Program cuts figure into Bush plan to control deficit

In his fiscal 2005 budget proposal released Monday, President Bush asked lawmakers to rein in the deficit, partly by eliminating 65 federal programs.

By cutting the 65 programs, the government could save $4.9 billion in 2005, said Joshua Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget. Some programs have already accomplished their mission, Bolten said. Others are either duplicative or have failed to live up to the White House's expectations, he said.

"If a program isn't delivering results to the American people, we're going to be proposing to either fix it or take it out of the budget," Bolten said.

Of the programs slated for elimination, 13 fared poorly in formal OMB evaluations completed using a series of 25 to 30 questions called the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART). The questionnaire, which OMB has used in the past two budget cycles as well, allows the administration to grade a sampling of federal programs as effective, moderately effective, adequate, ineffective, or results not demonstrated.

Bush requested funding decreases for a handful of other programs that underwent PART evaluations. In total, the administration asked Congress to cut roughly $1 billion in spending based on OMB's formal program evaluations for 2005. Lawmakers will decide during the fiscal 2005 appropriations process whether to grant the Bush administration's request.

Programs on the chopping block at least partly because of OMB's formal evaluations include the Federal Perkins Loan program, an adult literacy project, a nuclear research initiative and an environmental education program. Eight of the 13 programs slated for elimination based on performance received a results not demonstrated rating, while evaluators deemed five ineffective.

Administration officials have emphasized that a poor PART rating does not necessarily result in a funding decrease. The ratings are simply a means of identifying problem areas, administration officials have said.

The White House proposed funding increases for some programs graded as ineffective. For instance, Bush requested a roughly 3 percent funding increase for the Health and Human Services Departments' Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment block grant program. Though the program's managers failed to adequately measure and demonstrate results in 2005 assessments, the managers "will continue to develop new outcome measures" and will "establish baselines and set targets for treatment and prevention," the OMB evaluation stated.

But the administration decided that other ineffective programs, including the Federal Perkins Loan Program, which gives colleges and universities money to disburse need-based student loans, could be eliminated completely. The Perkins program "is redundant and duplicative, given the broad availability of need-based, subsidized, relatively low-interest loans available through two larger student loan programs," OMB assessors decided.

The Perkins loan program, evaluated for the first time during the 2005 budget cycle, is also not as cost effective as other loan programs and "the current statutory formula for allocating funding to schools fails to target aid to the neediest students," OMB evaluators concluded. In addition, "the data the Education Department collects from colleges and universities is insufficient for performance measurement and program management."

For the 2005 budget cycle, administration officials used the PART to evaluate roughly 400 programs, representing 40 percent of all federal programs. About half had already received ratings last year.

Of the programs graded for the 2005 budget, 40 percent received either effective or moderately effective ratings. A quarter earned adequate or ineffective grades, while about 40 percent could not demonstrate results.

For fiscal 2004, half of the 234 programs evaluated could not demonstrate results and only 30 percent received effective or moderately effective grades.

OMB is pleased that the percentage of agencies unable to demonstrate results has dropped by more than 10 percentage points, said Robert Shea, head of OMB's budget and performance integration initiative. The administration expects that the percentage will continue to fall as agency managers become more familiar with the PART and hone their methods of documenting program results.

"We're working with agencies to find the right measures [of whether programs are meeting performance goals]," Shea said.

The percentage of programs not showing results is "definitely still too high," said Carl DeMaio, president of the Performance Institute, an Arlington, Va.-based think tank. "Taxpayers have the right to know what they're getting for the money being poured into those 148 programs, and managers have the responsibility to provide that information," he said.

But agencies are doing much better at measuring program success than they did last year, DeMaio added. He applauded the administration's proposal to eliminate $1 billion in wasteful spending. "Performance budgeting is finally paying dividends for taxpayers," he said.

Congressional appropriators have been somewhat reluctant to use the PART in making budgeting decisions. But members of the House and Senate government reform committees praised the tool on Monday.

Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, a member of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, is pleased that the administration is focusing on management issues that have been "ignored in D.C. for too long," said Marcie Ridgway, his spokeswoman. "In this time of record deficits, it is imperative that government programs deliver the services that the American people expect."

PART evaluations are still evolving, but are useful to congressional oversight committees, according to a staff member on the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Efficiency and Financial Management. Ratings are particularly helpful in pointing out management challenges that lawmakers should investigate further, he said. "We're going to take a good hard look at the scores," he added.