{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-icymi-dr-rand-paul-holds-hearing-unauthorized-unaccountable-zombie-programs-eating-taxpayer/", "ICYMI: Dr. Rand Paul Holds Hearing on Unauthorized, Unaccountable \u2018Zombie\u2019 Programs Eating Taxpayer Dollars", "2019-10-31", "2019", "2019-10", "Republican", "Senate", "KY", "Rand Paul", "P000603", "www.paul.senate.gov", "paul", "https://www.paul.senate.gov/news/", "scraper", "FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:\n\nOctober 31, 2019\n\nContact: Press@paul.senate.gov, 202-224-4343\n\nWASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 Continuing his work to reform government and reduce waste, U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), chairman of the Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management (FSO) Subcommittee for the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC), held a hearing yesterday entitled, \u201cRise of the Zombies: The Unauthorized and Unaccountable Government You Pay For.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe are here the day before Halloween to talk about zombies. These are not the kind of zombies we see on The Walking Dead, or what we might see on our doorstep tomorrow evening. In many ways, these zombies are far scarier. These are zombie government programs that have sometimes not been reauthorized for decades,\u201d Dr. Paul said in his opening statement on Wednesday.\n\nThe Inter-American Foundation (IAF), for an example of the problem, is a past topic of Dr. Paul\u2019s Waste Reports that has used American taxpayer dollars on projects including teaching circus arts in Argentina, helping deported illegal immigrants start a business (and without being able to rule out that the money would not go to criminal deportees), and jumpstarting the Haitian film industry. Created in the 1960s, the Inter-American Foundation\u2019s most recent reauthorization came more than 30 years ago.\n\nIn FY 2019, the federal government spent over $300 billion on nearly 1,000 different programs that have not been reauthorized.\n\nAppropriators also regularly override authorizations by providing funds to programs inconsistent with the underlying authorization.\n\nThe FSO Subcommittee examined how \u201czombie\u201d programs have been set free to feast on taxpayer dollars \u2014 with Congress ignoring its responsibility to conduct proper oversight \u2014 as well as what can be done to protect taxpayer resources.\n\nU.S. Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA-5), who has sponsored the USA Act in the House of Representatives, testified on the first panel, saying, \u201cCongress isn\u2019t using its power to exercise the power of the purse to hold these programs accountable on a regular basis, and it needs to change.\u201d\n\nKevin R. Kosar, Vice President of Policy for the R Street Institute, Jonathan Bydlak, President of the Institute for Spending Reform, and James A. Thurber, Distinguished Professor of Government at American University, testified on the second panel.\n\nOne proposed solution discussed was Dr. Paul\u2019s own Legislative Performance Review Act, which he has previously introduced in multiple sessions of Congress to force Congress to regularly review federal programs for reauthorization to either improve them or otherwise consolidate or eliminate duplicative and wasteful efforts.\n\nYou can watch the FSO Subcommittee\u2019s \u201cRise of the Zombies\u201d hearing HERE.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-06-27T23:39:44Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-icymi-dr-rand-paul-holds-hearing-unauthorized-unaccountable-zombie-programs-eating-taxpayer/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.084448304027319, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}