President Obama's agenda has so overloaded Congress that its legislative gatekeepers - the analysts who score each bill and the auditors who weed out waste and fraud - can't keep up.

Repeated requests from lawmakers seeking to have their health care reform plans evaluated have overwhelmed the Congressional Budget Office, where some health analysts are putting in 100-hour workweeks. Meanwhile, the Government Accountability Office, Congress' chief investigative arm, says it needs a baseline funding boost to keep the 144 staffers it added just to track waste and abuse from the $862 billion Recovery Act that was enacted last year.

"The almost-round-the-clock schedule maintained this past year by CBO's current staff cannot be maintained much longer," that agency's director, Douglas W. Elmendorf, testified Wednesday to a House Appropriations subcommittee as he made a pitch to add new staff to his stressed-out team....