WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Sam Brownback today introduced the Commission on Accountability and Review of Federal Agencies legislation, a bill which would streamline government spending.

"Today I introduced legislation which I hope will help break the federal government's unsustainable pattern of out-of-control spending," said Brownback. "CARFA will provide Congress the guidance it needs to prioritize spending and eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in federal spending."

CARFA would create a commission which would review all federal programs and agencies, make recommendations to realign duplicative programs and eliminate programs that have outlived their usefulness, are ineffective, or have substantially accomplished their purpose. These recommendations would then be reported to Congress. Like the military Base Realignment and Closure commission, the recommendations would be considered in both houses of Congress with debate, but without amendment. A vote would be held to either accept or reject the recommendations as a whole. The BRAC commission, which targeted just a small subset of Defense Department spending, has to date saved taxpayers an estimated $60 billion.

Brownback continued, "The government needs to clean up its spending. We need to eliminate wasteful and redundant federal spending in order to ensure that taxpayer dollars are being spent as efficiently as possible. Rather than create more government programs and agencies, we should focus on doing better with what we already have."

The CARFA commission would be bipartisan and have seven-members. 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 first began to discuss CARFA in 1994.