The Grace Commission, established by President Reagan in 1982, aimed to identify areas of waste and inefficiency in the US federal government. The commission’s findings and recommendations, which included 2,478 suggestions to eliminate wasteful practices, were largely ignored by Congress despite the estimated savings of $429.4 billion. The reports produced by the commission were disputed by government agencies, who argued that some savings had been calculated more than once. The commission was funded by private donations of approximately $75 million.
The Grace Commission was officially known as The President’s Private Sector Survey on Cost Control, or PPSSCC. On June 30, 1982, President Ronald Reagan established the commission by executive presidential decree with final reports presented to the United States Congress in January 1984. the federal government. The commission’s findings and estimates of possible savings are controversial and are disputed by government agencies in the United States
President Reagan created the Commission of Pardons to find areas where income taxes collected by the United States federal government were wasted or misused by the departments or agencies to which they were awarded. The commission was composed of leading executives of private sector companies and experts in the management of private sector companies. J. Peter Grace was appointed to head the PPSSCC, which included contributions from over 2,000 people. Private funding was found for the commission’s work estimated at approximately $75 million.
To create the report on government inefficiency, commission members were split into 36 task forces that focused on the work of individual agencies and departments. During the 18 months it took to complete the Grace Commission’s work, each of the 36 task forces created a report detailing their findings, with another 11 reports created around waste and inefficiency. The final synthesis report detailing the commission’s work was printed in two volumes and comprised 650 pages. 748 issues were identified by the PPSSCC leading to 2,478 recommendations to eliminate wasteful practices within government.
The recommendations made by the commission were calculated to produce savings of $429.4 billion between the years 1985 and 1987 if implemented by Congress. Over the long term, the US national debt is estimated to shrink if all Grace Commission recommendations are implemented from approximately $13 trillion in 2000 to $5.8 trillion at the same time in history. A major claim made by the commission was that all money raised in income taxes was used to pay interest on the national debt and in payments made to welfare programs. Upon its presentation to Congress, the recommendations were largely ignored by the legislature.
Government agencies disputed the findings and dollar savings estimates based on the commission’s recommendations. The Congressional Budget Office and the US Federal Government General Accounting Office argued that the many reports produced by the PPSSCC overlapped and some of the reported savings had been calculated more than once to produce the estimated savings for the national debt. Bias about the work of the Pardon Commission is often reported because the original reason for establishing the body was to find evidence to support income tax cuts. The reports produced in response to the Commission’s findings are created by the services and agencies criticized in the final reports as wasteful and inefficient.
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