The House could vote at any time on a bill arising out of the GSA conferences scandal, now that CBO has released its official cost estimate.
HR-313 would require federal agencies to post on their public sites any information presented by federal employees at a conference. In addition, agencies would be required to provide quarterly reports to the Congress listing any conference, meeting, or event employees attended that involved travel expenses of more than $10,000 over a three-month period. Under the bill, attendance at international conferences would be limited to 50 federal employees that are stationed in the United States unless a waiver is granted by the State Department.
The bill also would limit agencies’ authority, over the next five years, to obligate funds for travel expenses (other than military travel) to 70 percent of the amount spent on travel in 2010. Finally, under the legislation, agencies would be prohibited from spending more than $500,000 to support a single conference.
CBO said that civilian agencies spent about $6.5 billion on travel-related expenses in fiscal year 2010 and about $5.5 billion in fiscal year 2011. The legislation "would probably result in a shift of spending to other activities. This provision might also lead to higher acquisition and leasing costs for additional equipment, such as telecommunications technologies. Thus, CBO expects that such a limitation would not result in significantly lower total spending by federal agencies unless total budgetary resources available to agencies to pay for administrative costs are reduced."
