The Anti-Sam Brownback Blog

You know BRAC, the Base Realignment and Closing commission. The giant political boondoggle that every year targets those not in the majority and pushes pork to the majority’s members. Brownback wants to have a similar system in place to review all federal programs. This can get a little complicated, so I’ll let ombwatch.org explain:

CARFA was modeled on the Defense and Base Closure and Realignment Act (BRAC), which was first used during the Kennedy administration in the 1960s and then resurfaced in the late 1980s to close unneeded military bases while avoiding political skirmishes among representatives. CARFA, however, had important differences from BRAC. First, while BRAC required a bipartisan commission, comprised equally of Republicans and Democrats, the CARFA bill would have allowed the president to choose all the members of the commission. Further, while a straight up-or-down vote saved the closing of military bases from political infighting, voting up or down on CARFA proposals would play only into special interests; by selecting programs to be eliminated but never addressing unmet needs, CARFA would act as a one-way ratchet, slashing needed government programs without addressing gaps in protection. Whereas a commission more closely comparable to BRAC would recommend closures of specific program sites, such as one Head Start center, a CARFA commission would recommend the elimination of entire programs, such as Head Start itself.

In the last Congress, Brownback put forth the same legislation, but with several important changes. First, Brownback’s legislation, which was also introduced in the House by Tiahrt, excluded entitlement programs as well as those operated by the Department of Defense from review by the commission. Second, the bill would have required the president to develop a review methodology, present it to the commission for approval, and conduct reviews of at least half of all government programs. The Brownback version would have required program assessments to be “based primarily on the achievement of performance goals.”

Why is this bad? The commission would be appointed by the President so would be completely partisan. It would recommend throwing out the baby with the bathwater by axing entire programs.

Plus, and this really gets me because conservative republicans are supposed to be all about reducing bureaucracy, it would create a powerful unelected body that would have the power to build an entirely new bureaucracy. How much time will all of these programs likely to be under the knife have to spend lobbying and filling out mounds of paperwork to keep their essential services afloat? Why do republicans love big government?

It seems that Brownback is going to focus on this issue more while glossing over the realities that it would create mounds of new paperwork and cut vital programs needed by middle class Americans.