February 24, 1977
Page 5249
SUNSET: NEW SUNLIGHT ON GOVERNMENT
Mr. HATHAWAY. Mr. President, my colleague, Senator MUSKIE, introduced a proposal earlier this year which would put all Government programs on a 5 year reauthorization schedule.
Commonly termed "sunset" legislation, Mr. MUSKIE's bill is a perfect companion to budget reforms adopted by Congress. What it asks is simply that no Government program is automatically extended year after year. Many programs authorized by Congress fill a necessary, but not permanent, need. If a program is to continue after the 5 year period, it must justify its existence or automatically be terminated.
Trial magazine, a publication of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, carries an article on the sunset proposal by Senator MUSKIE in its February issue. In it, my colleague explains the proposal and its need. When Senator MUSKIE introduced the legislation last year, nearly 60 of us agreed to cosponsor it. As the author of this proposal, Senator MUSKIE is most qualified to discuss its merits and goals, and at this time, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have the article printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
SUNSET: NEW SUNLIGHT ON GOVERNMENT
(By Senator EDMUND S. MUSKIE)
One of the most common grievances against government, expressed by the American people in one public opinion survey after another, is that they do not think they are getting their money's worth out of the tax dollars they pay. Judging from the rhetoric on the campaign trail this fall, this message promises to make a major mark on the direction of national debate over the next few years.
This rising chorus of "anti-Washington" themes strikes a popular chord with the American public, I am sure. For much of the rhetoric not only overstates the problem but understates the difficulty of solving it. Because I do believe there is a very real problem — a federal government that is not as productive or effective as it should be — I am concerned over the perils of political rhetoric which is long on scapegoats but short on practical solutions.
Making the federal government more productive could well be one of the most difficult tasks any of us — either in Washington or out — has ever undertaken. It demands not breezy promises about slashing the size of government — promises which probably can never be met — but diligent, unexciting scrutiny of the nuts-and-bolts operations of Congress and the Executive Branch.
Finding the proper mechanism to provide for such scrutiny is where the basic difficulty lies. For every politician, every bureaucrat, and every special interest group will have its own reason for protecting the status quo, in preference to the uncertainty of change.
One answer to this perennial dilemma of government is a systematic reform that will change some of the basic assumptions about the way government works.
THE "SUNSET"BILL
On February 3, 1976, I introduced a bill — along with Senators Roth, Glenn and Bellmon — which many believe would accomplish such fundamental change. By the end of this past session of Congress, that legislation — which has been nicknamed the "sunset" bill — had almost 60 cosponsors in the Senate and had been unanimously approved by the Government Operations Committee. Companion legislation in the House had well over a hundred supporters.
Specifically, the bill seeks to establish a process through which Congress is forced to apply greater scrutiny to the fruits of its legislative work. The bill would accomplish this by terminating every single federal program — with only a handful of exceptions — and every single federal tax expenditure every five years.
From a broader perspective, sunset is intended to accomplish for the individual parts of the federal budget what budget reform has begun to do for the budget as a whole — lend discipline and cohesiveness to the way the federal government handles the American taxpayers' money.
Sunset is a logical followup to budget reform. And like budget reform, sunset would dramatically alter the way we do business in Washington. It would not do so overnight, nor in a very exciting way. But it is a starting point for serious debate on what I believe is one of the most important items on the congressional agenda in the immediate future.
In general, the concept of "sunset" embodies the assumption that there will be an end to government programs — that they do not continue forever — that the sun must set on them before they can be recreated.
PROVISIONS OF THE BILL
The legislation I introduced makes use of this concept in the following, way:
First, it would put all government programs on a five year reauthorization schedule. All would have to be specifically reauthorized every five years or go out of business. The sole exceptions to this termination provision would be payment of interest on the national debt, and programs under which individuals make payments to the federal government in expectation of later compensation — for example, railroad retirement, Social Security, civil service retirement, and Medicare.
Second, the bill would establish a schedule for reauthorization of programs on the basis of groupings by budget function. Programs within the same function would terminate simultaneously, so that Congress would have an opportunity to examine and compare the federal effort in that functional area in its entirety, rather than in bits and pieces as is the practice now. The schedule would be set up so that all of the functional areas would be dealt with within one five year cycle.
