Sponsors (2)
The bill increases pre-enactment oversight and transparency to reduce duplication and potential waste, but it may slow or complicate legislative and implementation timelines and create uncertainty about when changes take effect.
Taxpayers and lawmakers: GAO will identify proposed programs that duplicate existing federal efforts before enactment, helping avoid wasted spending and reduce program fragmentation; CBO can use GAO's findings to give lawmakers fuller budget context.
Federal employees, agencies, and taxpayers: requiring OMB to refresh public financial transparency information before the amendment takes effect helps ensure implementation follows an information update so stakeholders have current data available.
Federal employees and taxpayers: the bill provides a clear fallback effective date (start of the next Congress after one year), preventing an indefinite delay of the amendment.
Taxpayers, members of Congress, and congressional committees: GAO review may delay committee consideration and the publication of cost estimates, and CBO may end up issuing estimates before GAO input, producing less thorough cost presentations for smaller or time-sensitive bills.
Congressional committees and staff: adding GAO findings into the legislative process creates extra administrative workload to review and incorporate those supplements.
Federal employees, agencies, state governments, and taxpayers: tying implementation to an OMB website update (and a fallback tied to the next Congress) creates timing uncertainty, could delay effects by more than a year for some stakeholders, and introduces administrative discretion that reduces predictability.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Requires GAO to flag and report potential new duplicative or overlapping federal programs in reported bills and lets CBO include that info with cost estimates.
Introduced September 8, 2025 by Rand Paul · Last progress September 8, 2025
Requires the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to check each bill or public joint resolution reported by a congressional committee for risks that it would create new duplicative or overlapping federal programs, offices, or initiatives compared to items GAO has already identified. GAO must, when practicable, identify the new entity, cite the existing overlapping program, send that information to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director and the reporting committee, and publish it on GAO’s website. The CBO Director may include GAO’s information as a supplement to CBO cost estimates. The new duty becomes effective on the earlier of two dates: 60 days after the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) next updates a specified website, or the date a new Congress begins after one year from enactment. The change adds oversight and transparency steps to the legislative review process but does not provide new funding or create new federal programs itself.