February 5, 1973
Page 3341
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I rise in support of S. 518, a bill to provide for Senate confirmation of the Director and Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget. I commend the distinguished Senator from North Carolina for his leadership in bringing this measure to the floor.
Over the past decade, the power of the Office of Management and Budget as a policymaking agency has greatly increased. In the past 4 years, the OMB has emerged as a force, second only to the President, in determining domestic priorities within the executive branch of our Government.
It makes a mockery of the senatorial power of confirmation when the Senate has the responsibility to confirm relatively minor officials like Assistant Directors of the Office of Emergency Planning and the Office of Economic Opportunity, but cannot confirm a powerful policymaker like the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
When the Bureau of the Budget was created in 1921, it was little more than a small advisory group within the executive branch. But in the past half century innumerable statutes and Executive orders have changed its status. Who among us can believe that this 700-person agency is nothing more than a part of the President's intimate personal staff.
Today the power of the Office of Management and Budget pervades the entire executive branch of the Government. It tells Cabinet officials, confirmed by the Senate, just what money for what programs they can request from the Congress. And, when it does not like the decisions the Congress makes in appropriating funds, it simply ignores them and illegally impounds appropriated funds.
It is disconcerting that the Office of Management and Budget which wields so much power within the executive branch of Government all too often offers little more than lip service to cooperation. Last week, for example, OMB Director Roy Ash testified before a special Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Impoundment and promised his cooperation with the Congress during the appropriations process.
However, when I asked Mr. Ash if his pledge for cooperation included his support for legislation I have introduced to require each Federal agency to submit its own budgetary proposals to Congress at the same time those budgetary proposals are submitted to the Office of Management and Budget, he said it did not.
My bill, S. 676, would not interfere with the operations of the Office of Management and Budget. It would simply allow the Congress to have the same information available to it during the appropriations process which the Office of Management and Budget has before it. It would give us the same opportunity to set priorities on the basis of the same information that the OMB now has. I can only interpret Mr, Ash's failure to endorse the thrust of my legislation as another indication that he and other top policymakers in the administration are willing to mouth words of cooperation with the Congress, but are not willing to follow up their words with real cooperation.
The legislation we are considering today, S. 518, of which I am a cosponsor, is an important step toward making the Director of the powerful Office of Management and Budget more responsive to the Congress. I urge its enactment.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following editorial from this morning’s Washington Post be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD as follows:
ACKNOWLEDGING THE STATUS OF OMB
"It is simply ironic to require Senate confirmation of the appointment of a second lieutenant in the Army and deny the Senate the power and the duty to pass on the fitness of individuals to serve as Director or Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget, individuals whose powers are second only to those of the President of the United States."
The observation was made by Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina apropos of some legislation the Senate is scheduled to vote on today. The legislation, introduced by Mr Ervin and a host of cosponsors and somewhat amended late last week, would have the effect of making the two top jobs in the Office of Management and Budget subject to Senate confirmation. Its reach is also calculated to include Mr. Nixon's top recent appointees to those jobs, Roy Ash, who has been named Director of OMB, and Frederick Malek, who has been named his deputy. Both men, under the provisions of the bill would need Senate confirmation to hold office.
Especially where Mr. Ash is concerned, it seems to us important to distinguish between two related but separate issues that have been raised in connection with Senator Ervin's bill. The fitness of Roy Ash for the job is one, and the relationship to Congress of the man who holds that job – whoever he might be – is the other. And although it seems apparent that questions concerning potential conflicts of interest on Mr. Ash's part have fueled the congressional drive to make this job subject to Senate confirmation, the legislation itself does not dispose of Mr. Ash's fate one way or the other. It merely addresses the question of whether the two top officers of OMB, including those who have just been appointed for a presumably long term of office, should be required to gain the same kind of Senate approval as Cabinet officers and other government officials. We think the answer to that is yes.
The positions that are at issue, like the OMB itself, have been altered dramatically in nature over the years. Half a century ago at its inception, the Budget Bureau amounted to little more than a small advisory group within the executive branch. Today, thanks to innumerable statutes and executive orders and rearrangements that have intervened, we are talking about something quite different. We are talking about an administrative and managerial agency of some 700 persons, an agency which makes and carries out policy affecting all the other departments of government. It is, as proponents of Senator Ervin's legislation have observed, more than slightly ironic that the top officers of this all important decision-making-and-enforcing agency should retain "advisory" group immunity from Senate confirmation proceedings, while the relevant officials of other executive branch offices much more advisory in nature require confirmation. For instance, the Council of Economic Advisers, the Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of Telecommunications Policy all are subject to confirmation of key officials.
There appears to be widespread support in both bodies of Congress and among legislators of both parties for the principle the Ervin bill asserts, even though some have questioned the actual formulation of the bill itself. So the odds seem to be that it will be passed by the Senate and also by the House. Evidently too, Mr. Nixon's spokesmen have put it out that the President intends to veto the legislation if it passes on the grounds that it would inhibit the President's choice of advisers and also establish retroactive conditions on the ability of men he has put in office to serve. In our view the desirability of making Senate confirmation a condition of these most unadvisory of positions seems abundantly clear. And at a time when Congress and the administration seem destined for a pitched battle over the actions of the OMB, it would seem to us to be in the administration's interest that the top OMB directors be people of whom the Senate had formally approved. The dispute over Mr. Ash's qualifications and connections is bound to continue in some congressional setting until it is resolved. We can think of no more appropriate and ultimately reassuring setting for its resolution than Senate confirmation proceedings.