Brownback Comments on Today's Vote on His CARFA Legislation

Statement

U.S. Senator Sam Brownback commented on the Senate's failure to adopt as an amendment to the Debt Limit Increase bill his Commission on Accountability and Review of Federal Agencies legislation.

"I am glad that so many of my colleagues voted in favor of my amendment, and I'm hopeful that we can vote on this again soon since a majority of the Senate voted for it," said Brownback. "Real reform is needed to fix Washington's spending problem, and CARFA will be a great step. I look forward to continuing to work on the issue of responsible budgeting; I know how important it is to bring government spending under control."

Brownback's amendment, voted on today, needed 60 votes to be adopted to the pending legislation; it received 51 votes from Republicans, Democrats, and Independents.

CARFA would create a bipartisan commission to review all federal programs and agencies, make recommendations to realign duplicative programs and eliminate programs that have outlived their usefulness or are ineffective. The recommendations would then be reported to Congress. A vote would be held to either accept or reject the recommendations as a whole. The commissioners would review roughly a quarter of all federal programs each year over a four-year period. At the end of each year, each set of recommendations would receive an up-or-down vote. After its fourth and final submission, the commission would terminate.

Brownback earlier this year introduced CARFA as a stand-alone bill. Brownback began to discuss CARFA in 1994, and first introduced the legislation in the 107th Congress. The Senate has approved the CARFA concept as a part of a Budget Resolution in every Congress since the 108th Congress in 2003. Today's vote was the Senate's first vote on the full authorization of CARFA.

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