November 2, 1971
Page 38852
Mr. MAGNUSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the language of the committee on contract authority in its report be printed. I think it makes it pretty clear.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
There being no objection, the excerpt was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
The language of subsection (b) of section 207 provides that funds authorized for fiscal years 1973, 1974, and 1975, shall be available for obligation by contract upon their allocation to the States. The importance of assured Federal financial support to the achievement of the objectives of this title and to our national purpose of cleaning up polluted waterways cannot be overstated.
The task is a massive one in terms of the work to be done and the funds to be expended.
In order to insure a properly phased program, States and local governments can go forward only when there is strong assurance that Federal funds will be available when needed. The Congress, through the Committees on Appropriations this year, fully funded authorizations for waste treatment facilities. In order to plan for construction of needed facilities and meet the deadlines of this act, communities must be able to anticipate with some certainty the level of Federal funding available. This can only be obtained through the process known as "contract authority."
Questions have been raised regarding the ability of State and local government to absorb the $14 billion which the bill would authorize over four fiscal years. Testimony before the committee, experience with the existing water pollution programs, and experience with other major Federal-aid construction programs indicate that it will be possible to build up to the levels of activity required to properly utilize the funds which title II Would authorize for waste treatment faculties construction. The time for actual construction of facilities required to treat municipal and continued municipal and industrial wastes extends over four to seven years. The commitment to pay must be made at the time the project is approved with payment to be made over the construction period.
If Congress places upon States and communities the burden of carrying out this program, it should bind itself to pay the Federal share of the projects costs. The authority for obligation will not bar the committee on appropriations from reviewing the manner in which the program is being carried forward.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I yield myself 3 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine is recognized for 3 minutes.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I am sure that I can add very little to what the distinguished Senator from Washington has said in his commonsense way about the importance of the contract authority in this matter.
I simply want to read from what the President said on this subject in his message on the environment last year.
The President said:
In the four years since the Clean Waters Restoration Act of 1966 was passed, we have failed to keep our promises to ourselves: Federal appropriations for constructing municipal treatment plants have totaled only about one-third of authorizations. Municipalities themselves have faced increasing difficulty in selling bonds to finance their share of the construction costs. Given the saturated condition of today's municipal bond markets, if a clean-up program is to work it has to provide the means by which municipalities can finance their share of the cost even as we increase Federal expenditures.
One of the tools the President recommended was this contract authority. Mr. President, I would like to pay tribute to the Senator from Louisiana for the dedicated work he has done in bringing appropriations up to authorizations in the past 2 years. It is good to have a friend like him on the committee, let alone as chairman of the committee.
What we are talking about here is not something that ought to depend upon the good will or even upon the chairman of that committee. What we are talking about is the kind of Federal commitment upon which municipalities can build their planning requirements, their engineering requirements, their financial requirements, and the kind of momentum they need in order to get their people to support the taxes, the bond issues, the building of these sewer treatment facilities; the kind of public commitment upon which we can structure these organizations with this kind of Federal commitment.
Even though, as the Senator from Washington and the Senator from Louisiana have said, the Appropriations Committee can still exercise control, it is this kind of commitment which says to the country that the Federal Government means business.
That is what we are talking about here. It is this kind of matter to which the Senator from Washington has referred.
Mr. President, I withhold the remainder of my time.
Mr. BOGGS. Mr. President, the distinguished Senator from Mississippi (Mr. STENNIS) would like to make some comments on the amendment. I am happy to yield 3 minutes to the distinguished Senator from Mississippi.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi is recognized for 3 minutes.
Mr. STENNIS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Delaware.
I want to emphasize at the beginning of my remarks that this is not a contest between committees, as I see it. My thoughts do not run in that vein.
I just raise the question of "where we are going?" Since I have been a Member of the Senate one safeguard or expenditure after another has fallen by the wayside. I refer to safeguards that tend to hold things in line and control appropriations as well as keeping various programs in shape, a great many new ones have come in.
