WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-VA), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee’s bipartisan Task Force on Government Performance, issued this statement following today’s release of the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) 2012 Annual Report on Opportunities to Reduce Duplication, Overlap and Fragmentation, Achieve Savings and Enhance Revenue.  The report outlined specific areas of program overlap, and also updated the status of efforts to act on recommendations from last year’s GAO report: 

“We are reaching a point where GAO reports on government duplication and redundancy are becoming duplicative and redundant. The 2011 report made more than 80 specific recommendations to reduce overlap and duplication, but we have implemented only four of those recommendations so far. This is extremely disappointing because there is nothing inherently partisan about smarter, more efficient government.

“Now we have a new report that indicates the Department of Justice issues more than 11,000 grants each year, and it apparently does not review grant requests across its internal silos to make sure we are not funding the same investment multiple times. This new GAO report also finds 13 different agencies which fund more than 200 different science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education programs, and more than 80% of those programs overlap. The President’s FY 2013 budget calls for the elimination of 33 of the overlapping STEM programs, and that’s a good start: Congress should adopt his recommendation.

“That’s why I’m sponsoring the Reforming and Consolidating Government Act of 2012. This bill will restore the President’s authority to send specific cost-cutting proposals to Congress for our expedited consideration. As a former business CEO and Governor, I had the authority and responsibility to identify and eliminate duplication and waste. The President should have it, too. Even in an election year, the Senate should be able to do its job and work in a bipartisan way with the Administration to demand smarter, more efficient and less expensive programs and services.”

# # #