Sam Brownback Supports BRAC-Style Porkbusting Committee

Good idea:

I have supported a Balanced Budget Amendment in the past and I would support it again. But what we’ve got to do is change the structure of the system here where the system legislators believe it rewards them to spend money rather than save it and it’s just structured wrong.

I put in a proposal, we’ve got it in on the House side, and we’ll get it in on the Senate side in the next couple of weeks, that does a BRAC type of structure for the rest of government including entitlement programs where you have a commission look at the totality of government. Are these programs effective? Are they duplications? If they are, then propose eliminations of whole programs -- or maybe the program accomplished its purpose -- or maybe it was never effective in the first place. They do those appraisals and then present in front of Congress a bill that says these 363 programs should be eliminated and give Congress one vote up or down without amendment whether to keep them all or to eliminate them all.

I think we’ve got to change the structure and the BRAC structure has been successful in changing, reducing a number of military bases, consolidating them successfully and I think we ought to use that structure throughout the rest of government. We have to get spending under control. We have not been able to do that and we need to change this structure to be able to get that done.

Thanks for the tip to The Apologist.

posted by Ace at 06:25 PM

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