[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 13]
[House]
[Page 17189]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     FEDERAL YOUTH COORDINATION ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, I am here this evening to speak about the 
Federal Youth Coordination Act. This act was written in response to a 
report issued by the White House Task Force on Disadvantaged Youth in 
2003. This task force report indicated that 25 percent of U.S. teens 
are at risk of not having productive lives, not growing up to be people 
who can hold a job, who are free of substance abuse, and are able to 
contribute to the society. The estimate is that roughly 10 million 
young people fall into this category.
  This is a very difficult time to be a young person. As almost anyone 
in our culture knows, we have drug and alcohol abuse, we are the most 
violent Nation in the world for young people in terms of homicide and 
suicide, and roughly one-half of the young people growing up in our 
country today are going to be growing up without both biological 
parents, so they have undergone a significant amount of dysfunction at 
some point in their lives.
  In response, the Congress, being generous and compassionate, has 
devised 339 Federal programs which serve youth and their families. 
There are 339 of these programs. These programs are disbursed over 12 
different agencies. The greatest number are in the Department of 
Education, Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice. 
Some are in the Department of Labor, some are in the Department of 
Agriculture, and so on; and so they are spread all over. The cost of 
all of these programs was $223.5 billion in 2003. So it is a huge part 
of the Federal budget.
  Now, the problem is that these programs are not coordinated in any 
way at all. They have kind of grown like Topsy. In many cases, they 
have no measurable quantifiable goals; and in many more cases, no one 
really knows whether they even serve the purpose which they were first 
intended to serve. So we have a very confused picture as far as these 
programs are concerned.
  The General Accounting Office refers to this confused government 
response to troubled youth as a perfect example of ``mission 
fragmentation.'' The GAO recommends that programs with similar goals, 
target populations, and services be coordinated, consolidated and 
streamlined.
  As a result of this report and the GAO commentary on it, the Federal 
Youth Coordination Act was written. It was written in response to the 
White House Task Force, and it creates a Federal Youth Coordinating 
Council. Now, this council is designed to do several things.
  First of all, it is composed of members from each of the 12 agencies 
that have these youth-serving agencies. Also included on the council 
are some young people who actually have been in dysfunctional 
situations, young people who have been in foster care, and young people 
who have been through the system and have seen some of the problems. So 
what this council will do is to meet regularly, at least four times a 
year; and they are charged with these different responsibilities:
  First of all, evaluate youth-serving programs. Does each program 
really serve any good objective? What programs are duplication? What 
programs could be combined; what programs could be eliminated?
  Secondly, coordinate among Federal agencies with programs serving 
youth. There may be a program in Health and Human Services that mirrors 
a program in the Department of Education. Why have that duplication? 
Why is there no coordination or even communication across agency lines?
  Improve Federal programs that serve at-risk youth. What works; what 
does not work? What types of programs should we be promoting? What 
should we be putting more money into and what should we be defunding, 
and so on?
  Fourthly, recommend improvements in an annual report. The commission 
has to file a report with Congress which examines exactly what they 
have been doing and what they have accomplished.
  And then probably most important of all, set and meet quantifiable 
goals and objectives. In other words, each program has to have a 
measurable quantifiable goal, a series of goals and benchmarks as to 
whether they are accomplishing anything or not. We think this is 
critical in any type of program that is going to move forward.
  Lastly, hold Federal agencies accountable for achieving results. Of 
course, accountability in government sometimes is lacking. So I urge 
support of this bill. We think it is very important.

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