Political Quotes

“I am pleased to offer today in behalf of Senator Cohen and myself the Federal Reports Elimination and Modification Act of 1995 as an amendment to the pending bill. Our amendment will eliminate over 200 outdated and unnecessary reporting requirements. These are reporting requirements which have been placed into the law over many, many years that are now useless. These are over 200 reports that are not needed or used by congressional committees. They require up to $10 million of cost in their preparation. We have gone through each of the reports mandated by law. We have talked to each of the agencies. We have consulted with each of the congressional committees. This is the list of those reports which are totally dispensable which for the most part no one even uses anymore. But they just stay in the law, filed every year or every 6 months by agencies at great cost. My subcommittee, the oversight subcommittee of governmental affairs, which Senator Cohen now chairs and which I am now the ranking member of, has gone through all of the reporting requirements. We have again made this assessment as to those reports. Each committee having proposed what their needs are, these reports are the ones that are no longer needed. This legislation is designed to improve the efficiency of agency operations by eliminating unnecessary paperwork and staff time by consolidating the amount of information that flows from the agencies to Congress.”