Joe Heck introduces bill to reduce duplication in government

Joe Heck introduces bill to reduce duplication in government
By Karoun Demirjian
Las Vegas Sun
March 17, 2011

WASHINGTON – Earlier this month, the government’s General Accounting Office released a report showing in stark numbers what many lawmakers have long complained of: that there is an excessive amount of duplication in the federal government.

Today, Nevada Rep. Joe Heck decided to take a legislative step to try to undo that pattern.

Heck introduced a bill Thursday afternoon to institute a reckoning any time Congress authorizes new spending, in the form of a stop-gap check to ensure that the work of that new initiative isn’t already being done elsewhere.

Heck’s measure would require that committee report — an official paper that’s drafted alongside bills to explain their details and intention — include “a statement of whether the program has similar or overlapping objectives to any other program within the same federal agency.”

Heck’s bill doesn’t issue any sort of ultimatum on what the fate of that new program would then be, but it’s likely that programs who can’t claim a mostly-unique function won’t have much luck getting past this Congress.

But Heck’s fix isn’t exhaustive. The check that’s required stops at the door of the federal agency in question, but the GAO’s report had identified scores and scores of common purpose among programs that crop up under disparate agencies. For example: programs to tackle economic development, commercial truck inspection, teacher quality and veterans’ health are managed across multiple agencies that aren’t all that great about communicating with each other.

That’s why Heck decided to go for the restrained approach — on the notion that even his proposal of holding up a mirror to agencies one at a time will require a cultural shift in Washington.

“We’re trying to tackle this problem one step at a time,” Heck spokesman Darren Littell said.