A bill (HR-4730) offered in the House would put all currently unauthorized federal programs on a path to sunset in three years and require any new authorizations or reauthorizations to include a sunset clause.
The bill, a response to so-called “zombie” programs that continue year after year even though their authorizations have not been renewed, aims to have every government program routinely scrutinized.
Congressional Budget Office reports of recent years have identified programs operating without authorization that collectively spend on the order of $300 billion per year. Such programs are not necessarily unexamined, however; among the unauthorized agencies in the most recent CBO report on the topic were NASA and NIH.
