C. Budget Process

Recommendation No. 20.-The Congress should adopt a two (2) year budget resolution and appropriations cycle, with the budget resolution and appropriations bills adopted during the first session of a Congress, and authorization legislation enacted during the second session.

Recommendation No. 21.-The Congress should prohibit authorizations of less than two (2) years.

Recommendation No. 22.-The Congressional Budget Office should submit quarterly deficit reports to Congress.

Recommendation No. 23.-The Congressional Budget Act should be amended to clarify that the Byrd Rule is permanent, applies to conference reports, requires sixty (60) votes to waive, and applies to extraneous matters.

Recommendation No. 24.-During the second session of a Congress, the General Accounting Office should give priority to requests by authorizing committees for audits and evaluations of government programs and activities.

Recommendation No. 25.-Four (4) years after the enactment of a two year budget resolution and appropriations process, there should not be an appropriation for any program for which there is not a current authorization.

Recommendation No. 26.—The Congress should abolish baseline (or current services) budgeting.

Recommendation No. 27.-The Congress should restore the "firewalls" between defense and non-defense spending.

D. Floor Procedure

Recommendation No. 28.-Debate on the Motion to Proceed should be limited to two (2) hours.

Recommendation No. 29.-Sense of the Senate resolutions should be cosponsored by ten (10) Senators unless offered by the Majority or Minority Leaders.

Recommendation No. 30.—Under cloture, time consumed by quorum calls should be charged against the Senator requesting the quorum call.

Recommendation No. 31.-Under cloture, a three-fifths ruling should be required to overturn a ruling of the presiding officer.

Recommendation No. 32.-The Senate should dispense with reading conference reports so long as the report is printed and available one (1) day in advance.

Mr. PACKARD. Thank you very much, Mr. Wright. I am going to defer to the chairman of the Senate committee for the first questions, if you would like, Senator Mack.

Senator MACK. Mr. Wright, you made the comment change the way you do business.

Mr. WRIGHT. Yes, sir.

Senator MACK. Tell me the first one, two, or three things that you think we ought to change.

Mr. WRIGHT. The Congress should change or the Government? Senator MACK. The Congress should change.

Mr. WRIGHT. I believe that, as Mr. Taylor said, you have way too much duplication in the areas of the economic studies, technical studies. I believe that you have too many requests, for example, of GAO that are coming in from the Congress that are not required, and they are overlapping and duplicating. I believe the Congress has been very slow to do any privatization.

Senator MACK. Let me hop in here for a second on GAO.
Mr. WRIGHT. Yes, sir; I can keep going.

Senator MACK. There would be some who will say that cutting down or trying to limit the ability of the Congress to ask questions is really not-we won't be carrying out our responsibility as a legislative branch, that the General Accounting Office is, in fact, there to be an extension of the Congress, to be able to delve into some very difficult issues. Again, what is your reaction?

You know, the Senate Republican resolution that was passed at a Republican conference earlier this year calls for a 25-percent cut

in the General Accounting Office. Again, what is your reaction to that? Is it, in fact, going to limit the Congress' ability to do its job? Mr. WRIGHT. Senator, I do not believe it is going to limit the Congress' ability to do its job at all. If I remember from the documents from GAO, 80 percent of their total volume, I believe they said, was driven by requests from the Congress.

Senator MACK. Just to clarify that, you are saying that 85 percent was requested by various Members of the Congress and was not directed at its auditing function?

Mr. WRIGHT. They said 80 percent were by Members or entitiescommittees, joint committees of the Congress. I am sure some of it was information and reports from their auditing function. But the point is that the Congress itself is the driver of how large GAO is by the requests that you as a body make upon that institution. And so, therefore, understand that if you are going to reduce the size of GAO-and by the way, I supported your recommendation-if you are going to reduce the size of it, you also are going to have to adjust your own insatiable appetite for getting overlapping, duplicative reports, for having committee chairmen-and I do not mean this in a disrespectful way at all, but having committee chairmen go and basically ask for a report on information for a subject they already know the answer to. This happens over and over again.

Now, I can say this because I am not in GAO, and so, therefore, you know, I am not going to go back and hear from Chuck Rowsher. But that happens too many times. One area also that I would say that they could reduce is what they call transition rePorts From the executive branch, I do not believe that those have been very useful nor been used very often.