I am not arguing against them. However, with respect to the idea of contract authority, I know by experience how easy it is to let a contract authority run away with itself if there is not some kind of checkrein to hold down the spending.
We do not pay much attention now to budget recommendations. Few are concerned about whether an item has a budget recommendation or not. We are not enough concerned about how much we are running over the budget recommendations and how much we spend beyond them. I understand that we are now spending at a rate of $35 to $40 billion a year over the budget this fiscal year.
Reference has been made here to the military department having contract authority. I do not know of any appreciable part of the military program that is carried on pursuant to what we call contract authority.
That was true to a considerable extent many years ago. The situation got very bad. It had to be abandoned and has been largely abandoned.
I am on both the Appropriations and Armed Services Committees. We sometimes spend several billion dollars, as Senators will remember, for squadrons of a particular plane. All of these sums are taken care of by annual appropriations with no contract authority and extend over several years.
My point is that it is not necessary to do it through contract authorizations. It is true we have set some precedents recently, as the Senator from Washington has mentioned. That is one of the reasons why I think we are running away in spending programs and dropping one appropriation safeguard after another.
According to the terms of this proposed bill, $12 billion is to be authorized as contract authority. The regular budget is way out of balance at the present time, however.
Mr. President, we will have a proposal in a few days to further reduce taxes. We act without enough consideration of what is going to become of the fiscal affairs of this Nation. This is not a matter of condemning the program. However, I say, let us call a halt here. Let us pass this amendment and stop and listen enough to get some understanding and some realization of where we are going and what it is going to cost and what the effect of these increases are and what they are going to mean in the long run.
Already we have had to impose price freezes. We will get down to the nittygritty of that problem and the freeze in a few months and we shall have serious trouble.
I thank the Senator for yielding to me.
Mr. BOGGS. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from Mississippi for his comments, which are based upon his insight, knowledge, and experience with this type of situation.
Mr. PASTORE. Mr. President, may we have order?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. May we have order in the Senate. The Senators will please retire to their seats and the attaches will retire to the rear of the Chamber so that we may hear the Senator from Delaware.
The Senator from Delaware may proceed.
Mr. BOGGS. Mr. President, I believe that an annual review by the Congress of this very significant, very important, and high priority program should serve to focus, each year, the attention and support of the public on this program and the progress it has achieved.
I believe this amendment would strengthen the program, rather than deter it. I urge the adoption of the amendment.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I yield myself 2 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine is recognized for 2 minutes.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I want to make one point clear in response to the Senator from Mississippi and others. We are asking the States to embark upon a program that would commit them to expend $7 billion or $8 billion. Either we mean it or we do not. Their financial problems are as strait and as difficult as ours.
The thrust of the argument of the Senator from Mississippi is that we ought to reserve our options and back off on our commitments.
What options are we giving to the States and municipalities to back off? Either we want these treatment facilities built, or we do not. If we are saying to them, "We want you to do this job," let us put up our share where it belongs, right beside theirs. One of the provisions includes an authorization for almost $2.5 billion, and to do what? To reimburse the States for money they put up to build waste treatment facilities we should build. In other words, we are borrowing from the States $2.5 billion in this bill that we did not put up. Now we are saying: You put up another $8 billion, and maybe we will put up $14 billion as our share, and maybe we will not.
If we mean what we say in this bill, let us nail it down; if not, vote against the bill.
Mr. PASTORE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. MUSKIE. I yield.
Mr. PASTORE. Is the obligation of the contract authority, the Federal Government, contingent upon the States coming up with their commitment?
Mr. MUSKIE. Yes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Do Senators yield back their time?
Mr. MUSKIE. I yield back my time.
Mr. BOGGS. I yield back my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time has been yielded back. The question is on agreeing to the amendment of the Senator from Delaware (Mr. BOGGS). On this question the yeas and nays have been ordered, and the clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
The result was announced – yeas 34, nays 58, as follows:
[ROLL CALL VOTE TALLY OMITTED]
So Mr. BOGGS' amendment was rejected.