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account on February 23, 1977. This action was documented only in ERDA's internal financial plans and OMB was not notified of this budgetary action.

An ERDA official told us that OMB was not informed because the agency was at the time working with OMB to include language in ERDA's fiscal year 1978 authorization bill to rescind the funds previously authorized for the project--$22.1 million--less those amounts obligated. This proposed legislation was transmitted to the Congress in March 1977.

Since both Houses of Congress subsequently reinstated funding for the project and deleted the rescission language, ERDA's Office of the Controller has requested the release of the project's funds from the ERDA reserve account. In the meantime, however, the $13.4 million remains in an impounded status due to ERDA's actions placing the funds in reserve.

Section 1015(a) of the Impoundment Control Act requires the Comptroller General to report to the Congress whenever he finds that the President, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the head of any department or agency of the United States, or any other officer of employee of the United States has ordered, permitted, or approved the deferral of budget authority and the President has failed to transmit a special message with respect to such a deferral. This report is submitted in accordance with the requirement imposed by section 1015(a) and, consequently, has the same effect as if it were a deferral message transmitted by the President.

Lever B. Ateaks

Comptroller General
of the United States

This letter reports one rescission and three deferrals of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Forest Service, budget authority that should have been, but were not, reported to the Congress by the President pursuant to the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.

Section 1015(a) of the Impoundment Control Act requires the Comptroller General to report to the Congress whenever he finds that the President, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the head of any department or agency of the United States or any other officer or employee of the United States has ordered, permitted, or approved the establishment of a reserve.or deferral of budget authority and that the President has failed to transmit a special message under section 1012 or 1013 of the Act with respect to such reserve or deferral. This report is submitted in accordance with the requirement imposed by section 1015(a) and, consequently, has the same effect as if it were a special message transmitted by the President. The statutory 45 days of continuous congressional session that the Congress has to complete action on a rescission bill involving the budget authority hereby proposed for rescission will commence based on the date that the Congress receives this report.

In the Supplemental Appropriation Act, 1977, Public Law 95-26, approved May 4, 1977, the Forest Service of USDA was provided with additional budget authority to fund administrative and program costs, a portion of the subject appropriation intended for salaries and expenses of the Service.

Despite the fact that USDA documents appear to indicate that all of the funds appropriated to the Forest Service under Public Law 95-26 were made available for obligation and expenditure, we have determined that this is not the case. Specifically, we have found that pursuant to the direction of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), USDA personnel ceilings are being reduced from 83,525 to 82,700 full-time permanent employees by the end of fiscal year 1977. While, at this time, no final decision has been reached regarding where the personnel cuts will be made, we have determined

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that the Forest Service will not fully utilize all of the funds appropriated in Public Law 95-26 because of OMB's hiring

restrictions.

Based upon information provided to us by the Forest Service, we have determined that the OMB-imposed hiring limitation will preclude the obligation of money allocated to certain Forest Service programs prior to the end of fiscal year 1977. For one of these programs, Forest Protection and Utilization, the budget authority will be unobligated on the last day it is available for use--September 30, 1977. Thus, for these funds we are reporting to Congress an undisclosed proposal to rescind budget authority pursuant to section 1012 of the Impoundment Control Act.

In addition, in three Forest Service programs there likewise will be unobligated budget authority at of the end of fiscal year 1977. However, because the funds in these programs will not lapse, if unused, on September 30, 1977, and because we are unaware of any intention never to use the funds, we are reporting these funds as undisclosed deferrals.

The USDA Forest Service programs and amounts are as follows:

DEFERRALS

Mr. BENJAMIN. In the present instance where there are restrictions on filling vacancies in various agencies by retirement or departure and the agencies do not fill these vacancies probably because of an edict of the OMB, is that considered a deferral? Mr. STAATS. I am sorry, Mr. Chairman, I am not sure I follow the question.

Mr. BENJAMIN. If I understand the present hiring practices of the executive branch, it is to fill one of every two vacancies.

Mr. STAATS. That was partly to comply with the provision in the Civil Service reform legislation.

