Republican Lawmaker Seeks to Phase Out ‘Zombie’ Federal Programs Costing Over $510 Billion

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) sponsored one of four bills calling for an end to COVID-19 emergency measures that was adopted by the House Rules Committee, in Washington, on Jan. 30, 2023. Samuel Corum/Getty Images

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) wants to phase out the more than 1,100 “zombie” federal agencies and programs that have continued for years after legislative authorizations have expired, at a cost of more than $358 billion annually.

The McMorris Rodgers proposal is the Unauthorized Spending Act (USA), which she has introduced in every Congress since 2016. The Washington state Republican believes the measure (H.R. 1518) is needed to restore to voters the power of accountability in the nation’s capital.

“We have a fiscal crisis in America today, too much of the federal government is on autopilot. Americans are rightly frustrated by a government that thinks it knows best,” McMorris Rodgers explained in a statement on her official website. “These frustrations are a symptom of the people losing our power to ensure every penny of taxpayer money and every decision by federal agencies are subject to citizens’ scrutiny.

“The USA Act aims to restore the American people’s ‘power of the purse’ by eliminating unauthorized spending or ‘Zombie’ programs—spending on government programs that haven’t been authorized by the people’s representatives in Congress. This bill is simple, it ensures that every penny of taxpayer money is subject to the scrutiny of the American people.

“It means that the people’s representatives are doing their jobs to effectively review, rethink, and possibly eliminate programs that are no longer needed. It means restoring the power of the purse and ending unauthorized spending.”

Her proposal currently has 11 co-sponsors, all Republicans, in the House of Representatives. No hearings have been scheduled on the measure, which is awaiting further action in the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability and the House Budget Committee.

Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) questions Congressional Budget Office Director Phillip Swagel as he testifies before the Legislative Branch Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee in the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Feb. 12, 2020. Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images

The Congress Budget Office (CBO), in an April report, “identified 1,108 authorizations of appropriations that expired before the beginning of fiscal year 2023 and 355 authorizations that are set to expire before the end of the fiscal year. CBO also found that $510 billion in appropriations for 2023 was associated with 428 expired authorizations of appropriations.”

The USA proposal “puts all unauthorized programs on a pathway to sunset in three years, which is enforced by a reduction in overall budget authority based on the total value of unauthorized programs,” according to a fact sheet on McMorris Rodgers’s website.

“In the first year after expiration, overall budget authority is reduced by 10 percent of the total value of unauthorized spending. In the second and third years, that increases to 15 percent. The programs in question would sunset at the end of the third fiscal year after expiration,” the fact sheet says.

Congress could also decide to reauthorize a zombie agency or program, but individual senators and representatives would have to go on the record whether to phase out funding or reauthorize the activity.

The process of deciding what to do about a specific zombie agency or program would be overseen by a new Spending Accountability Commission (SAC) tasked with establishing reauthorization schedules, conducting reviews of the effectiveness of the agencies and programs, and recommending mandatory budget cuts “to be used as potential offsets to restore budget authority that was reduced due to unauthorized programs.”

Zombie federal agencies, are programs, especially those that have continued with funding but without reauthorization, “are a symptom of a federal government that is far too big for the institution of Congress to manage,” says David Ditch, senior policy analyst in the Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget at The Heritage Foundation think tank.

“No institution in the history of humanity could properly manage an entity [like the federal government] that employs so many people doing so many things and spending so much money covering such a broad range of topics.”

Before joining Heritage, Ditch worked on the Senate Budget Committee where, among much else, he analyzed zombie agencies and programs.

At the heart of the problem, Ditch told The Epoch Times, is how “Congress, rather than doing the hard work of analyzing the performance of an existing federal agency or program, the instinct is to create new things that you can take political credit for back home.

4 Decades as a Zombie

“Especially when you combine those political incentives with the astronomical growth of the federal government that took place during the 20th century and which has been allowed to keep growing and festering over time, you end up with a combination of small zombies that probably should be repealed, and I would say large important programs with nowhere near enough oversight,” Ditch said.

Among the results of such political dysfunction are federal agencies—such as the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities—that have continued receiving billions of tax dollars despite their legislative authorizations having expired decades ago, in 1993.

Other examples of zombie programs include the Title X Family Planning Program in the Department of Health and Human Services that expired in 1985, which Ditch noted primarily provides funding for one of the most hotly debated federal subsidy recipients, the Planned Parenthood Foundation of America Inc.

“If it is so contentious that we couldn’t reauthorize it, why should that program be entitled to going on four decades of billions of dollars over that time period in federal funds?”