[Congressional Bills 106th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 1973 Introduced in Senate (IS)]







106th CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                S. 1973

 To simplify Federal oil and gas revenue distributions, and for other 
                               purposes.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                           November 19, 1999

 Mr. Bingaman introduced the following bill; which was read twice and 
       referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
 To simplify Federal oil and gas revenue distributions, and for other 
                               purposes.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``The Mineral Revenue Payments 
Clarification Act of 1999''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

    The Congress finds the following:
            (1) Subtitle C of title X of the Omnibus Budget 
        Reconciliation Act of 1993 (Public Law 103-66) changed the 
        sharing of onshore mineral revenues and revenues from 
        geothermal steam from a 50:50 split between the Federal 
        Government and the States to a complicated formula that 
        entailed deducting from the State share of leasing revenues 
        ``50 percent of the portion of the enacted appropriations of 
        the Department of the Interior and any other agency during the 
        preceding fiscal year allocable to the administration of all 
        laws providing for the leasing of any onshore lands or interest 
        in land owned by the United States for the production of the 
        same types of minerals leasable under this Act or of geothermal 
        steam, and to enforcement of such laws....''
            (2) There is no legislative record to suggest a sound 
        public policy rationale for deducting prior-year administrative 
        expenses from the sharing of current-year receipts, indicating 
        that this change was made primarily for budget scoring reasons.
            (3) The system put in place by this change in law has 
        proved difficult to administer and has given rise to disputes 
        between the Federal Government and the States as to the nature 
        of allocable expenses. Federal accounting systems have proven 
        to be poorly suited to breaking down administrative costs in 
        the manner required by the law. Different Federal agencies 
        implementing this law have used varying methodologies to 
        identify allocable costs, resulting in an inequitable 
        distribution of costs during fiscal years 1994 through 1996. In 
        November, 1997, the Inspector General of the Department of the 
        Interior found that ``the congressionally approved method for 
        cost sharing deductions effective in fiscal year 1997 may not 
        accurately compute the deductions.''.
            (4) Given the lack of a substantive rationale for the 1993 
        change in law and the complexity and administrative burden 
        involved, a return to the sharing formula prior to the 
        enactment of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 is 
        justified.

SEC. 3. AMENDMENT OF THE MINERAL LEASING ACT.

    Section 35(b) of the Mineral Leasing Act (30 U.S.C. sec. 191(b)) is 
amended to read as follows:
    ``(b) In determining the amount of payments to the States under 
this section, the amount of such payments shall not be reduced by any 
administrative or other costs incurred by the United States.''.
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