Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Act, 2008, --Continued --

Floor Speech

DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008--Continued -- (Senate - October 19, 2007)

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, first, I thank Senator Harkin and Senator Specter for working with us on this bill, this important piece of legislation, and for the opportunity to offer this amendment.

It is my intention, at the end of my remarks, to seek to withdraw the amendment because there are some procedural objections under rule XVI of the Senate rules.

I think this is an important amendment and an important matter for us to consider at the appropriate time. I hope my colleagues will work with me, as well as Senator Voinovich and Senator Chambliss, who are cosponsors of the amendment, to find a way to address the urgent matters contained within the scope of the amendment.

Specifically, we ought to be good stewards of the taxpayers' money. Unfortunately, due to the size and scope of the Federal budget, there seems to be precious little attention given to ways to make sure that we spend the taxpayers' money efficiently. While we debate the necessity of appropriations, and we should continue to try to cut back on the unnecessary expenditures wherever possible, I think it is imperative that Congress do the appropriate oversight on existing Federal programs and appropriations and ways to look for both cost savings and efficiencies.

I think we ought to ask the fundamental question every time we are asked to appropriate money for a particular agency--we ought to ask this question: Is this agency or program still needed?

What has led me to offer this amendment arises out of some good work being done by the OMB. As a matter of fact, they have published this brochure called: ``Expect More.'' You could go on line to expectmore.gov on the Internet and see what I am talking about. Specifically, they have a tool called ``the program assessment rating tool,'' which helps the Office of Management and Budget assess whether a particular Government program is working.

The Office of Management and Budget has recently reviewed over a thousand programs. As this chart indicates, upon a review of 1,016 Federal Government programs, they have concluded that 22 percent of those programs rated either as ineffective or they are unable to determine whether they are effective. In other words, they are unable to find evidence that they are effective. They have not conclusively determined them as ineffective, but they have concluded that 22 percent of the Federal Government programs are either ineffective or the results are not demonstrated. Anybody who is interested anywhere in the world--certainly in the United States--can look at the information on this expectmore.gov Web site and inform themselves, as I am sure they would want to, about what the Federal Government is doing and not doing on their behalf.

As part of the review, the OMB looked at 35 programs within the Department of Labor, totaling almost $15 billion. They identified $2 billion that could be saved out of that $15 billion on programs that are not meeting expectations and are not effective. Some of these programs include the Office of Disability Employment Policy, Trade Adjustment Assistance, and part of the Workforce Investment Act. Certainly, these programs have the potential to help people and strengthen our country. But my hope is we will look at these programs and not necessarily decide they are not necessary--because they may be--but, rather, give the appropriate oversight and come back and try to do what is necessary to make them effective or, if they simply cannot be rehabilitated or made effective, we ought to eliminate them.

The fact is we can look to our State governments and State laws for mechanisms that we could use to make sure we spend the taxpayers' dollars only on needed programs and in the most efficient ways possible.

I look to my State of Texas. Since 1971, we have had something called the Sunset Commission, which periodically--about every 10 years--reviews State programs and State spending to decide what the answer to the question is that I posed earlier: Is this agency or this program still needed? Is the money being spent effectively?

Here in Washington, we could learn from the State sunset commission process, which I know happened in Texas and which also is reflected in the laws of many of our State governments but which we do not have here at the Federal level.

A study by the Congressional Budget Office found that Congress spent almost $160 billion in 2006 on agencies and programs that were not, in fact, authorized. In other words, while the authorizing committees had previously authorized it, those authorizations had lapsed, indicating a lack of continued oversight and authorization by Congress. Yet money was continuing to be appropriated and spent on these programs. This list includes hundreds of accounts, both big ones and small ones, ranging from the Coast Guard, $8 billion, to the Administration on Aging, $1.5 billion, to section 8 tenant-based housing, $15.6 billion, to the foreign relations programs, which is $9.5 billion. Many of these programs and agencies, perhaps most, deserve reauthorization. I am not saying they do not. But reauthorization no longer means what it should. It means we have conducted the appropriate investigation and oversight to determine whether the programs are meeting current needs or whether they are no longer necessary. Congress should make sure we are only spending money on programs that can and are justified.

My amendment would take what I think is a great experiment, which has shown tremendous success on the State level in places such as Texas, and create a bipartisan Federal sunset commission to review the efficiency of all Federal programs but will focus their work on ineffective and unauthorized programs and will make recommendations to Congress about how to improve them, if they can be improved, or whether we should just eliminate them altogether.

To me, this is a shocking figure, when our own Federal Government concludes--the executive branch, the Office of Management and Budget--that almost 25 percent of Federal programs are not delivering for the American taxpayers.

