Mr. MENDELOWITZ. We have not undertaken as yet an analysis of the effectiveness of Executive Order 12044. Under the terms of the Executive order, implementation is currently being monitored by the OMB. Senator PERCY. With respect to GAO, you suggest on page 19, that the explicit assignment of oversight responsibility for GAO would involve a commitment of substantial staff resources and additional staff by the Congress. Do you have any estimates as to the level of resources the Congress would be required to authorize to GAO for this purpose? Mr. STAATS. We have made some analyses of this. I would prefer to supply this for the record, if I may. I would suppose we put this in in part out of concern of what the House subcommittee has done to our budget this year. Against the situation where Congress passed 16 different laws last year, adding to our responsibilities, we are taking an effective reduction this year. We had a cut last year and no increase the year before. So we are beginning to feel quite concerned as to whether or not this is going to endanger the quality of the work we are doing. Chairman RIBICOFF. If the Senator would yield, why was that done? Are they aware of what you are doing and that you are really an arm of Congress? Mr. STAATS. Mr. Chairman, I am really a little distraught about this situation because if you take cash savings that our office has produced in the last 2 years where we can compute the savings, it added up to $8.25 billion. That doesn't take into account all the other work we do. So just the savings alone we get a cost-benefit ratio of $20 to $1. Senator PERCY. You may be on the verge of doubling that in one fell swoop with our deep tunnel project in Chicago. [Laughter.] Chairman RIBICOFF. I assume this was made available to the committee. Mr. STAATS. It has been made available to everyone I can think of. Senator PERCY. I don't want to make a unilateral offer- Senator PERCY. I have always felt there were some areas that were cost effective. The Internal Revenue agents can usually make their salary 10 times over. I would think that for our problems in this regard, this committee has a special relationship to you, and we would be happy to help in that regard. Mr. STAATS. I don't bring this up in a complaining manner because we have high hopes that the Senate will improve the situation. But we are genuinely concerned-I am personally concerned that at some point it will begin to affect the quality of the work we do. I think that would be a great tragedy. Chairman RIBICOFF. It would be shortsighted. You say the House did that. Mr. STAATS. The House has not acted yet. The committee has acted. Chairman RIBICOFF. What did the Senate do? Mr. STAATS. I don't know that I can explain fully the rationale, except the overall concern about the size of the budget for the legislative branch. Senator PERCY. I wonder if they are aware of the load we have added on you with financial disclosure requirements and the audits you are required to make. I want to ask you a question on that at the end. I have a couple of questions on administrative law judges. Under S. 262 and S. 755, a term of office is set for administrative law judges at 10 and 7 years, respectively. Concerns have been expressed that under such a proposal administrative law judges would be exposed to undue political pressure in reaching decisions on cases before them, particularly toward the end of their terms and they begin assessing the prospects for reappointment. Is this a matter of concern to you? Mr. STAATS. Yes. We dealt with management of administrative law judges in two reports. We asked Janet Lowden to come this morning because she has been involved in that. First, we feel that administrative law judges should go through a trial period—that is, a probationary period-of, say, 2 to 3 years before they receive their permanent appointment. Second, there should be periodic appraisal of administrative law judge performance, we suggest, by an organization outside the regulatory agency. That could be either the Office of Personnel Management or it could be the Administrative Conference of the United States. We would prefer avoiding a specific term because of the reason you have indicated and because, also, it seems to me the important thing here is that there be some good way to appraise performance as you go along. If you did have a specific term, I would say that that individual should not be able to be reappointed in that agency. He might be reappointed somewhere else. But there shouldn't be any concern about the actuality, or the perception even that the administrative law judge's judgment is compromised by the desire to be reappointed. Senator PERCY. Is there currently a documented problem of inadequate or poor performance among Federal administrative law judges serious enough to justify substantial changes in the law concerning the removal of administrative law judges? Mr. STAATS. We have found problems. Would you care to comment? Ms. LOWDEN. In the work that we did, we didn't find really substantial problems. We did find cases, for example, at the National Labor Relations Board where there were judges who consistently performed below the office average. Senator PERCY. Any information that you can provide to this committee in whatever form you wish to submit it to us, we would greatly appreciate.1 Do current laws make it impossible or unreasonably difficult to fire an administrative law judge who is not performing adequately or competently? Do we have any procedure or system for really reviewing and making a judgment on their performance? Ms. LOWDEN. Right now the procedure for firing an administrative law judge is cumbersome. I believe the last firing took about 4 The witness forwarded the following material which may be found in the committee files: GAO report: Problems and Progress in Holding Timelier Hearings for Disability Claimants. Letter with the enclosure entitled: Review of Administrative Law Judge Activities and the Hearing Process at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. GAO report: Administrative Law Process-Better Management is Needed. years. I would like