The Daily Texan - Cornyn Announces Plan to Start Committee to Evaluate Agencies

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The Daily Texan - Cornyn Announces Plan to Start Committee to Evaluate Agencies

By: Lena Price

Sen. John Cornyn plans to create an eight-person bipartisan committee in Washington to evaluate the effectiveness of federal programs and agencies.

The committee will be modeled on Texas' Sunset Advisory Commission, which was created in 1977 and has eliminated dozens of state agencies which no longer serve any purpose.

"We ask a very simple question: ‘Does the purpose for which this agency was created still exist?'" said state Rep. Carl Isett, R-Lubbock and chairman of the commission. "If the answer to that is no, then it needs to go away."

The Sunset Commission has eliminated 8 percent of the state agencies it has reviewed in the past 30 years, said state Sen. Glenn Hegar, R-Katy and vice-chairman of the commission.

Cornyn said without some kind of review process at the federal level, government agencies take on lives of their own and continue spending money past their usefulness.

"If we can bring the same sort of transparency and oversight to the federal government, we can do a lot to help save tax dollars and eliminate wasteful Washington programs," Cornyn said. "This is not a new idea, but it is part of my objective to make Washington more like Texas."

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