Consolidation of Certain CBO Reporting Requirements Relating to ARRA and TARP

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARRETT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, under the current law, the Congressional Budget Office, the CBO, is statutorily required to submit semiannual and quarterly reports to Congress pursuant to TARP and stimulus requirements. Unfortunately, these reports have become mainly duplicative and repetitive in nature. They say the same thing over and over again, and do not provide a lot of new information to Congress. In addition, these reports consume a great deal of limited CBO staff resources. So to remedy this, we have H.R. 6570 before us. What this will do is reduce the frequency of the reports required each year by the CBO as well as required by the GAO.

First, H.R. 6570 would change the quarterly stimulus reporting requirements for the CBO and GAO to annual report requirements due at the end of each calendar year. This legislation would also sunset the ARRA reporting requirements for CBO and GAO on January 1, 2016. H.R. 6570 would not impact the current reporting requirements for recipients of ARRA funds or the reports required by the executive branch agencies, I would like to point out.

Secondly, H.R. 6570 would change the TARP reporting requirements for CBO and the OMB to an annual basis from a semiannual basis. So this legislation would also sunset the reporting requirements for the CBO and OMB to when the last TARP asset has been sold or last transferred out of the ownership control of the Federal Government.

So, Mr. Speaker, I think this is a commonsense bill to reduce government duplication and ensure that congressional support agencies such as CBO and the GAO are using their limited resources most effectively. With that, I urge support of this legislation.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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