On Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley appeared on TV and admitted something that Americans have long known — the political process in Washington is broken.
This “dysfunction,” as he called it, is standing in the way of a historic budget agreement that would reduce spending and eliminate the national debt. It is also, he claimed, acting as a “wet blanket” on the nation’s economy, slowing growth and holding down job creation.
If Daley is right, and if in fact our nation’s elected leaders are incapable of making the difficult decisions that are necessary to address the issue and get our nation’s fiscal house in order, then perhaps it is time to put in place a mechanism that would force the issue and take at least some of these decisions out of their hands.
The mechanism is a federal sunset commission. First introduced in the 1970s, the mechanism would do two things. First, it would put a time limit — usually about 10 to 12 years — on any new program that was passed by Congress and signed into law. And second, it would establish a permanent panel — called a sunset commission — that would essentially conduct a performance review on these programs when their time limit was up.
If the program was found to no longer be serving its original purpose, the sunset commission would recommend it be terminated. If instead the program was found to be performing a valuable function and still fulfilling the mission it was intended to do, the sunset commission would recommend the program be continued and, if needed, make suggestions on how the program could be improved. The recommendations then would be sent to Congress, which would have to approve or reject them.
Commission members would be appointed by the leaders of both parties. In the past, some have suggested having these members be comprised primarily of current members of Congress. A better solution would be to have the sunset commission comprised of retired members of Congress instead. They know where the fiscal bodies are buried, so to speak, and are unencumbered by the political sensitivities of holding office that might otherwise prevent them from speaking their mind.
When the idea of a sunset commission was first proposed more than 30 years ago, its main proponents were, surprisingly enough, Democrats. Former Maine Democratic Sen. Edmund Muskie was the chief sponsor in the Senate, while Democratic representatives such as Dick Gephardt and Shirley Chisholm supported the idea in the House. Republicans ranging from Barry Goldwater to Jesse Helms also supported the plan, as did then-President Jimmy Carter and such ideologically diverse interest groups as Common Cause and the Chamber of Commerce.
Perhaps Muskie summed it up best when explaining why the sunset commission mechanism enjoyed such broad political support.
“Conservatives see this as a way of reducing the responsibilities of government,” he explained, while it is viewed by “liberals as a way of getting our house in order to take on new responsibilities.” The Senate overwhelmingly approved the Muskie legislation by a vote of 87-1 in October 1978. Unfortunately, the bill was never voted on in the House, and the idea never was seriously considered again.
In recent years, it has been mainly Republicans who have been pushing the idea of establishing a federal sunset commission; Texas Sen. John Cornyn has introduced a sunset bill in the Senate, while Texas Rep. Kevin Brady has authored companion legislation in the House. It’s not surprising that both of these members of Congress are from Texas; the Lone Star State is one of 20 states that have some form of sunset legislation on the books. In fact, then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush made establishing a sunset commission part of his platform when he ran for the presidency in 2000.
Bush’s successor as governor, Rick Perry, will likely do the same thing if, as some predict, he throws his hat in the ring as a GOP candidate for president in 2012. The reason he can be expected to embrace the plan is simple — it is a success story. Indeed, in the 33 years it has been in existence, the Texas Sunset Commission has abolished 54 agencies and consolidated another 12, saving state taxpayers more than $784 million in the process.
In short, the sunset commission has provided taxpayers with value and results. Given the dysfunction that Daley talked about this past weekend, these are two qualities that are obviously not just lacking in Washington these days, but ones that the American people would readily and enthusiastically embrace.
Lou Zickar is the editor of the Ripon Forum, a centrist Republican journal of political thought and opinion published by the Ripon Society.
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