Third, the bill would reverse the assumption that all existing programs deserve to be continued next year simply because they existed last year, by requiring two things: (1) that no program could continue after its termination date unless specifically reauthorized and (2) that before any program could be reauthorized, it be subject to a thoroughgoing "zero base" review to determine what future funding level — if any — is justified.
Fourth, the bill would require the Congress, upon the advice of the Finance and Ways and Means Committees, to adopt a similar five year schedule for the termination of all tax expenditures, so that they too, like direct federal spending programs, would be subject to regular review and possible termination.
The rationale behind these sunset and review provisions is to bring Congress closer to the results of its legislative work. Gone would be the idea of permanent programs and activities which receive only irregular and often cursory review by Congress. Instead, sunset assumes that there is no government activity so important that it should not be subject to regular and thorough review.
Gone also would be the present day assumption of budgeting which says that because a program was funded one year, it deserves to be funded the next year at the same or higher level, regardless of how well it is doing the job. Instead, sunset proposes that no program be reenacted unless a case can be made that it is still needed.
The principal operating mechanism of the bill is this "sunset"provision. In order to ensure that it results in something more subtantive than simply a speeded up version of the current reauthorization process, the bill requires further that no program or activity be reauthorized until it has been subject to a zero base review by the standing congressional committees. While not mandating the implementation of specific zero base budgeting procedures, the legislation clearly does endorse one underlying principle of that process — that is, the need to cut into the base of a program's funding level, in order to better determine that the most service is being provided for the least amount of money.
BEHIND THE BILL
A number of factors have led me to introduce and work actively for the enactment of this kind of proposal.
First, I suppose, are the regular opinion polls which tell us that the American people have lost faith in the responsiveness and effectiveness of their government. The only government worker getting high marks from the public is the local trash collector, because at least people know whether he is doing the job or not.
A second major factor has been my brief, but very educational experience, with the new congressional budget process. Under that process, Congress is finally beginning to reassert control over the federal budget — the most important statement of national priorities that we have.
The progress we have made thus far is very encouraging. Nevertheless, I — and I believe other members of the committee as well — have been frustrated by the limits of the system within which we have to work.
To illustrate from this year's budget the cost of continuing all 1976 programs in the 1977 budget was estimated at approximately $45.50 billion higher than last year's spending level. Thus, despite targeted program cutbacks, the final budget resolution for FY 1977 set spending at $413 billion, about $50 billion above the final budget outlays for FY 1976. Most of this growth is attributable to the increase in so-called "uncontrollable" spending, which in 1967 accounted for about 50% of that year's budget but which in FY 1977 will take up roughly 77% of all federal spending.
At this rate, the much-hailed new congressional budget process could, in the not too distant future, become little more than the simple arithmetic sum of predetermined spending levels.
The implications of this trend for discretionary spending, or for innovative federal programs to meet coming national needs, are of equal concern to me. It is these efforts which stand to suffer most in the competition for increasingly scarce federal resources.
As Dr. Allen Schick of the Library of Congress testified during hearings on the bill, uncontrollable spending is "bleeding" controllable spending. "If we compared the 1966 and 1976 budgets, we would find dozens of major programs which were funded then, but not now. We would find dozens more which have grown less than inflation. And we would find dozens in which there is a significant and growing gap between the amount authorized and the amount actually appropriated."
Because of this predicament — which I foresee only getting worse in the future — I have come to believe that no matter how successful the new budget process really is, the statement of national priorities embodied in the Federal budget as a whole will not be complete until Congress has better control over the individual parts — and thus over the services the budget is intended to buy.
Sunset has been offered as a framework through which Congress can begin to exert such control.
A third and related reason why I have come to believe in the necessity of some kind of sunset approach stems from the active support I have given to many of the new federal program initiatives over the last 15 years.
Over that period, we have built up an awesome federal structure for the purpose of solving what are truly serious national problems — hunger, poverty, ignorance and disease. I personally have expended a considerable amount of energy in helping to nurture that system along.
Today, however, I find that many of the goals I have worked for are being thwarted by an unwieldy and unresponsive federal establishment.
