OMB Watch told Congress today that the Bush administration's Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) draws biased conclusions about federal program efficacy and should thus continue to be largely ignored by Congress. Adam Hughes, OMB Watch's director of federal fiscal policy, testified on PART before a Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Subcommittee, during a hearing held by Committee Chair Tom Coburn (R-OK) to investigate why PART is not more widely used by Congress. Hughes raised concerns that PART is inherently biased toward OMB's perspective, and ultimately that of the White House, regarding expectations for success. Because of its subjectivity, according to Hughes, PART allows OMB considerable power to manipulate political and policy outcomes. "Both by the design of the tool and as the mechanism is implemented, PART systematically ignores the reality of federal programs and judges them based on standards that are deeply incompatible with the purposes that federal programs are expected to serve," Hughes explained. "As one agency contact described it, PART assessments are tantamount to a baseball coach walking to the mound to remove his pitcher and then chastising him for not kicking enough field goals." Hughes went on to describe PART as transferring to the White House authority over an area of government that is the purview of Congress under the U.S. Constitution. Hughes also maintained that Congress already has the tools to execute necessary program oversight, evidenced by the fact, which Coburn was quick to point, that Congress largely ignores PART scores in the budget process. "PART continues a troubling trend we have seen in other executive branch initiatives and even congressional proposals--namely, a trend to arrogate increasing power to the White House, even in areas that by constitutional design have been committed to Congress," Hughes testified. "For this reason alone, PART should be approached extremely cautiously by those outside the administration." Clay Johnson, deputy director of OMB and a main proponent of the PART system, also testifying at the hearing, conceded that PART was a tool with many deficiencies. He repeatedly told the committee that PART was a work in progress, admitting that PART was a very "blunt" tool for identifying inefficient programs in need of help. Eileen Norcross with the Government Accountability Project of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University testified as well, supporting PART and encouraging Congress to give more weight to PART scores. This should come as no surprise as the Mercatus Center was instrumental to PART's creation in 2001. Hughes concluded by advising Congress to approach PART reviews with a high degree of skepticism and use the long-established congressional structures within the oversight, authorization, and appropriations processes to conduct more thorough program review and results investigations. You can read Hughes' full written testimony to the committee here.