master’s degree from the same institution, in management, with a specialization in procurement contracts.

Deputy Chief Administrative Officer

Stephanie Ruiz began her career at CBO in 1999. She started as a human resources specialist and was promoted in 2001 to lead the Human Resources Office. Since 2009, she has held the dual role of Human Resources Director and Deputy Chief Administrative Officer. Before joining CBO, she managed various human resource functions at the Samson Companies, a domestic oil and gas company with international operations, headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Ms. Ruiz has also held various roles in academic administration at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University and at the University of Tulsa. Ms. Ruiz received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Tulsa in political science and Spanish and is a certified Professional in Human Resources.

Assistant Director

Joseph Kile came to CBO in 2005, following 16 years in various positions at the Government Accountability Office (GAO). While at that agency, he led the Center for Economics, within the Applied Research and Methods Team—overseeing a group of economists that provided analyses and reviews of a broad range of issues. Before that, he was a senior economist and an assistant director within GAO’s Office of the Chief Economist. His analyses focused, in particular, on the issues of transportation (especially aviation financing, airline competition, and air service to small communities), energy, natural resources and the environment, and the pharmaceutical industry. Joseph Kile received a master’s degree and a doctorate in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His bachelor’s degree in economics and mathematics is from St. Olaf College, in Northfield, Minnesota.

Deputy Assistant Director

Chad Shirley joined CBO in 2010 as an analyst in the Microeconomic Studies Division and became Deputy Assistant Director of the division the next year. Before coming to the agency, he worked in economic consulting examining questions related to intellectual property and industry structure and performance. Before that, as an economist at the RAND Corporation, he focused on issues in transportation policy and government acquisitions and contracting. Dr. Shirley received his doctorate in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and graduated with a bachelor's degree in economics from Stanford University.

Assistant Director

David E. Mosher returned to CBO in June 2010, resuming with the agency after having been a principal analyst at CBO from 1990 to 2000 in the division that he now leads. In the decade in between his time at CBO, he was a senior policy analyst at RAND. During his time at RAND, David Mosher was also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and served as the director of the American Physical Society’s Study Group on Boost-Phase Intercept Systems for National Missile Defense. His research focused on environmental issues for the Army in contingency operations; ballistic missile defense; military use of space; nuclear proliferation; nuclear weapons; the role of the military and the National Guard in homeland security; special forces aviation; Army strategy; and terrorists’ acquisition and use of nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological weapons. David Mosher holds an M.P.A. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, and a B.A. in physics from Grinnell College, in Grinnell, Iowa.

Deputy Assistant Director

Matthew S. Goldberg has been Deputy Assistant Director for the National Security Division of CBO since 2004. He brought to the agency more than 20 years' experience conducting and leading analyses of defense issues. He was a research team leader at CNA Corporation, an assistant division director at the Institute for Defense Analyses, and a research analyst at RAND and at CNA. His publications have appeared in such peer-reviewed journals as Review of Economics and Statistics, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Management Science, and Journal of Econometrics. In 2003, he published a coauthored monograph, Statistical Methods for Learning Curves and Cost Analysis, which was awarded the Koopman Prize by INFORMS as the best military application of operations research in that year. At CBO, he manages a portfolio of research on the military operations and maintenance account, the compensation and health care benefits of military personnel, veterans' benefits, and related defense budget issues. He holds a bachelor's degree in economics and mathematics from Queens College, City University of New York, and a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago.

Assistant Director

John McClelland came to CBO in August 2016 following 18 years at the Department of the Treasury. At that agency, he most recently was Special Assistant to the Director of the Office of Tax Analysis (OTA). Before that, at OTA, he was the Director of Revenue Estimating; in that role, he was responsible for the Administration’s estimates of the revenue consequences of all tax proposals. Over the course of his tenure at OTA, he worked on a variety of topics in taxation, with a particular focus on business taxes and the consequences of potential reforms. Earlier in his time at the Treasury Department, he was the analyst responsible for the forecasts of revenues from the corporate income tax and a variety of excise taxes. John McClelland received his doctorate in economics from the University of Maryland, College Park. He received his bachelor’s degree in economics, mathematics, and environmental studies from Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, Maine.