Work With Me

I help organizations understand how federal budget rules, appropriations decisions, CBO scorekeeping, and public spending data affect their policy, funding, and legislative strategy.

I work with organizations that need clear answers to technical federal budget questions, including nonprofits, foundations, advocacy organizations, journalists, researchers, and government affairs teams.

CBO Scoring and Budgetary Effects

I help clients understand how CBO and JCT are likely to analyze policy proposals and legislative options.

This work can include:

  • Explaining how CBO scorekeeping rules apply to a proposal
  • Identifying the budgetary effects that are likely to matter most
  • Comparing alternative policy designs and pay-fors
  • Translating CBO cost estimates, baselines, and technical assumptions into plain English
  • Preparing teams for conversations with congressional staff, committees, or outside validators

I do not provide official CBO estimates. I help clients understand the scoring issues, risks, and design choices that are likely to shape official analysis.

Budget and Appropriations Trainings

Congressional budget and appropriations rules shape what can pass, when it can move, and who controls the process. I provide briefings and trainings that help teams understand those rules without losing the practical stakes.

Training topics can include:

  • Annual appropriations acts and continuing resolutions
  • Budget reconciliation
  • CBO and JCT scoring
  • PAYGO and deficit effects
  • Appropriations report language
  • Impoundment, rescissions, and executive-branch implementation
  • The difference between discretionary, mandatory, emergency, and reconciliation funding
  • How to read budget documents, CBO scores, and federal spending data
  • Sample training materials:

These trainings can be designed for policy teams, government affairs staff, executives, coalition partners, journalists, researchers, or board members.

Data Analysis and Federal Funding Research

I build and refine datasets that help clients answer questions about federal funding, agency budgets, legislation, and policy effects.

This work can include:

  • Creating datasets from USAspending.gov, CBO, Treasury, OMB, agency budget documents, and enacted legislation
  • Mapping appropriations to Treasury Account Symbols and agency accounts
  • Tracking obligations, outlays, balances, and object classes
  • Combining annual appropriations with funding provided through reconciliation, supplementals, emergency designations, and other legislative vehicles
  • Searching full text of past appropriations laws, budget resolutions, and reconciliation statutes to identify congressional practices and precedents that matter for current decisions
  • Producing tables, charts, memos, and methodology notes that can withstand scrutiny

The goal is not just to make a chart. The goal is to produce an analysis that makes the data, definitions, caveats, and policy implications clear.

Representative Questions

Clients often come to me with questions like:

  • How would CBO likely evaluate this proposal?
  • What budgetary effects or pay-fors should we worry about?
  • What did Congress actually appropriate, and where did the money go?
  • How much money remains available to an agency or program?
  • What federal data can answer this question, and what does the public data still leave unresolved?
  • How should our team explain a technical budget issue to decisionmakers?

Selected Work

My public writing shows the kinds of questions I help clients answer:

Get In Touch

If your organization needs help understanding CBO scoring, congressional budget rules, appropriations strategy, or federal spending data, I would be glad to talk.