It’s been the night of the living debt in Washington for decades now. Government programs that Congress hasn’t expressly approved to receive money keep operating on the taxpayer’s dime, and the cost is no pocket change. These “unauthorized” programs, zombies of the federal budget, total more than $300 billion — about one-quarter of the spending over which lawmakers have complete control each year.
The programs also have caught the eye of fiscal hawks in Congress. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the House Republican Conference chairwoman, introduced legislation Monday that would prompt Congress to review and re-up unauthorized programs, or watch them be cut off after a three-year period. The Unauthorized Spending Accountability Act certainly has the appearance of a spending bill, but McMorris Rodgers tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD that it’s also an accountability measure.
“I believe that we do need to restore the voice of the people, the power of the purse, the accountability to the citizens who are the ones that are paying their hard-earned dollars,” she said.
Discretionary government spending, or the spending over which Congress has total funding control, generally follows a sequential, two-step approach. First is authorization. When Congress authorizes a program, it makes that program eligible to receive funding. The second step, appropriations, is the actual funding process. If a congressional committee that creates a program, agency or activity is thought of as a bank, then the Appropriations Committee is the withdrawal.
It’s the first part of this mechanism that pertains to Rodgers’s legislation. In addition to addressing the backlog of unauthorized programs (more than half of the $310 billion is marked for spending that hasn’t been authorized since 2006 or earlier), the USA Act would subject discretionary spending to a three-year reauthorization schedule. In practice, such a schedule would incentivize Congress to not fall behind on authorizing spending, ensuring that the federal budget doesn’t resemble The Walking Dead.
The bill is the latest effort from budget hawks that takes inspiration from non-partisan spending watchdogs, like the Congressional Budget Office and Government Accountability Office. For example, former Sen. Tom Coburn and his staff mined government reports and audits “for thousands of hours” to produce a deficit-reduction plan based on eliminating duplicative and wasteful programs. The recommendations in his “Back in Black” proposal were so bold and thorough that they would’ve chopped $9 trillion over a decade.
While many of the ideas behind such packages are common sense, Congress has approved them only en partial masse. And though the current election has prioritized immigration, jobs issues and anti-establishment fever above spending, Rodgers says her aim is to keep driving a message of fiscal responsibility.
“One of our top priorities the next few weeks is to focus on some ideas, some specific policy solutions that are going to restore our constitutional role as representatives of the people,” she said. “Part of it is the accountability that comes through the budget.”
