I suppose everyone is sort of chortling, as I am, about the Republican implosion. I have a friend who baits right wingers with the line "You have to like Buchanan--all of the other candidates consider him a socialist." However (see below) the budget battles have already done real harm. Dave Richardson ---------- BLS DAILY REPORT, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1996 BLS Commissioner Katharine Abraham told the Daily Labor Report (Feb. 23, page CC-1) that, with funding levels below those requested for the current fiscal year, budgetary constraints have forced BLS to eliminate some economic reports and to cut back on the frequency of others. BLS has already implemented spending cuts that resulted in a smaller sample size for the household employment survey, the elimination of the Bureau's data on collective bargaining, and postponement of certain data improvement initiatives. Other future savings will come from a streamlining of BLS' Occupational Compensation Survey, the Employment Cost Index, and Employee Benefits Survey (through the COMP2000 initiative) to eliminate the duplication of data collection among these programs. About two-thirds of the BLS budget goes toward national economic indicators. After including other legally required programs and administrative costs, just under 6 percent of the agency's budget is spent on other data programs. The revision of the Consumer Price Index was excluded from spending cuts in order to meet the schedule of releasing an updated and rebased CPI early in 1998. Private data users are increasingly concerned about the impact that budget cuts will have on the data's use by policy-makers and economists for research and economic forecasting. BLS is currently operating with funding provided by a continuing resolution that expires on March 15.
