GPRA Modernization Act of 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I will be brief.

Mr. Cuellar, you have been a good Member. You have worked hard on this. We worked together on this.

When this number left the House, it was a different bill. In the first hour of the new Congress, I intend on working hard to bring up a bill that looks more like your original bill, has some additional learning experiences, and try to bring it back as quickly as possible.

I cannot support your bill today. This is not the bill that left the House. It is also a bill that still has $75 million not paid for.

But it's not the $75 million. As much as we talked about paid-for and PAYGO and offset and how do we do things, our real problem here today is that, as it came back from the Senate, it looks an awful lot like somebody just picked up your number and redid your bill.

Now, I know you want this, and you deserve it for the hard work you did. But this bill is simply a series of mandates that codifies a management style that needs no legislation. This legislation does not create something that the President cannot and is not already doing.

We, in Congress, want goal-setting. Historically, we look to OMB, and that goal-setting is intended to be objective, to hold agencies to standards determined not just by their own agency. As the bill is written today, basically, an agency sets its own goals, announces its own goals, and OMB has a secondary role. This does not create a real requirement for performance-based program analysis. The bill that left with an amendment that you very much helped carve, and we did it together, would have done that.

I don't like the idea that, in the day after the day after the day after we probably should have long gone home but we are waiting for the CR, that they bring something on suspension. Given a few days of regular order, given one round-trip to the committee, we could change this. But if we changed it, of course we would be back with the Senate, which UC'd a completely different bill than the one you worked so hard on.

It might pass today, but it won't have my vote, my support, and I will urge and am urging all the Members on both sides of the aisle to defeat the bill, not because you don't deserve a bill with your name on it on this subject. You have worked hard. But because this isn't the bill that you deserve to have become law.

I know you are leaving Congress. You are a good Member who has worked hard on our committee, and I thank you for that. And I promise you, starting January 5, we will work together with you, if you will donate the time, to do the bill you wanted to do. And that, I guarantee you, will be my first priority, if it is not passed today.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. ISSA. I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I think we've both said what comes from our heart. We're losing a good Member who worked hard on our committee. This is not a good bill. This is not the bill he would have done. So I respectfully ask all Members to vote ``no'' on this. I will vote ``no'' not because of the author and not because of his effort, but because it simply isn't good enough.

If we are going to spend even $75 million on new mandates, we have a standard that has to be a standard of excellence, a standard that truly makes improvements, and a standard that in fact does not simply allow the President to do what he already has the power to do. We can do this in the next Congress. We will do this.

Again, Mr. Speaker, I express my interest in working with members of the committee now and members of the committee in the future to fashion a bill with this same name, and, if I'm allowed, even the same number, so that we can pass it in its original form or in an improved form in the next Congress. I reluctantly say we must oppose this bill.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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