Sign on To Oppose Sunset Commissions - Nonprofit Accountability - Advocacy Blog

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Advocacy Blog

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Sign on To Oppose Sunset Commissions

TEXT OF LETTER:

Dear Members:

We are writing in opposition to any effort to include sunset commission proposals in upcoming consideration of budget process reforms. As the negotiations over the budget resolution proceed, we urge you not to strike any deals that would guarantee onsideration of sunset commission proposals.

Sunset commission proposals would force government programs to plead for their lives on a periodic basis, such as every ten years. In most versions of the concept, an unelected sunset commission would be charged with reviewing government programs and recommending whether or not they live or die. Congress would have to act to save a program, or else it would automatically be terminated. Unlike the many committees of jurisdiction in the House, in which members develop substantive expertise over the programs they oversee, a single sunset commission would sit in judgment over all programs, from the Community Development Block Grant to Title IV-E foster care to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and everything in between.

We are concerned by the potential harm to the public interest from a federal sunset proposal. Agencies would be distracted from their missions of protecting the public by being forced to defend themselves against extinction every ten years—in addition to the efforts already spent every year in the budget and appropriations processes and periodically on reauthorization. The result is agency staff would be forced to divert time, energy, and resources that should be devoted to their congressionally-mandated missions of protecting the public interest. Meanwhile, key battles that were fought and won in the past over civil rights, human services, and more would have to be fought again and again every 10 years.

There are other troubling issues in sunset commission proposals that have been introduced so far. For example, a White House proposal has called for giving an unelected sunset commission the power to ram its proposals through Congress on a fast-track, take-it-or-leave-it basis and would impose such severe limitations on debate that it would muzzle our elected representatives from speaking on vital issues about the structure and function of government services. Additionally, some proposals would exempt the sunset commission from the open government and balance requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. The commissions could therefore be packed with industry lobbyists, and they could conduct their business—about important issues of the structure and function of government services—in secrecy.