Ah, good point. If you believe a particular regulation is useful and necessary now, why wouldn't you also believe it would be so in the future? You may not be in power to conditionally renew it. And from a pragmatic political perspective, sunsetting smells like compromise; the political base and interest groups generally frown on compromise. All of which may explain why sunsetting isn't as common as one would think, even if most legislators share the sentiments expressed in this thread (and I would presume that they do).
