WELCOME TO THE AABPA

The latest edition of AABPA’s newsletter, The Bottom Line, is now available! Click here.

• The Forecast is Gloomy: CBO Economic and Budget Outlook
• Reining in Health Care Costs: Reform Legislation and the Federal Deficit/Debt
• Harnessing Web 2.0: A New Way of Conducting Business
• Hand-in-Hand: Budgeting and Accounting Down the Integration Road
• Sawhill Lauds Analysts, Offers Gloomy Fiscal Message
• American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 – A New Look at Data and Transparency
• Becoming a 21st Century Budget Office: Assessments and Tools to Build Capacity
• Let’s Talk Performance: A Dialogue on Program Evaluation
• Lessons Learned From Robert Hale

More than 200 people gathered on May 18 to network, and to hear budget experts and national opinion leaders speak about current issues ranging from the national debt to budget formulation and execution line of business. Initial feedback has been universally complimentary, and the AABPA board of directors is already looking forward to another successful symposium this fall.

During the day, AABPA also held its 2nd annual Graduate Student Research Competition. Selected finalists presented their research to a panel of judges, and in poster form in the Symposium ballroom. Winners receive the Marykathryn Kubat Award for Graduate Research, which includes a certificate and $1,000!

We would like to congratulate the following winners of the 2010 competition:

Amanda Parker, American University
Measure Twice, Cut Once: Examining the Impact of Budget Cuts on Student Success

Robin Ghertner, The Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration, The George Washington University
Gains to Guestworkers: The Social Welfare Consequences of the Y Visa Program in S.1639

• Visit AABPA's Recovery Act Links page, which organizes and puts in one place all the links to passage of the Act and its implementation.
• The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance has had a makeover, and its May 2009 debut bring new graphics and capabilities to the popular site. For months, users have had to deal with a flat, electronic version of the hard copy, but now they may perform advanced searches, get information on writing grant proposals, and much more. Go to www.cfda.gov to see the new site.
• The Federal Digital System (FDsys) [in Beta until summer 2009] is a new GPO site that provides public access to government information submitted by Congress and Federal agencies and preserved as technology changes. Its allows advanced search capabilities across several databases at once.
• When will those unemployment figures come out? How about the CPI? The release dates for these and other economic indicators are set in advance. Click here for the schedule of release dates for principal federal economic indicators for CY 2009.
• 111th Congress, New Member Pictorial Directory (NMPD). Where did they go to college? What do they look like? It's all there in the NMPD. Eventually, the pics and other biographical information will go into the full directory.