The House of Representatives Tuesday decided to kill or maim more than 100 of the thousands of reports federal employees must prepare each year at Congress' behest.
Thanks to the Federal Reports Elimination Act of 1998, which the House approved Tuesday, 132 federal reports have been eliminated or modified. So the Interior Department will no longer have to report on the "Size and Condition of the Tule Elk Herd in California." The Environmental Protection Agency can stop producing its report on "State and Local Training Needs and Obstacles to Employment in Solid Waste Management and Resource Recovery." NASA can take the "Notification of Procurement of Long-Lead Materials for Solid Rocket Monitors on Other Than Cooperative Basis" off its to-do list.
Members of Congress patted themselves on the backs for making federal employees' lives easier.
"Each year, hundreds of federal employees spend thousands of hours writing reports that get sent through Congress to the recycling bin. Many are never opened," Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, said Tuesday. "Today we are making an effort to end some of that waste and to set free so many of our federal employees from these kinds of tasks."
The Clinton administration, at the request of Congress, had originally targeted more than 400 reports it deemed unnecessary. Senate committee heads whittled that number down to 186 before approving the legislation. Then House committees took their turn, saving an additional 54 reports from elimination.
Hundreds of congressionally mandated reports were eliminated in similar bills passed in 1980, 1982, 1986 and 1995. But the reductions have not kept up with new reporting requirements. The General Accounting Office estimates Congress imposes 300 new reports on the executive branch each year. The number of reports has risen from 750 in 1970 to well over 3,000 today.
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