The increase of $121,000 in this category is due entirely to inflation costs averaging 5.2 percent. These activities include items such as tele

737

phone and equipment leases, utilities, printing, travel, and supplies.

The four Congressional support agencies-CBO, the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), and the General Accounting Office (GAO)--have contiunuously sought to improve procedures to avoid duplication of effort, while making research and analytical expertise available to the Congress in a timely and effective manner.

We

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Appendix C to this statement is a copy of the coordination plan submitted to both Senate and House Appropriation Committees in February 1983. A formal progress report will be submitted to each committee by March 1984.

However, I would like to take this opportunity to review several significant efforts of the past year to coordinate the work of CBO with that of the other agencies.

3

The House and Senate Budget Committees asked CBO and GAO to analyze the recommendations of the President's Private Sector Survey on Cost Control (PPSSCC), also known as the Grace Commission. The PPSSCC was established by Executive Order 12369 on June 30, 1982, to identify

2

opportunities for increased efficiency and reduced costs achievable by executive action or legislation. The PPSSCC has issued more than 40 reports containing more than 2,200 recommendations for achieving cost savings in federal activities. The joint CBO-GAO effort will focus on the major recommendations that potentially involve the largest cost savings identified by the PPSSCC. The CBO-GAO analysis, which is to be completed in February 1984, will identify the extent to which the PPSSCC recommendations are new recommendations that the Congress has not yet considered, and will estimate the possible savings that could be achieved from CBO's baseline budget projections for fiscal years 1985-1989.

OTA

All four support agencies worked together in a conference on the future of Medicare. CBO and CRS jointly planned the conference in conjunction with the staff of the House Ways and Means Committee. prepared one of the major papers presented at the conference and the GAO expert on medicare served on one of the panels.

At the request of the House Public Works and Transportation Committee, OTA and CBO have undertaken complementary studies on airports. The Committee requested CBO to focus on current airport financing practices

and OTA to undertake a technology assessment of airport capacity. OTA plans to incorporate parts of the CBO report into its final report.

Cooperation with other support agencies can mean not only collaboration on related efforts but also referral of requests to a more appropriate

agency.

Thus, for instance, a potential CBO study on the federal role in fostering occupational health and safety was dropped when we learned that OTA already had such a study underway. The House Ways and Means Committee informally asked CBO to study the impact of the budget reductions in the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program on the employment of recipients. Since the proposed study was beyond CBO's capacity, we referred the Committee staff to GAO. GAO is performing the study, with extensive technical assistance from both CBO and CRS staff.

These are just a few examples of a very broad and intensive effort by the four agencies to cooperate with each other in the interest of better serving the Congress.

NEW LEGISLATION

Mr. Chairman, CBO also asks that the Committee include two items of

new legislation in the appropriation bill under present consideration:

one

exempting CBO from the requirement of contract advertising, the other including CBO in the provision of recent legislation covering Congressional procurement.

Exemption from Requirement of Contract Advertising

Edward F. Willett, Jr., the Law Revision Counsel for the House of Representatives, has called to our attention the fact that it is necessary to reenact an exemption for the Congressional Budget Office from the general requirement of contract advertising contained in section 5 of Title 41 of the

United States Code.

By way of background, the House, the Senate, the Architect of the Capitol, the Congressional Research Service, and the Office of Technology Assessment are all exempt from the Advertising requirement. However, the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, apparently through inadvertence, did not include a similar exemption for CBO.

From its beginning in February 1975 through December of that year, CBO was funded from the Contingency Fund of the Senate and its contracts were entered into according to regulations prescribed by the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, so the lack of a contract advertising exemption was immaterial during that period.

The first actual appropriation for CBO was in the First Supplemental Appropriation, 1976 (Public Law 94-157, December 18, 1975). That supplemental exempted CBO from section 5 of Title 41. The exemption was reenacted in the Legislative Branch Appropriation Act, 1977 (Public Law 94-440, October 1, 1976), and was incorporated at 2 USC 604 in the 1976 edition of the United States Code. It has not been reenacted since then.

The language at 2 USC 604 is straightforward: "The Congressional Budget Office shall have the authority to contract without regard to section t 5 of Title 41." We were of the view that the provision was permanent law and so did not seek its subsequent reenactment. However, Mr. Willett informed us that technically the authority expired with our 1977 appropria

tion.

So far as we know, there is absolutely no controversy over the propriety of exempting CBO, like other legislative agencies, from the requirement to advertise for contracts, and as a matter of policy the exemption makes sense. The requirement necessarily implies a set of formal and deliberate procedures, and a willingness and capability to evaluate whatever numbers of responses are received as a result of the advertisements. The requirement is time and resource-consuming, and to follow it will impair our ability to respond rapidly to Committee requests.