To amend the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 to consolidate certain CBO reporting requirements.

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

I rise in support of H.R. 6570, which will amend the reporting requirements in two laws: the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the stimulus package, and the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which created TARP. I commend my colleague from the great State of New Jersey for bringing this bill to the floor.

In both laws, the Congressional Budget Office, the Government Accountability Office, and the Office of Management and Budget have certain reporting and comment requirements. The goal of the bill before us today is to streamline those requirements and make them workable for all of the agencies and for the American public while preserving access to the information. It will make these agencies more efficient in their oversight of both the stimulus and of the TARP programs.

First, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 requires recipients of grants made under the law to produce detailed quarterly reports on their use of the funds. These reports include the amount that was spent, the number of jobs that were created, and certain information about the subcontractors. The reports are publicly available, and the bill before us does not touch the reports themselves or the requirements that they are required to produce. However, CBO and GAO are also required under the law to comment each quarter on the content of the reports. This bill before us today simply says that they can provide those comments on an annual basis rather than quarterly. This will ease the burden on the CBO and GAO while maintaining their oversight responsibilities.

Second, in the law that created the TARP fund, OMB was required to report on a semiannual basis the estimated cost of TARP, the assumptions behind that estimate, and estimate how the costs have changed. The bill before us today would amend the law to allow OMB to submit these reports annually rather than semiannually. This again lessens the burden on OMB, especially 4 years after TARP was enacted and when a large majority of those funds have been paid back.

Semiannual reports are simply no longer needed.

Finally, the bill before us includes a commonsense provision to sunset OMB's reporting requirement once all remaining troubled assets acquired under the TARP program are no longer owned or controlled by the Federal Government.

So I support this bill. I support this effort to lessen the burden on agencies that are stretched extremely thin and are already stretching every single dollar while ensuring that the public continues to have the valuable information the reports would provide and information that these agencies are providing.

I support the bill. I have no further requests for time, and I reserve the balance of my time.

I join my colleague and commend his work on relieving unnecessary burdens and requirements on important agencies. I support this bill.

And I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 6570) to amend the American Recovery Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 to consolidate certain CBO reporting requirements.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and add extraneous material.

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.

I also have no further requests for time. So I will just conclude by saying to the gentlelady, thank you very much for working with us on this bill. Thank you for the support for the legislation.

And with that, I will yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of H.R. 6570, which was received from the House and is at the desk.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read three times and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements related to the bill be printed in the Record.