Hearing of the
Subcommittee on Rules and Organization of the House
Subcommittee hearing on "The Government Performance and Results Act and the Legislative Process of House Committees."
Chairman, Subcommittee on Rules and Organization of the House
I am pleased to convene this subcommittee hearing to examine the impact of the Government Performance and Results Act's implementation on the legislative process of House committees. The jurisdiction of the Subcommittee is not to monitor GPRA from the perspective of managing the requirements of the act itself, but from the perspective of its impact on the duties, jurisdictions, and oversight responsibilities of the standing committees of the House. Therefore, the Subcommittee today hopes to do two things. First, determine whether committees automatically provide performance goals when creating or reauthorizing programs, and second, examine the rules governing the House oversight and hearing process to determine whether these rules affect the way in which committees incorporate performance goals into their legislation.
Most of the reviews of GPRA in the past have spotlighted the role of agencies. In order to achieve the goals of this hearing, we want to review the congressional committee process and this institution's oversight role. Overall, we want to ask how committees think during the drafting process and how committees can better accomplish the oversight goals of the Results Act.
The Results Act is an important tool that committees can utilize to maximize their knowledge of existing federal programs and work with agencies to set meaningful performance targets. It can also be a beneficial team-building mechanism within the House of Representatives, between the House and the Senate, and between the legislative and executive branches.
When fully implemented, GPRA has the potential to transform government by changing the focus of federal programs from money to results. Unfortunately, measuring performance is often difficult because the goals of a statute may be vague or so general in character that it is difficult for committees and others to assess whether an agency or program is working to achieve its intended purpose. Under the Results Act, committees and agencies have been working to develop performance goals, implement policies for an efficient government and improve decision-making.
Reports by the Congressional Research Service indicate that a culture change is occurring in the government toward performance results and that congressional committees are increasingly setting goals. According to CRS, the number of public laws with performance measure provisions nearly doubled from the 104th to the 105th Congresses and the number of committee reports containing performance measure provisions nearly tripled, from 27 to 78. There were instances when committees passed legislation or committee reports contained language requiring use of the Results Act process of establishing goals and evaluating performance and in a few instances committees specified detailed performance indicators and directed that continued funding was contingent upon performance.
The task before the subcommittee today is to evaluate how committees have worked on performance goals – in the past and today – and assess how the current oversight and hearing process plays a role in achieving these performance goals.
We will receive some historical perspective from Chairman Steve Horn on the Results Act, the legislative process and how committees work on and advance performance goals. He has been very active in reviewing the Results Act and he will be providing his insights into oversight, an analysis of where the committees stand, and whether these performance goals are considered during reauthorization.
We will also be hearing from the General Accounting Office and the Office of Management and Budget who will provide an outside perspective on House committees' role in implementing GPRA and provide advice to better equip committees to achieve the goals of the Results Act.
We will then hear from an academician and former member of parliament from New Zealand who will provide some insight on legislative oversight, how committees can define goals and secure quality outcomes, and relate his experience in creating the proper framework for program performance.
Under the authority vested in the House committees by Rule X and Rule XI, committees work to determine whether legislation is working as intended, the costs and benefits of program implementation, and whether some statutes have outlived their usefulness. In the context of these program oversight responsibilities granted the committees, I look forward to hearing testimony on GPRA and the legislative process, discussing the ways in which committees design and advance performance goals, gaining insight on how committees analyze these performance goals during authorization or reauthorization of programs, and receiving some suggestions on how committees could better accomplish the oversight goals of the Results Act.
