Archived Information

Demonstrating Results, An Introduction to Government Performance and Results Act, Spring 1999

Background

It is impossible to fully understand the purpose of the Government Performance and Results Act without understanding the environment within which the law was drafted, debated, and enacted with strong bipartisan support.

In his 1996 State of the Union address, President Clinton declared, "The era of big government is over." That declaration signaled the end of a 30-year period in which the federal government expanded its activities to address a broad range of problems. During that period, the federal government regularly spent more than it received in revenue. Since 1982, budget deficits have exceeded $100 billion annually and, on several occasions, have exceeded $200 billion. To finance the deficits, the government borrowed substantial sums to finance these deficits and, as a result, the national debt now exceeds $5 trillion.

The large debt, the need to maintain a balanced budget, and the increasing – and projected to continue to increase because of an aging population – costs of entitlement programs (such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid) have placed great pressure on the limited amount of money available for non-defense discretionary activities, which include education, energy, housing, public safety, the environment, and scientific research, among others. Discretionary activities account for 17.2% of the federal dollar in FY 1998, down from 23.9% in FY 1980, and are projected to decrease to 15.7% in FY 2003. The declining discretionary portion of the budget has caused Congress to require federal agencies to focus more on improving their performance and demonstrating that they are supporting effective programs that are important to the American people.

The Director of the Office of Management and Budget has stated,

This is an era of fiscal limits. Resources are scarce. Not every priority can be met, nor all needs satisfied. Every program must count. So we must ask: Which programs are effective, and which are not? Which programs are efficient, and which are not?...Budgeting under the regimen of a long-term balanced budget agreement can be seen as a zero-sum game. Within the discretionary spending cap, choices about which programs receive funding increases, remain level funded, or shrink, should increasingly be governed by performance.^[1]

Federal agencies will increasingly be asked to emphasize results as the "bottom line," as all programs will be under more intense scrutiny and greater pressure to make the most of scarce resources. Many government programs could receive less funding each year than was appropriated during the preceding year. Even for the few agencies, like the U.S. Department of Education, that are expected to receive increases, the need to demonstrate program effectiveness is a condition of continued funding.

The intent of Congress was made clear by the Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee when he stated,

With the Results Act, we can ask other important questions about federal programs, such as what will the program accomplish, what will it cost to accomplish it, how will the results be achieved, and how will the agency monitor the program's effectiveness. If properly implemented, the Results Act can assist Congress in identifying and eliminating duplicate or ineffective programs.^[2]

Ongoing fiscal constraints will cause programs to be increasingly subjected to a cost-benefit analysis, in which programs will be funded if their benefits exceed the cost. Even if a program is desirable, appropriations will be forthcoming only to the extent that positive outcomes can be demonstrated. The Government Performance and Results Act is the tool Congress has established to obtain objective information about program performance that will assist it in making the hard choices on what will be funded and what will not.

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[Introduction]

[Requirements of GPRA]