1. Sunset Agency Reporting Requirements.

Recommendation: The appropriate committees of the House and the Senate should be directed to eliminate nonessential reporting requirements by executive branch agencies and to sunset all such reports within five years unless the report is explicitly reauthorized by law.

The House Committee on Government Operations and the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, with the assistance of the GAO, are charged with examining statutory reporting requirements and reporting legislation by a date certain to eliminate nonessential agency reports. The Committees also are instructed to develop a procedure to sunset agency reports within 5 years unless the reports are reauthorized, and to report legislation to achieve this objective.

The proliferation of mandatory agency reports is a matter of wide concern. Several times in recent years, the House Government Operations Committee and the Senate Governmental Affairs Committees have acted to eliminate reports which have seemingly outlived their usefulness. This recommendation would require an initial comprehensive review of current reporting requirements, seeking to terminate current superfluous reports. Thereafter, the two committees are directed to establish a process whereby agency reports are terminated after 5 years unless specifically reauthorized.

2. Joint Committee on Information Management.

Recommendation: The Joint Committee on the Library and the Joint Committee on Printing should be abolished and most of their functions transferred to a proposed Joint Committee on Information Management.

This recommendation seeks to enhance access to information within the Congress and to allow easier and more comprehensive access by the public to information available within the legislative branch. The proposal abolishes the separate Joint Committees on Printing and on the Library, and replaces them with a Joint Committee on Information Management. The new Joint Committee would be comprised of five Senators drawn from the Rules and Administration Committee and five Representatives drawn from the House Administration Committee with the chairmanship rotating between the Chambers. The new Committee will have the functions of the Joint Printing and Joint Library Committees; coordinate information management for Congress; establish standards and policies for information technology in Congress; and ensure public dissemination of executive branch information.

Interconnectivity and interchamber data compatibility are essential to allow Congress to make maximum use of the information it has available to it. The Joint Information Committee's responsibilities with regard to public access to government-published information will smooth creation of ``information highways.'' The provision links administratively the Nation's major repository of knowledge (the Library of Congress) with the Nation's largest producer of documents and data (the Government Printing Office), and seeks to overcome management and access problems associated with having separate computer systems and conflicting data networks in the House, the Senate, and the Library of Congress. Finally, the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government which has considerable expertise in this area urged the creation of such a committee in its October, 1993 report.

3. Budgetary Controls Over Entitlement Spending.

Recommendation: Additional budgetary controls over entitlement spending should be enacted. Such controls should establish targets for entitlement spending, and require the President to identify what actions if any he would recommend to address situations whenever such a target is exceeded. The Congress should be required to vote on legislation to address any overage identified by the President.

This recommendation establishes a process to better control entitlement spending. Under this proposal, the Administration would be required to submit a report to the Congress specifying direct spending targets for fiscal years 1994 through 1997. If subsequent Presidential budgets indicate that the targets have been exceeded in the prior year or will be exceeded in the current or budget years, the President is to submit a ``direct spending message'' which will analyze the overage and provide recommendations for dealing with it. The President may recommend specific changes to offset some or all of the overage, or he may propose that no legislative changes be made.

The Congress is required to respond to the Presidential message by including in the concurrent budget resolution either a specific set of reconciliation instructions to offset the overage, or an increase in the targets, or both (if, for example, the President is recommending changes that would only partially achieve compliance with the existing targets). If the budget resolution recommends any increase in the targets, the House of Representatives must have approved a separate resolution to increase the targets before it is in order for the House to consider the budget resolution.

This change is similar to a provision that was included in the House-passed version of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 but which was later deleted in the Senate. By executive order, the President later established the requirement for the executive branch to set targets and report to Congress when the targets are exceeded. The House also enacted a rule requiring it to respond to this Presidential message. Placing the requirement in legislation will make entitlements subject even more to periodic review and control by forcing both the President and the Congress to respond to changes in entitlement spending projections. This change is intended, in part, to ensure that hard-fought deficit reduction actions are not undone by subsequent unforeseen increases in entitlement spending.