The budget resolution Congress finally agreed upon last week incorporated language that endorses the establishment of a results commission and marks the first steps in the direction of turning the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) into an insurmountable obstacle for new protections of the public interest. The House and Senate passed the resolution on April 28 after heated negotiations. As Medicaid funding in particular dominated the debate, a final resolution appeared unlikely at times. Two pieces of the budget resolution -- one section affecting UMRA points of order, and another endorsing a proposal to establish a results commission -- were simply crowded out by these controversies and went under the radar. UMRA Point of Order The final budget resolution retains a section, reportedly inserted at the behest of Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), that turns a relatively harmless procedural mechanism into an insurmountable roadblock. UMRA currently requires the Congressional Budget Office to estimate the costs to the states of complying with new legal mandates. For any bill that establishes new requirements for state and local governments that would cost $50 million in a single year (indexed for inflation to $62 million), a member of Congress can raise a point of order, which can be waived by a simple majority vote under current law. The Alexander provision increases the required vote count in the Senate to a 60-vote supermajority, which would make it much more difficult to pass mandates in the Senate. This measure, section 403(b) of the budget resolution, was never debated, and many senators on both sides of the aisle were so distracted by the draconian budget cuts for important programs that they did not focus attention on the UMRA provision. Immediately at stake would be new environmental protections, which typically either rely on state and local governments as partners in enforcement activities or call on the local governments to modify their own behaviors (as polluters, as managers of water systems, sewers, and waste facilities, etc.). Also at stake would be any improvements for workers, such as a real increase in the minimum wage, if the costs to states for applying new safeguards for their own employees reach $62 million or more. One of the few statutes ultimately enacted that met the UMRA threshold was, in fact, the minimum wage increase from the mid-1990s. Moreover, this change in the point of order is only the first step in a larger plan to make UMRA a more significant obstacle to new protections of the public interest. State and local government groups are lobbying for the elimination of exemptions from UMRA's coverage, which currently include civil rights protections and conditions of grant funding. Because the budget resolution is only a concurrent resolution, UMRA itself has not been amended. Presumably, this section is tantamount to a change in the Senate rules. The revised point of order mechanism will be governed by a section of the Congressional Budget Act that requires this supermajority requirement to be renewed in 2010. Results Commission Another section of the budget resolution advanced the concept of a results commission with a "sense of the Senate" resolution. As has been proposed in past sessions of Congress and more recently in the White House budget submission, a "results commission" would be charged with reviewing government programs and considering proposals to restructure or eliminate programs in order to "improve performance and increase efficiency." These proposals would then be fast-tracked through Congress. Section 502 of Budget Resolution Sec. 502. Sense of the Senate Regarding a Commission to Review the Performance of Programs.        It is the sense of the Senate that a commission should be established to review Federal agencies, and programs within such agencies, including an assessment of programs on an accrual basis, and legislation to implement those recommendations, with the express purpose of providing Congress with recommendations, to realign or eliminate Government agencies and programs that are wasteful, duplicative, inefficient, outdated, irrelevant, or have failed to accomplish their intended purpose. Although the proposals to "consolidate" and "streamline" programs would seem initially more structural than substantive, structural changes can be the technical cover under which major substantive changes are hidden. For example, this year's budget submission called for consolidating various block grants into the new "Strengthening America's Communities Grant Program," while subtle clues in the text -- referring to "focuse[d] resources" and a "targeted, results-oriented approach"-- indicated the White House's intention to change the direction, purpose and function of the original grant programs. A recurring theme in discussions of results commission proposals is that any such commission would rely on White House performance reviews using the Program Assessment Rating Tool. The clear intention of this proposal, as evinced by both the language of past results commission bills and related Senate testimony, is to use tools like the PART assessments to justify eliminating or cutting back government programs and agencies. Though PART is touted as a neutral tool to assess government productivity, we have shown elsewhere that PART is highly political and fails to capture the real successes and failures of government programs. PART is so flawed that some programs actually receive point reductions for following the law. Using this tool to remake government could have dangerous consequences for the health, safety and security of Americans. This section of the budget resolution is merely hortatory and has no legal ramifications. It does signal, however, the likelihood that there could be some momentum for a results commission proposal during the 109th Congress.