to add, too, that that is really no different than trying to get rid of any civil service employee. It is difficult. The second point of your question concerned-did you say standards? Senator PERCY. Pardon? Ms. LOWDEN. You had a question in two parts. Senator PERCY. Is there a procedure for methodically reviewing performance or getting information as to poor performance? Ms. LOWDEN. We don't. The reason that we recommended in our report that someone, some organization, be assigned responsibility for evaluating administrative law judges' performance is that right now there is a hands-off situation in both the agencies and the Office of Personnel Management in regard to administrative law judges' performance. Both entities have been reluctant to actively manage administrative law judges. Our report, the one you received today, addresses that as well as does the other report. Senator PERCY. Thank you very much. Mr. Staats, I will not ask questions about S.445, the bill that we will have up for hearings this afternoon. S. 445 is the Regulatory Reform Act that Senator Ribicoff and Senator Byrd and I introduced. We now have about a third of the Senate supporting that bill. We passed it last year. Could I submit questions for the record for you on that? I think we would like very much to have your analysis in the testimony. Mr. STAATS. Yes. I inquired this morning, Senator Percy, whether we had any direct requests on that. So we would be happy to respond to comments on this area. Senator PERCY. Very good. On an unrelated subject, that is pertinent now, we want to take a careful look, I would hope, at the Financial Disclosure Act, whether we are imposing a burden upon Members of Congress, what the benefits are, what we are accomplishing and whether we are not losing sight of the original objectives of this law. Are we now, after 2 years' experience, really serving that objective? I know you objected at one time to requiring GAO to audit those reports. You have audited a number of them now. Do you still feel that that puts you in an awkward position? Mr. STAATS. I have written a letter, Senator Percy, to the committee chairmen involved and asked them to reconsider-this is on the Senate side-as to the advisability of our continuing in this kind of a role. It not only adds to the cost of our budget, but also we question whether or not it is producing a useful result. In the bill that passed the House and the Senate, the statute last year, we were asked to make an appraisal as to the overall statute that passed, including a specific requirement in that mandate to us as to whether or not the individual statements should be subject to audit. But on the Senate side, under rule 110, we are still required to audit not only the Members' financial statements but also the staff who earn $25,000 or more. We have that requirement imposed on us by Senate rule 110. Senator PERCY. I think this whole thing should be reviewed before it becomes entrenched as a part of our system. Now you have only been doing it for 2 years now. We have the unusual case where the lower court has ordered the Supreme Court not to comply. You have certain questions being raised around here. People are hesitant to raise the issue because it might look like we are trying to get out of something, that we are not imposing the same standards on ourselves as others. Here we impose on ourselves a standard way beyond anything we require of other people. I think, for the first time, Members of Congress have seen the horrendous cost in this requirement. Yet, other than a few newspaper stories, what does it really accomplish? I decided this year that there was no way to tell whether I gained or lost as a result of holding public office. I thought that that was one of the original purposes of public financial disclosure. I decided to release an absolute figure of my financial holdings. This was the only way I could see justifying the effort of putting the report together. The way it is now, it is a whale of a lot of paperwork, an awful lot of reporting, to satisfy perhaps a few people's idle curiosity. It raises very serious questions on the whole concept of having an agency like GAO, that works so closely with Congress, being forced to make audits of this kind. I heard one Senator's figures that ran into the thousands of dollars for outside accounting services to conduct an audit. What does this accomplish? I really don't know anyone better able or more objective now than Senator Ribicoff Chairman RIBICOFF. I was going to say that I have enough to do in the next 18 months without putting this one on my shoulders, too. [Laughter.] Senator PERCY. I thought we ought to take a look at it to see what we are accomplishing and whether we are really serving the purpose intended before this becomes a regular routine. I think if we are going to talk about making regulatory agencies cost effective, we ought to look at ourselves. What are we really getting out of financial disclosure? Is the benefit worth all of the reporting involved? Are we willing to apply the same rules to ourselves as we are now applying to other regulatory agencies? That is why I bring it up at this particular time. I would like to pursue it. I would hope I would have with me a colleague whose objectivity would be beyond question in this regard. Chairman RIBICOFF. Just one point. Who is the Senate chairman on the Appropriations Subcommittee? Mr. STAATS. Senator Sasser. Chairman RIBICOFF. He is a member of this committee, too. Mr. STAATS. I don't want to imply anything with respect to him. He has been very supportive. Chairman RIBICOFF. No. I think if Senator Percy would join me, I would like to send a letter signed by both of us to Senator Magnuson and Senator Sasser and the ranking minority member indicating our concern with the budget problems you brought up today. I think it is really shortsighted on Congress part, especially with all the work we are giving you to do. So I will ask Dick Wegman to get such a letter off to Senator Magnuson and whoever is the ranking member and Senator Sasser. Thank you very much. Senator PERCY. I will certainly join in that letter. |