Mr. BENJAMIN. That is true, but there was also this procedure in early 1977 before that act.

Mr. STAATS. You are quite correct.

Mr. BENJAMIN. Would that be considered a deferral?

Mr. SOCOLAR. If I might respond to that, that would not necessarily be considered a deferral. The issue of whether there has been a deferral would relate to whether the executive branch deferred the availability for obligation of the funds that have been appropriated to them, so that to the extent that all of the funds appropriated are available for obligation, and are, in fact, going to be used, the precise rate of hiring would not constitute a deferral unless ultimately it could be concluded that the purpose for that was to avoid expending the appropriation.

Mr. BENJAMIN. I would imagine you would have to find a pattern. of that, then?

Mr. SOCOLAR. Yes, and you would have to make some factual determination.

Mr. STAATS. It would probably have to be so substantial as to mean that they could not spend their appropriation or carry out a program for which appropriations had been provided. But as long as they can demonstrate that the appropriation will be re-spent in the fiscal year, I think it would be very difficult to demonstrate there was an intentional impoundment.

ANALYSIS OF BUDGET INCREASES FOR FISCAL YEAR 1980

Mr. BENJAMIN. For the record, of the $21,007,000 increase over the 1979 appropriation level, how much is to maintain your current level of service, including any inflationary increases? How much is for expansion of your activities?

[The information referred to appears on pages 1875-1877.]

EFFECT OF CONGRESSIONAL STAFF INCREASES ON WORK OF SUPPORT AGENCIES

Mr. BENJAMIN. Generally you indicate that the fiscal year 1980 workload has arisen from specific requirements for GÃO audits and evaluations from legislation and committee reports. I note that, like the GAO, congressional committee staff budgets have also increased 400 percent in the past 10 years. Could a joint arrangement be worked with congressional committee staffs to assume the growing workload when the request is initiated by the committee?

Let me refine this. We have, as you know, the statutory limit on the size of these staffs, and then we appropriate, supplemental to that, a considerable amount of money for investigative and study work, which has been the bane of the Congress at least for the last few years.

There is some indication at least from previous testimony before this committee that this has also increased the workload requirement on support agencies such as yourself. By the same token, we seem to be appropriating for duplicate work, and possibly by increasing the size of the staff we increase the number of requests to your agency.

Mr. STAATS. I fully understand the thought behind your question. I would respond in this way. We are a pretty tough negotiator on these requests, and we try to reduce them wherever we can negotiate out a reduction in the workload on GAO. This is a standard practice with us. Occasionally we will find that Congress has mandated something in the law, maybe as a compromise. This provision on the Non-proliferation Act came as a complete surprise to us, and it is written into the statute now. It was a compromise worked out on the floor.

But on the committee chairmen requests, we normally will have an opportunity to work with the committee to try to minimize the workload on GAO. One of the ways we do that is to brief them on work that we have done in the past. If we have done work on a particular subject, it may not be completely up to date; we can brief them on it, and if we have ongoing work that isn't finished yet, but they need it now, we can brief them, and maybe that is all that is required to meet that demand.

Another thing we have done to reduce the workload on us is if they need a specialist from GAO, we will assign a person temporarily to the committee if they don't have the kind of background that they are looking for and need it from GAO.

In the Senate this is reimbursable, as you know, and in the House it is not. But it does have the effect of reducing the total workload. It means more of the work is done in the committee than if we had taken on the project in its entirety.

So those are some of the ways we have tried to minimize the workload on us. We are not saying that we do this perfectly, but we make a conscientious effort in every single case to try to find some way to keep the workload on us at a minimum.

ASSIGNMENT OF GAO PERSONNEL TO COMMITTEES

Mr. BENJAMIN. In how many instances do you have this type of effort where you provide a congressional committee a certain degree of expertise?

Mr. STAATS. Assignment of people?

Mr. BENJAMIN. Yes.

Mr. STAATS. I have the information here. In fiscal year 1978, 64 employees were assigned to various House committees. The cost to GAO was $883,994.