Kevin Brady: “To follow on what the gentleman said, we have been fighting big government since the very beginning. Our Founding…”

“To follow on what the gentleman said, we have been fighting big government since the very beginning. Our Founding Fathers and mothers did know there would be a struggle. The other day in reading a book on Thomas Jefferson, I stumbled across a letter that he had written during his first term stating that he was hard at work trying to abolish agencies that were no longer needed in our Federal Government. That was at the very infancy. Already the bureaucracy was starting to take hold. Two of the things I like, I think, also about sunset is that in real life at the State level, when an agency knows that they are coming up for sunset, they are also less likely to write regulations that are so far afield from what Congress or the legislature intended. As you know, we write a bill that is 10 pages long. An agency writes regulations that fill a thousand pages. The mayor may not have to do what the original intent of Congress or the legislature intended. But under sunset, when they know they are coming, every agency knows they are coming back routinely in front of taxpayers, the customers and users of their agencies, and Members of Congress to justify their responsiveness and their service and their quality, it changes things. Also, under sunset, because we do not just single out the Department of Education or the Department of Commerce or any other program, every agency is held accountable. It puts American taxpayers back into the driver's seat.”