Sunset Commission Proposals Would Not Provide "Good Government"

The President and Congressional Republican leaders are advocating "sunset commission" proposals, which are expected to come to the House floor in late July. The leading sunset bills before Congress have a distinctly partisan slant. A bare majority of commission members, appointed by Republ...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Policy File 2006
Main Author: Horney, James
Format: Report
Language:English
Subjects:
Budgets/Expenditures
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Government
Online Access:Request full text
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Summary:The President and Congressional Republican leaders are advocating "sunset commission" proposals, which are expected to come to the House floor in late July. The leading sunset bills before Congress have a distinctly partisan slant. A bare majority of commission members, appointed by Republican leaders, could recommend elimination of various programs and agencies, as well as of various rules and regulations. The programs, agencies, and rules and regulations could then be eliminated without a single vote in favor of elimination being cast by a member of the minority party either on the commission or in Congress, and with members of the minority party barred even from offering amendments on the House and Senate floors. Successful commissions traditionally are formed to operate in a bipartisan fashion. The pending sunset-commission proposals, in contrast, make changes in procedures that would enable program terminations and cuts that lack sufficient support to pass Congress under normal procedures, with bipartisan support, to be achieved instead on a strictly partisan basis. Moreover, the commission's mission itself would be ideologically skewed. The commission would be prohibited from proposing to eliminate or scale back any of what the GAO, OMB, and CBO refer to as "tax expenditures," which are the roughly $800 billion spent each year on special interests and others through the tax code.