Murray-Ryan Bill to Improve Government Performance Is Signed Into Law

Press Release

Today, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) applauded the Evidence-Based Policymaking Commission Act being signed into law by President Obama. The bipartisan bill, that she wrote with Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), will establish a 15-member commission to study how best to strengthen and expand the use of data to evaluate the effectiveness of federal programs and tax expenditures. The commission will also study how best to protect the privacy rights of individuals and ensure confidentiality.

"After Speaker Ryan and I passed the budget deal in 2013, we wanted to do more to prove that Democrats and Republicans could still work together. I'm proud that from that conversation came this law -- and I look forward to the Evidence-Based Policymaking Commission getting to work to help our government function better for those it serves," said Senator Patty Murray. "This new law is great news for families in Washington state and across the country. We all agree that the government we have should work as well as possible, so I hope to further build on this foundation with continued bipartisan work to help improve the effectiveness of the federal government."

The bill passed the Senate and then the House earlier this month. The bill passed through the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee by a voice vote on June 24, 2015.

The idea to team up again came out of conversations between Senator Murray and Speaker Ryan following their work together to pass their Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013. On election night in 2014, after a highly partisan campaign season, Speaker Ryan and Senator Murray were texting with each other and decided to do something to show that Democrats and Republicans could still work together. From this conversation came the decision to work together on the Evidence-Based Policymaking Commission Act - a bill to create a bipartisan commission to make recommendations for how the federal government could better use data to improve programs and the tax code.

The commission will determine whether the federal government should establish a clearinghouse for program and survey data, what data should be included in the clearinghouse, and which qualified researchers from both the private and public sector could access the data to perform program evaluations and policy-relevant research. By coordinating data across federal programs and tax expenditures, and giving qualified researchers and officials greater access to that data, with appropriate controls on the use of that data, federal agencies will gain a better grasp of how effective they are, and lawmakers will gain a better grasp of how to improve them.

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