I have often cited the example of the GAO study of outpatient health care facilities in the District of Columbia, where several different federal programs funded eight separate clinics in one neighborhood. The result of this lack of coordination was that doctors in some of these clinics were seeing as few as four or five patients a day.
I found this example outrageous — not because I no longer believe in a major federal role to ensure that poor Americans receive the health care they need — but because I do believe so strongly in that federal role. And because I know that federal resources are not unlimited, and that if better use were made of the resources we do have, more Americans could receive the services they need and which these resources were intended to buy.
I have come to see sunset as offering us one of the few chances we may have to locate scarce resources that are not now used effectively — and to redirect those resources where they are needed most.
A final reason for my support of the sunset concept is more amorphous. I do not know if the situation described by the GAO, to which I referred above, is typical of many federal programs or not. Probably no one knows the real story, on a government-wide basis. And I suggest that the fact that no one knows is in itself a compelling reason to pursue a sunset type of reform.
By now, the numbers demonstrating the multiplicity of federal programs are becoming quite familiar — 302 health programs, 259 community development programs, more than 150 income security and social service programs, etc.; more than 1,000 federal advisory boards, committees, commissions, and councils; and more than 4,000 quasi-governmental units, such as law enforcement planning regions, air quality regions, comprehensive areawide health planning agencies, and the like.
These numbers invite an obvious, but to my mind, simplistic, response — that the answer to government inefficiency is consolidation of programs.
Frankly, I do not think this is an adequate reply. For I think we ought to be less concerned with the actual number of programs than with the questions they raise: How did we get where we are today? And what have we gotten in return?
The answer to the first question is relatively clear. We have gotten where we are today largely by accident, through individual legislative initiatives enacted in a piecemeal fashion. No one has decreed that 302 health programs is the right number of health programs. I am not suggesting that it is a wrong number. What I am suggesting is that it is a number that should be arrived at deliberately, not by default. If Congress determines that we need all 302 of these programs, so be it. At least then we will have a positive, comprehensive statement of federal health policy.
The answer to the second question is not so easy.
Clearly, we have provided health care to many Americans previously unable to afford it. But we still have not cracked the fundamental health problem — providing high quality care at a cost all can afford.
Clearly, we have raised the standard of living for a great many poor Americans. But we have not yet eliminated poverty, nor even corrected the imbalance in the distribution of income to any degree.
Clearly, we have spent billions of dollars to revive our nation's cities. Yet we still have no national urban policy, and the root cause of the cities' problems, defined so eloquently by the Kerner Commission several years ago, still remains.
Can we not do more? Clearly, I think, we must. But until we bring what activities we now have under control, we simply may not have the reserves we need — either in the budget or the public's trust — to pursue new legislative solutions to pressing national problems.
And Congress must be the one to do it.
The goals we have sought elude us not because we haven't tried. But in too many cases, we in Congress have satisfied ourselves with the rhetoric of legislation, leaving the hard work of implementation — from rule making to evaluation — to the Executive Branch. Permanent appropriations — funds spent without any review by Congress — have become the fastest growing component of the federal budget, tripling from $55 billion in 1966 to $165 billion in 1976.
WHY SUNSET?
The sunset proposal offers a vehicle for Congress to respond rationally and constructively to the criticism that we are not in control of our own house.
It proposes a neutral process. It does not propose to judge the success or failure of any program or for that matter of the totality of federal programs which now exist. Nor does it propose to judge national priorities. These judgments must continue to be made by the standing committees of the Congress, and by the Congress as a whole, as they are now.
And it offers a stronger congressional voice in setting national priorities — out from under a suffocating system which now has the upper hand in the fate of programs we enact.
Last winter, when I introduced the sunset bill, I had no idea that a bill which would so radically alter the way we do business in Congress would catch on as rapidly as it has — both in Washington and throughout the country.
Why has sunset met with such success thus far?
Because, I believe, sunset is a uniquely sound and appealing idea.
Because the need it seeks to address is one upon which everyone agrees.
And because through budget reform, Congress has found that change in the status quo can be very beneficial — not only to the public's perception of Congress as a responsible and responsive institution.
The sunset bill has opened a dialogue on the important task of making government more productive. And this is an undertaking in which liberals and conservatives alike have a vital stake.