Government Reform Committee backs federal program reviews

The House Government Reform Committee approved a bill Thursday calling for regular reviews of federal programs by the Office of Management and Budget.

The bill (H.R. 185), sponsored by Rep. Todd Platts, R-Pa., passed on a partisan roll call vote, 19-14. The legislation requires OMB to examine programs at least once every five years and submit reports to Congress with the President's budget request. OMB would get input from the agencies in establishing its evaluation criteria. In introducing the measure, Platts said it would provide "evidence based performance information" that would, "improve the way that programs are managed."

The bill expands on the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act, which mandated programs to set performance goals and measure their progress. But last year, the General Accountability Office found that agencies sometimes overlooked that requirement. To remedy this, the administration created the Performance Assessment Rating Tool (PART), which integrated OMB into the review process so that budget decisions could be based on performance. Platts' measure does not directly authorize PART. Instead, it gives OMB the authority to decide how to conduct reviews.

H.R. 185 is smiliar to a bill the committee passed last year, but the 108th Congress ended before it could be approved by the full House. At the suggestion of committee Democrats, the new measure incorporates a few changes to make the review process more transparent. Platts said the revisions "offer significant improvements and address concerns that a performance assessment could be used as a political tool. "The new provisions would require OMB to publish notice of its evaluations on its Web site, allow the public to comment on the programs being assessed, and make reviews and evaluation criteria available in electronic form.

Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., offered an amendment that would require OMB to print criteria for reviews in the Federal Register, not just on its Web site. It would also broaden the requirement for public comment. Towns introduced a second amendment adding a sunset provision to the bill, allowing Congress to reauthorize it in 2013. The amendments were voted on en bloc and failed on a party-line roll call vote, 15-16. Rnking member Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., sponsored an amendment that would have allowed agencies ultimate authority to set their own performance goals, rather than giving that responsibility to OMB. He said this would ensure that program assessments did not become too politicized. But Platts argued that agencies are just as likely as OMB to allow political ideology to influence evaluations. Republicans blocked the amendment on a roll call vote, 15-17.