February 7, 1973
Page 3801
BUDGET FOR THE AGED
Mr. MUSKIE,. Mr. President, I again call the attention of Senators to a newspaper commentary analyzing the administration's budget proposals. Clayton Fritchey, in his column published yesterday in the Washington Post, observes that the President has once again failed to keep his pledge to aid the elderly. To quote from the column:
[The President last October] pledged that "relief for these Americans is going to be a first order of business in our next federal budget." Nevertheless, there isn't a whisper of this promise in the new budget. On the contrary, the administration intends to make the elderly pay an extra $1 billion a year for Medicare benefits they are now getting free. Fortunately for the aged, this has to have the approval of Congress.
I expect that Congress will demonstrate not only its fiscal responsibility, but also its social responsibility, by rejecting such distorted priorities in next year's budget.
I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Fritchey's column be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
THE BUDGET: A QUESTION OF PRIORITIES
(By Clayton Fritchey)
What is left out of federal budgets is often as significant as what is put in, and the Nixon budget for fiscal 1974 is no exception.
On Oct. 7 last year, just a few weeks before the presidential election, Mr. Nixon called the high property taxes paid by elderly retired Americans a "national disgrace." He pledged that "relief for these Americans is going to be a first order of business in our next federal budget." Nevertheless, there isn't a whisper of this promise in the new budget. On the contrary, the administration intends to make the elderly pay an extra $1 billion a year for Medicare benefits they are now getting free. Fortunately for the aged, this has to have the approval of Congress.
In his budget message last year, the President said, "Welfare reform, with training and work incentives, with a new fairness toward the working poor and a minimum income for every dependent family, is a good idea whose time has come ... it is ripe for action now." Further delay in enactment. he said, would be both "unwise" and "cruel." Yet, there is no mention of it in the next budget. Instead Mr. Nixon in a special broadcast preceding the formal presentation of the 1974 budget, favored the public with a sermon against government spending, no doubt hoping this would divert attention from the record-breaking expenditures he is planning for next year and the year after.
Despite Mr. Nixon's warning about the spending habits of Congress, it is the President – not Congress – who is now asking for a budget of $269 billion, or $23 billion more than he requested last year. That's a leap of almost 10 per cent. In four years under Mr. Nixon, the budget has climbed from $195 billion to $239 billion – a record jump of $74 billion, or almost 40 per cent.
And it might have been worse except for Congress. At the end of the 92nd Congress last fall, Sen. Mike Mansfield, the majority leader, reported that Congress had cut Mr. Nixon's new appropriation budgets by $22.2 billion.
Under Mr. Nixon's stupendous spending, the national debt has climbed to almost half-a-trillion dollars, an increase of around $100 billion in four years. His deficits have exceeded anything in U.S. history except at the height of World War II. Yet in his radio broadcast on his latest budget, the President said with a straight face, "It is time to get big government off your back and out of your pocket."
Actually, there is little or no disagreement between the President and Congress over the $269 billion total for the new budget. The conflict centers on priorities. Although the United States is now out of the Vietnamese war, Mr. Nixon still wants to spend more on defense, while cutting or eliminating domestic programs for, among other things, health, education, poverty, pollution, day care and Medicare. Congress wants to do the reverse.
The President says his "search for waste" has led him "into every nook and cranny of the bureaucracy." But it hasn't led him to the Pentagon, where the documented waste runs into the billions.
The President warns Congress that if it gives social programs more than he has allowed it will have to take the responsibility for a tax increase. Not necessarily. Congress can offset these increases with military reductions. Also, it can provide more revenue by eliminating tax loopholes for vested interests.
After being subjected to four Nixon budgets, Congress has become a little skeptical of the President's arithmetic. It still remembers his first budget message, in which he said, "I have pledged to the American people that I would submit a balanced budget. The budget I send to you today fulfills that pledge." Instead, it ended with a deficit of $23.4 billion, and that was just a start.