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Floor Statement: United States Authorization and Sunset Commission Amendment
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
I think we can all agree that providing relief to those afflicted with the AIDS virus is worthy and noble goal and I appreciate the efforts of the Senator from Indiana, Senator Lugar, and the Senator from Delaware, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, for their work. I think we all would recognize, though, that it's important not only that Congress provide appropriate oversight for the various programs we create and the spending that we authorize but that we actually do everything we can to make sure that any waste associated with a government program, particularly one as big as this one, with a $50 billion authorization, that we establish mechanisms that will allow us to review and provide the appropriate oversight and, if necessary, eliminate inefficient and wasteful programs.
My amendment establishes the bipartisan United States Authorization and Sunset Commission which will help improve oversight and eliminate wasteful spending in programs reauthorized or established by S. 2731, the PEPFAR bill. Just to be clear, this, in negotiations with the Majority Leader, I actually had a Sunset Commission bill modeled after the Sunset Commission in my state and a variety of states that have been enormously effective in looking across the government to reduce waste and inefficient programs - but in our negotiations we agreed that this would be narrowly addressed at the PEPFAR program which I think is appropriate but I just want to say that I intend to be up here at every opportunity pressing this issue because of its importance, I think, across the Federal government, in reducing waste and inefficiency.
As I said, this Sunset Commission idea was modeled after the process in my state, and I know many other states, but in Texas it was instituted in 1997. It has eliminated, over time, 50 state agencies who were no longer serving their intended purpose and saved state taxpayers more than $700 million. The Commission consists of four Senators and four members of the House of Representatives, the CBO and GAO will serve as non-voting, ex-officio members. My original intent, as I said, was to make this more broad than just the PEPFAR program but perhaps this would be a great sort of pilot program, if you will, to see how it works as we consider, perhaps, expanding it more broadly. The Commission will recommend ways to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the PEPFAR programs according to a timeline while certainly this $50 billion is an awful lot of money and certainly it's $20 billion over and above what the President actually originally asked for, and as the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office has said, it's probably going to be impossible for the program to spend more than $35 billion within the five-year budget window. But it makes even more important the matter of making sure the money is actually used to treat AIDS and HIV and help people get better and not waste it on extraneous matters. Under this amendment, the Congress cannot simply ignore the Commission's reports. The amendment provides expedited procedures that will force Congress to consider and debate the Commission's work similar to the BRAC procedures. This Commission will help Congress do the necessary oversight to make sure that every taxpayer dollar under PEPFAR is being spent wisely. The Commission will focus on unauthorized and ineffective programs, as I said.
The simple fact of the matter is that within the myriad programs, funds, organizations, funded by Congress each year, the Office of Management and Budget has done a review of about 1,000 government programs and concluded that about 25% of them were either ineffective or that OMB , the Office of Management and Budget, said there wasn't sufficient information to make a conclusion one way or the other. That's 25% of about 1,000 government programs. So we know that the waste and ineffectiveness of government programs and the need for more oversight is there and I think this would provide, basically, Congress two bites at the apple when it comes to evaluating Federal spending. First, when it authorizes a program; and second, when it appropriates money. Year after year the Congressional Budget Office has found Congress appropriates billions and billions of taxpayer money on programs despite the fact that their authorization has expired. This means that Congress has dropped the ball when it comes to doing the hard work of figuring out whether the programs are working and whether taxpayers' money is being spent efficiently or wastefully.
While we all do our best to ensure that proper oversight is given to every program, we simply don't have the tools or the time necessary always to monitor and review every program. That's why the Sunset Commission review is important. It would give the tools specifically because of the narrowed down nature of the PEPFAR programs but it is applicable because the bill would more than triple the amount of government spending. The Commission will be an assistance to the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee and the house Foreign Affairs Committee in its oversight of PEPFAR and it will not replace their work. Instead, it will supplement their work. It will serve as another set of eyeballs keeping a close eye on wallets of the taxpayer.
Let me be clear in conclusion, this is not a problem only for PEPFAR and this program. It's a problem in every part of our government. I continue to support the creation of a Sunset Commission that would review all government operations, from transportation to research, to foreign aid. My hope is at a later point we will be able to urge its adoption more broadly. Simply put, the purpose of the Commission is to ask, is this program still needed? Is it still serving the intended purpose? Is the money that Congress has appropriated, is it accomplishing the goal that cCongress intends? I think, I hope, our colleagues would support this amendment and provide this needed additional oversight that would assist the United States Congress in making sure that the taxpayers' money is being spent as intended, to help the worthy humanitarian purposes for which this particular program is intended.
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