Republicans Rip Reinvention Record

EXECUTIVE MEMO

Republicans Rip Reinvention Record

ice President Gore's latest report on the National Performance Review, "The Best Kept Secrets in Government," released in September, was quickly criticized this fall by the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee and the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank.

The committee's Sept. 28 report pronounces the NPR a "laudable initiative" that "has produced few concrete results." Heritage's report, released Oct. 15, calls the NPR "an agenda of pseudo-reform designed to get media attention rather than to get to the root of government's most pressing problems."

Both reports rely primarily on previously published General Accounting Office reports to cite various examples of mismanagement, waste and fraud even during the reinvention era.

The House committee weighs in with the perennial Republican complaint that the civil service retirement system is underfunded; calls on the Labor Secretary to pay more attention to racketeering by unions; and raises again its criticism that retirement-eligible employees have received buyouts. "Federal Government Management" also hawks the committee's bill to create a Citizens Commission on 21st Century Government to review all federal functions for duplication, possible streamlining or elimination. The measure died in the Senate last session.

Heritage's report charges NPR savings are illusory at best and misleading at worst, noting that the federal budget continues to increase despite civil service reductions. Furthermore, the think tank's report argues that despite National Performance Review initiatives, critical financial management and information technology weaknesses persist in government; obsolete programs totter along; and duplication of effort wastes funds.

Savings from reinvention's first phase would amount to less than 2 cents on the federal budget dollar, according to the Heritage Foundation.