My amendment would create, as I said, a bipartisan U.S. authorization and sunset commission that would be composed of four Members of the House and four Members of the Senate. The commission would issue a schedule-and-review proposal to Congress at least once every 10 years, as well as issue reports on the way to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of Government programs and agencies.

The schedule-and-review proposal is where the commission would review and analyze at least 25 percent of unauthorized Federal programs and 25 percent of the ineffective programs as identified by OMB and would do so on a rolling or ongoing basis. In other words, we have to start somewhere, and that is where they would start, but we would continue until all Federal agencies and programs would be subject to this sort of scrutiny and review.

Unlike most commissions, Congress cannot simply ignore the commission's work under my amendment. Rather, the amendment would provide an expedited procedure that would force Congress to consider and debate the commission's work and then vote up or down on whether to accept it.

Simply put, this commission would help Congress do what we should already be doing; that is, providing the necessary oversight to make sure every dollar of the taxpayers' money is being spent wisely. The commission will help Congress answer the simple but powerful question I posed at the outset, and that is: Is an agency or program still needed? It seems like common sense to me.

I know some will argue this is why we have authorizing committees, but I believe the commission would add greater focus to the budget and appropriations process on saving taxpayers money as opposed to how can we come up with new ways to spend more money, which tends to dominate the appropriations process, and how can we improve Government accountability and provide for greater openness and transparency in Government decisionmaking?

This concept, as I said, is not new or even revolutionary. My home State of Texas has had a sunset commission in place for 30 years, in which time it is estimated the Texas taxpayers have been saved more than $700 million by eliminating ineffective or unnecessary programs, starting with a zero-based budget during the sunset commission reviewing process and justifying each and every dollar that is added to pay for that program if reauthorized.

The tendency in Washington, unfortunately, is to take an existing program and see it grow incrementally each year. Indeed, once a Government program is created, it tends to create a constituency that will come to Congress and argue that it should not be eliminated--not only should it not be eliminated, it should grow by a certain percentage each year.

As this and other appropriations bills come before the Senate, I ask my colleagues to keep in mind the extent of waste we already see in Government programs. Rather than allowing these programs to continue endlessly with no real purpose and no real means of accomplishing their goals, it is time we took a closer look at and acted on our responsibility to eliminate wasteful Washington spending. Before we raise taxes and before we mindlessly appropriate money for another batch of potentially ineffective and outdated programs, we should take a hard look in the mirror on how we spend the hard-earned money of the beleaguered American taxpayers. No one wants higher taxes, and our first defense against higher taxes ought to be greater efficiency and money savings by eliminating wasteful programs. Our primary means of ensuring this efficiency would be through this bipartisan sunset commission.

I hope all of our colleagues will seriously consider this proposal for a Federal sunset commission. It is important, before we look at raising taxes and growing the size of Government, that we look at ways to eliminate waste and unnecessary programs, and that is exactly what this amendment would do.

AMENDMENT NO. 3381 WITHDRAWN

I understand this particular amendment, being legislation on an appropriations bill, will be subject to a point of order. Rather than pursue that issue and require the procedural ruling on that decision, I now ask unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I thank the bill managers and my colleagues for indulging me on this point. This is not an issue that is going to go away. I am not going to go away when it comes to urging greater efficiency and elimination of wasteful Washington spending.

We have a tremendous responsibility, those of us who have been sent to Congress to represent our States and our districts, the least of which ought to be being good stewards of the taxpayers' money. It is time to take the Federal budget off autopilot, to see the Government grow and grow and grow without any real oversight, particularly when it comes to these programs which have been demonstrated either as ineffective or where it is impossible for the Federal Government to conclude that the evidence justifies the continued existence of these programs.

FUNDING FOR DEAFBLIND SERVICES

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, in America, there are over 10,000 children like 11-year-old Nate Newton of San Antonio and 7-year-old triplets Zoe, Emma, and Sophie Dunn of Houston, who are both deaf and blind. The increase in the number of deafblind children in America is fueling a growing demand for qualified teachers to work with deafblind children.

Texas Tech University is one of the few universities in the United States that offer graduate training in deafblind education. To date, the Department of Education has provided funding from the special education national activities account to train teachers with deafblind children in their classes on how to educate and include these children in daily classroom activities. Yet Federal funding for this program has remained level at $12.8 million for nearly the past 20 years.

The House-passed version of the Labor-HHS appropriations bill includes a modest increase of $2 million in funding for deafblind services. I think this is a reasonable increase and would request that the conference committee accept the higher level of funding.

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