They also get into management reviews which I worked with Chuck Bowsher on. And in the management reviews I believe they have gotten too top heavy, they are too duplicative with the inspecfor general activity. So I think there could be quite a bit of paring down and making a much leaner and effective organization. But the Congress is going to have to also reduce its appetite and demands upon that institution.

Senator MACK. I mean, put yourself in Chuck Bowsher's position, though, when you have chairmen of the committees all through the Congres that come to him and say, we want a particular report Astel We want to investigate this or that. I mean how is he going gos tell the Congress that he can't do that? I mean after all, we cread Aim for the purpose of investigating, doing things that the (red they wanted to have done.

The dont that I would make, and I think-I guess I know my own mind what the answer is. I think the Congress needs deline more tightly the kinds of things that would be open to the

The second thing is that some people have suggested that maybe that the Members and the committees ought to have to pay a fee NIs of their budget to the GAO and, therefore, people would be a Spile bir de likely to just kind of off the cuff say, gee, I would like so have a report from GAO about how many stars are in the uni

Novatuses when you go through the process of thinking, well, arvut you going to take some of the money out of my office budget or them a committee budget to get that work done, maybe that

would be the kind of thing that would discourage a number of requests from GAO.

Mr. WRIGHT. Senator, if-I think it would be a very good idea for Chuck Bowsher to come in with the Appropriations Committees and reach—with you, really, and reach an agreement on standards that are going to be followed to give him some protection to be able to say no in the form of priorities to reports or studies that are not needed or are very low priority or are repetitive.

In other words, you may be asking him for the report and he has got 95 percent of it already done somewhere else and it is only 1 year old in a subject that is not timely. But he is going to have to have some cover from the committees to be able to sit down and say here is what our standards are.

Second is I believe that the Members of Congress should be charged up against their committee's budgets for the use of not only GAO, but the other services. Because there is an unlimited demand for a free good, and that is what is being exercised right here in many of the duplications that I have seen. So, therefore, I have seen that recommendation, I totally support it.

Senator MACK. Let me switch to another area. In your statement that you submitted for the record, you referred to an article titled "The Imperial Congress", and I think it was by Joseph Califano. Mr. WRIGHT. Yes, sir; that is right.

Senator MACK. One of the quotes in there was Congress has overstepped its proper size and authority. Can you elaborate on what you believe Joseph Califano meant by that and what your impressions are?

Mr. WRIGHT. I will give you my impressions of it, because if you read the article at the time, it was pretty explicit. I think that Mr. Califano was talking more in the policy areas. I believe what we are dealing with right here is more in the administrative areas.

I questioned why the Copyright Office is part of Congress. I understand the requirements for registration, but that is easily handled, you just send a copy. I question the entire Government Printing Office, that this is a managerial contracting-out function. It is not a legislative function.

There are some other duties, for example, resolving disputes. You know, overseas as well as with contractors. You have got administrative law judges. You have got these types of functions within the agencies. I don't think anybody has really taken a good look at how many executive branch activities you really do. And if you do take a look at it and you decide that, for whatever high priority, there is a reason to do it, my guess is that those activities that you decide upon are going to be relatively small.

Senator MACK. What about the Office of Technology Assessment? Mr. WRIGHT. I agree with your recommendation, that it is not worth the dollars that you are spending on it, and it is being duplicated elsewhere. I would shut it down.

Senator MACK. I think that is all I have right now.
Mr. PACKARD. Thank you very much. Mr. Fazio?

Mr. FAZIO. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to get into a couple of these areas. I know that there are problems in terms of GAO's overload in the sense that members still have the authority to request some sort of investigation, study, or report. I do think

we would be mistaken if we didn't admit that the degree to which they comply with that request varies tremendously based upon the seriousness of the question, and, frankly, the source.

Committees and entities that speak in a bipartisan way in particular I think tend to get a lot more attention than an individual member who has a particular district problem. And I think the resources at GAO are far more likely to be spent more meaningfully on the more significant issues.

But I do think that it has to be put on the record that GAO has been downsized in recent years, certainly in the period since 1981 when I came to the committee, and maybe the clerk can help us with the numbers. But we have not only seen a voluntary reduction of downsizing in the aids, I think some 500 positions were eliminated, but in the last couple of years with the early-out incentives we have seen GAO downsize even more. Not to say that that is sufficient.

