Establish technical drafting services for congressional committees and subcommittees. (1) Agency heads should require their agencies to provide technical drafting services to chairs and ranking members of congressional committees and subcommittees and to the House or Senate Office of Legislative Counsel as a method of avoiding unintended consequences of legislation. It is important that such service be provided regardless of the administration's substantive policy position. If responses have to wait for determination of administration policy, such a service would not be effective because it will not provide timely input into the legislative process. Because an agency may have to implement legislation with which it disagrees, it should strive to fix technical glitches that may cause implementation problems. Furthermore, if the agency provides the service to all comers, responses cannot be interpreted as an early indication of administration support (which could happen if agencies only provided assistance in response to select requests). To ensure that it is the agency, rather than the individual staff members, assisting Congress, the service should have the following safeguards built in: --An agency will designate an office or senior agency official (perhaps the congressional liaison office or the general counsel's office) as the clearinghouse for all technical drafting services. --Although legislative language normally would be drafted or revised by the agency's technical experts, it should then be cleared by an appropriate senior agency official (or officials). Given the time- sensitive nature of the legislative process and the fact that policy clearance is not needed, the number of levels of clearance should be very limited. --Requests for statutory language and responses containing such language will be in writing. --Upon providing the response, the agency shall instruct the congressional committee to disclaim that technical drafting services indicate administration support.
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