When I say zombies, I don’t mean World War Z or an episode of The Walking Dead. I’m talking about what Ronald Reagan described as the closest thing to eternal life on earth: Government programs that never die.
No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!
Ronald Reagan
Expired and Expiring Authorizations of Appropriations: Fiscal Year 2019 is a report form the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) detailing federal appropriations in Fiscal Year 2019 whose authorizations have expired. The report describes the appropriations process as:
Authorizations of appropriations are provisions of law that authorize funds to be provided through a future appropriation law to carry out a program or function. They are different from appropriations, which generally provide funding once those authorizations are in place.
Expired and Expiring Authorizations of Appropriations: Fiscal Year 2019
So, before the federal government can spend money, it must first be authorized by Congress, then appropriated, again by Congress. It’s like agreeing with your spouse to buy a car before you go to the bank to the get the money to actually buy the car. As you expect with anything involving government though, it isn’t quite as simple as my car buying analogy.
The term authorization is used to describe two types of laws. The first are enabling statutes (sometimes called organic statutes), which create a federal agency, establish a federal program, prescribe a federal function, or provide for a particular federal obligation or expenditure within a program. Such an authorization may allow a federal agency, program, or function to continue indefinitely or for a specific period. It may provide an agency with the authority to obligate and spend federal funds in the form of direct—or mandatory—spending, or it may simply specify a purpose for which a subse- quent appropriation may be provided.
Expired and Expiring Authorizations of Appropriations: Fiscal Year 2019
So first, Congress passes an enabling statute creating the federal agency or program. This new entity may live forever, or expire after a period of time specified in the legislation, but these programs are not authorized to spend any money yet. That takes another bill called an “authorization of appropriations”.
authorizations of appropriations, which authorize the appropriation of funds (generally discretionary) to carry out a program or function established in an enabling statute. An authorization of appropriations constitutes guidance to the congress about the funding that may be necessary to implement an enabling statute; it may be contained in that enabling statute or provided separately. An authorization of appropriations may be annual, multiyear, or permanent. Such an authorization also may be definite or indefinite: It may authorize a specific amount or “such sums as may be necessary.”
Expired and Expiring Authorizations of Appropriations: Fiscal Year 2019
To follow our analogy, the “enabling statute” is the agreement between you and your spouse to buy a car and the “authorization of appropriations” is the agreement to go to the bank to get a loan. However, just like taking out a loan to buy a car without consulting your spouse is detrimental to your marriage, Congress spending money without authorization of appropriations is detrimental to good government. That is why the rules of both the House and the Senate require their appropriations committees to report on such situations. The CBO report I’m referencing fulfills a legal requirement to list programs whose authorization of appropriations have expired, or will expire, in the current fiscal year. The CBO found 971 authorizations of appropriations that expired prior to fiscal year 2019. Congress spends over $300 billion of your money on these “zombie programs”. Some of the laws with expired authorization of appropriations are:
Veterans’ Health Care Eligibility Reform Act of 1996
Expired and Expiring Authorizations of Appropriations: Fiscal Year 2019
Housing and Community Development Act of 1992
Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2005
Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act of 1998
Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Year 2003
Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010
National Aeronautics and Space Administration Transition Authorization Act of 2017
America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010
An act to reauthorize Head Start, to improve program quality, to expand access, to expand access, and for other purposes
International Security and Development Cooperation Act of 1985
Energy Policy Act of 2005
Higher Education Opportunity Act
Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Authorization Act of 1992
Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2015
Without even getting into whether these laws are valid constitutionally or not, these are programs that Congress is spending money on when they have no legal authority to do so.
Conclusion
It should be a surprise to no one that Congress is robbing you blind.
No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law;
U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 9, Clause 7
Sure, much of the money is being spent by the executive branch, but Congress is appropriating money outside of the law. These men and women work for you and do business in your name, but they are embezzling your tax dollars to use on programs they cannot be bothered to authorize.
To put this in perspective, the federal government spends approximately $4 trillion every year. At $300 billion, these programs are approximately 13% of the money the federal government spends. That’s not insignificant, but certainly not the bulk of our spending problem. But this begs the question that if Congress passed these laws and Congress appropriates money for these programs, why don’t they authorize the appropriations?
I believe the answer is the size of the federal government. We have begged Washington to take on so many things they are legally prohibited from doing by the Constitution that Congress doesn’t have time to authorize all the illegal programs we’ve asked them to create. Ultimately, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
If we hadn’t spent the last 100 years begging those we send to Washington to control just about every aspect of our lives, we wouldn’t have so many programs that need to have their appropriations authorized. But when an elected official mentions rolling back, or even stopping the expansion of these programs, we see a media and pundit firestorm that puts a California wildfire to shame. The only way we will ever get control of this spending and these out of control federal agencies, is to stand with those politicians who want to return to the limited government created by our founders. Unless we hold them accountable when they violate the Constitution and stand with them when they try to uphold their oath to support it, this nation will be consumed by zombie programs in Washington that have “erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to Harris our people, and eat out their substance.” (Declaration of Independence)
