EDITORIAL: Let sun set on federal programs, laws

One of the many bad habits our Congress has is its insistence on passing “continuing resolutions” that keep our government funded when its members should instead be voting on individual spending bills. Congress is required to pass a dozen discretionary bills, but hasn’t done so since 1994. Republicans pledged things would change when they held the House and regained control of the Senate in November 2014, but they’ve made little progress.

Arguably the most persistent problem with Congress’ inaction is that it helps needless programs continually get renewed federal funding, while technically never getting reapproved by Congress.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., equates these programs with zombies that feed on our tax dollars and continue to exist long after they were supposed to die out. Rep. McMorris Rodgers says her new bill, the Unauthorized Spending Accountability Act of 2016 (or USA Act), would set in motion a pathway to sunset all unauthorized programs within three years, and require all new authorizations and reauthorizations to carry a sunset clause.

“We hear the frustrations of families and individuals whose power to make the best decisions for themselves has been taken away by a government that thinks it knows best and isn’t being held accountable,” Rep. McMorris Rodgers said last week while introducing the legislation. “These frustrations are a symptom of the people losing their power to ensure every penny of taxpayer money is subject to citizens’ scrutiny and accountability. Too much of the government is currently on autopilot, and it’s time to challenge the status quo.”

Rep. McMorris Rodgers’ strong proposal falls in line with another solid idea from Reason columnist Veronique de Rugy, who calls for the federal government to sunset all new laws and regulations 18 months to two years after enactment. Ms. De Rugy says the government should be taking inspiration from the so-called “Moore’s Law,” which points out that technology and business conditions change rapidly, which should provide government with the impetus to “scrap its business model every so often, the same way private-sector institutions already do.” As Ms. De Rugy notes, policy makers can always re-enact the rule if it’s sensible to do so, but sunsetting a rule first forces those politicians to change their behavior and become more fiscally responsible.

“Under such a regime, the inertia and inefficiency that plague Washington would play to the favor of limited government advocates,” Ms. De Rugy writes. “This would finally allow us to start getting rid of some bad programs and replacing them with better ones, just as Amazon shook up the bookstore world.”

Indeed, the only way to expand freedom is to reduce government. Adopting Rep. McMorris Rodgers’ USA Act and Ms. De Rugy’s proposal would mark two big steps in that direction.