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“FEDERAL YOUTH COORDINATION ACT” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H6415 on July 25, 2005.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
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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