Sen. Hassan, Dr. Paul Introduce Duplication Scoring Act

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), Ranking Member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH) introduced the Duplication Scoring Act, which seeks to reduce the size of government by eliminating duplicative programs and prevent further duplication within the federal government.

“As we fight to rein in current wasteful spending, this reform would better enable Congress to make more fully informed decisions by adding a layer of oversight that will help stop waste in government before it ever happens,” said Dr. Paul.

“We need to keep working together across the aisle to stop taxpayers’ hard-earned money going to waste,” said Senator Hassan. “Our bipartisan bill would tackle wasteful government spending by preventing the creation of duplicative federal programs and as a result save taxpayer dollars.” 

Background:

Over the last 12 years, Government Accountability Office (GAO) has documented more than 1,100 cases of duplicative programs. In its most recent report, GAO found that the U.S. government has saved over $500 billion from the elimination of GAO’s identified programs, however, these savings only account for just over 50 percent of GAO’s identified programs, suggesting billions of taxpayer dollars are still being wasted on duplicative programs. While it will take time to eradicate all of the identified duplicative programs, this bill would work to prevent Congress from standing up these programs in the first place.  

The Duplication Scoring Act seeks to prevent the passage of fragmented, overlapping, and duplicative government programs by:

• Requiring GAO to review each committee-reported bill or joint resolution and determine if it at risk of duplicating or overlapping with an existing program, office, or initiative previously identified in a GAO duplication, fragmentation, and overlap report.
• Requiring GAO to submit this assessment to the director of CBO and the corresponding committee.

The Duplication Scoring Act was last introduced in 2021 in the 117^th Congress on a bipartisan basis, led by Dr. Paul and Sen. Hassan, and joined by Sens. Lankford, Ernst, and Rick Scott. The bill was reported favorably out of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee by voice vote on March 17, 2021.

You can read the bill in its entirety HERE.

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