July 28, 1976
Page 24277
S. 2925, THE GOVERNMENT ECONOMY AND SPENDING REFORM ACT OF 1976
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, since I joined with Senators ROTH and GLENN in the introduction on February 3 of S. 2925, the Government Economy and Spending Reform Act of 1976, I am pleased to note that 54 Senators have expressed their support and have asked to be added as cosponsors to this landmark proposal.
I regret to note, however, that the names of several of these Senators have not officially been recorded as cosponsors and I wish to ask that these names be included on this legislation. The Senators are: CHURCH, CRANSTON, DOMENICI, EAGLETON, HUMPHREY, JOHNSTON, KENNEDY, LEAHY, MONDALE, and PROXMIRE.
The Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations completed action on this legislation on May 13 and we have been assured by the chairman of the Government Operations Committee that full committee consideration of this proposal will occur on Tuesday, August 3.
Public support for S. 2925 has mounted steadily as the media and public officials have brought it into the public arena. As an example of this interest, I ask unanimous consent that an article by Neal R. Pierce in the Washington Post entitled "Programs That Self-Destruct" be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
[From the Washington Post, July 21, 1976]
PROGRAMS THAT SELF-DESTRUCT
The "sunset" law idea — to force government agencies and programs to justify their own existence or face extinction — is advancing rapidly in Congress and spreading like a prairie grassfire among the States.
Sunset measures were introduced this spring in California, Florida, Illinois and Louisiana — even before Colorado, in April, could complete action on its pioneering bill to put 40 state regulatory agencies on a seven-year life cycle. Maryland has set up a 15-member commission to study the feasibility of a sunset law.
The Colorado chapter of Common Cause, which originated the sunset idea, reports inquiries from 80 states. "I wouldn't be surprised if two dozen legislatures were debating sunset bills by next winter," says Roselle Schiff, executive director of Colorado Common Cause.
On Capitol Hill, 47 Senators, of every ideological hue, are sponsoring sunset legislation requiring federal government programs, grouped by functional area, to come up for renewal every five years. Programs that couldn't pass muster would be cut back or eliminated altogether. Those that proved themselves would be given a new lease on life by Congress.
The bill cleared the Senate Intergovernmental Relations Subcommittee by a 7-0 vote May 13, and sponsors Edmund S. Muskie(D-Maine) and William V. Roth (R-Del.) hope it will reach the Senate floor this summer.
On the House side, a companion bill has more than 100 sponsors including 41 members of the freshman class lined up by chief backers James J. Blanchard (D-Mich.) and Norman Y. Mineta, (D-Calif.). House committee hearings are scheduled to begin this month.
Broad support — from Common cause to the Chamber of Commerce of the U.S.— for the sunset legislation was forthcoming during Senate hearings. Only one interest group — the veterans — had the temerity to oppose the idea in public, out of fear that Congress might cut back their benefits.
Blanchard says he's "absolutely convinced" sunset legislation will eventually pass Congress. If he's right, the results could be revolutionary: the most effective brake on federal spending and programs in modern times — perhaps ever.
Muskie and Roth see sunset as a logical extension of the new congressional budget process, now in its second year. Whereas the budget process lets Congress establish spending priorities and overall ceilings, the sunset mechanism would force Congress to make periodic decisions on whether federal programs are really working so that duplicative or unnecessary ones can be weeded out.
Up to now, bureaucratic and political pitfalls have made it almost impossible to eliminate programs or agencies once they're on the statute books.
The sunset bill tries to avoid those pitfalls in three ways. First, a triggering mechanism requires that Congress must act every five years to keep a program alive. The burden of proof is shifted to a program's backers, to show that it deserves continued life. According to Alvin From, staff director of the Senate Intergovernmental Relations Subcommittee, "it will be very hard for a committee to justify reauthorizing the Tea Tasters Board or 228 individual health programs."
Second, the sunset measure requires that all related programs — in manpower or health or national security, for example — come up for review and a decision on extension in a single year. Under strict budget guidelines, Congress will have to decide which programs are the most worthwhile, which might be dropped or consolidated.
Finally, the sunset bill as it's now written requires a zero based review of each federal program, to be prepared for Congress by executive agencies and the General Accounting Office. Zero based review shows the consequences of cutting any program's budget 25 percent or more, eliminating it altogether, or providing the services another way.
The zero based review process alarms professional budget makers. Roy Ash, former director of the Office of Management and Budget, says that zero based review of an average of 250 programs a year "is like attempting to jump aboard a 747 in full flight." Others say the bill is overly ambitious, would set a "paper mill" in motion and create "a staggering workload." They suggest more modest pilot or test runs.
Muskie and Roth show little patience with such arguments. If Congress proceeds at the pace predicted by many critics, Roth says, "I will be dead by the time the work is completed." Much of the resistance, sunset law backers believe, stems from normal bureaucratic terror of any radical change in their way of doing business.
Even federal tax incentives are the target of a sunset provision suggested by Ohio's Sen. John H. Glenn (D). However noble their original purpose, Glenn says, tax incentives often degenerate into loopholes that cause an annual loss of $101 billion in tax revenue — as much as the entire national defense budget.
Common Cause urges a kind of sunset for Congress itself — reorganizing committees into more clear cut functional areas and forcing members to rotate committee assignments every few years to break up "unholy" alliances between committee members and special interest lobbyists.
Even an imperfect sunset system, however, could help breathe life into the oft-neglected oversight role of the legislature, prompt the executive to be more accountable, and begin the arduous process of rescuing government from its own cumbersome inefficiencies and the nadir of public esteem where it finds itself today.