; and (B) a 2008 book titled Uneven Ground: Appalachia Since 1945 by Ronald D. Eller; (5) in 2004, the Office of Management and Budget noted the importance of the Commission [f]ocusing efforts on … targeting assistance to areas of distress ; (6) in 2017, Citizens Against Government Waste characterized the programming of the Commission as duplicative and called for drastic reductions in the budget of the Commission; (7) in 2017, the Office of Management and Budget, citing a Government Accountability Office study, concluded that the Commission should be abolished, and that conclusion was reflected in the fiscal year 2018 budget request submitted by the President; (8) these recent actions reflect a growing chorus that the Commission should be reformed; and (9) therefore, given the long-recognized shortcomings of the Commission, the long-standing criticism of the Commission, and the need to ensure its optimal performance, the time has arrived for the Commission to be reformed. (c) Persistent poverty Congress finds that— (1) using 1960 data, the Commission (which was created in 1965) concluded that there were 214 distressed counties in the Appalachian region; (2) in 2017, according to the Commission, there are 84 distressed counties in the Appalachian region, reflecting the areas of most persistent poverty in the region; and (3) therefore, the Commission should be reformed to focus its attention on the areas of most persistent poverty in the region. (d) Area development funding for distressed counties Congress finds that— (1) according to the study by the Columbus Dispatch referred to in subsection (b)(4)(A), of the 22,169 grants issued by the Commission from fiscal year 1966 through fiscal year 1998, none of the 5 counties that received the most Commission funding was considered distressed, and more than 1/4 of all Commission spending during that period went to States with few, if any, distressed counties