I believe Mr. Bowsher has a 3-year plan for further downsizing. But I have heard people talk about a 25-percent cut in 1 year. I think that would be the kind of cut that would be rather difficult for any agency to absorb and still maintain its level of efficiency, and I particularly want to highlight it in regard to GAO because I think in a period of downsizing Government, GAO could make a significant contribution in that regard. And to in effect impede the legislative branch's ability, in fact, the Government's ability, to make reductions appropriately throughout Government would be somewhat counterproductive.

Let me just comment in addition on the recommendation to reduce CBO by 10 percent. I hear your comments, Joe. We have kept CBO in recent years at a level of funding, have essentially paid only cost-of-living adjustments for staff. We have not increased the number of people there at all. And yet we continue to ask them to do more work.

We just passed a bill through the House yesterday which requires them to do more analysis of unfunded Federal mandates, something we have all decided is very important. Last year we were all banging on CBO because they couldn't produce sufficient analysis on the plethora of health reform plans coming from every ideological perspective in Congress.

We are constantly demanding more finite work on all sorts of Government expenditures for a better job of budgeteering. They, of course, came into existence in the 1970's, long after most of the growth of legislative branch funding came to a close. I am concerned that CBO would find it very hard to meet the demands of the new majority in Congress if it were to absorb that kind of cut. Last, OTA. I think again, here is a question of whether or not the legislative and executive branches should have the ability to provide some check on each other. OTA is a relatively small agency, mostly seeking private sector input, nonprofit sector input by contract. Very few permanent personnel.

But essentially, an effort to bring the best in the scientific community's technological advances to the attention of Congress, run by a bipartisan board that vigorously prevents Members of Congress from interfering with the priorities that are set for the institution, not by individual requests. And it would seem to me a real

loss if we were to not have the kind of input on a number of subject areas that frankly Members of Congress, given our typical backgrounds, are not really proficient enough to handle.

So I would be interested in your thoughts. Where is the input we would get in lieu of OTA that isn't within the purview of executive agencies that have their own agenda, their own axe to grind, which can often amount to spending money?

Where would we go for the kind of help that CBO increasingly is being told it must provide to Congress? And where do we go in the downsizing of the Government when we are making a 25-percent cut in a GAO that has already made significant reductions in personnel?

Mr. WRIGHT. OK. Mr. Fazio, I have a whole list of items that you brought up. Let me take first of all, GAO. The numbers in 1981. They had a budget authority which is approximately the same as outlays, about $220 million and 5,182 people. And this last year, they had $429 million, which is a little over a doubling of that, and 4,928 people. Now, I don't know what is going to happen, you know, for the rest of the year. So in effect, they stayed about even. Now, I totally agree with you that the reports will be dramatically different depending upon whether or not they are coming from a chairman-pardon me, the request is coming from a chairman of a powerful committee or somebody else. But the fact still remains that by what GAO says, the Congress drives approximately 80 percent of their workload.

So all I am saying is if you are the big bear out there and you are driving the market forces that are keeping that product line going at its rate, you can change your requirements. I don't pretend to be smart enough right now to be able to tell you how that should be done.

But I believe that a 25-percent cut is doable; I believe that Mr. Bowsher should come up with the committees, and he should get some very good understanding of what is going to be, you know, honored in terms of requests. There should be a process of going through an appeal that is done all the time, that is no problem. The overlapping between the executive branch, particularly in the areas of the inspectors general and some of the appeal mechanisms they have got like on the international, as well as the contract disputes, should be handed back to the executive branch. I believe that is where it belongs.

Now, I think you can get down to 25.

On the

Mr. FAZIO. When you say you think the appeal function should be in the executive branch, wasn't it placed in GAO in order to make sure that there wasn't the bias that might occur in the executive branch itself had the issue before it?

Mr. WRIGHT. Yes; it was. And then you set up the administrative law judges activities, and then you set up the inspectors general activities, both investigative and auditing in 1978. So what has happened is you have set up the structure, and then you have set up duplicative structures after that.

The point I was trying to make is rather than taking a system that has grown up over the years that is really a faulted process, it is a faulted structure-and making it more efficient, restructure