August 1, 1974
Page 26327
PUBLIC WORKS FOR WATER AND POWER DEVELOPMENT AND ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION APPROPRIATIONS, 1975
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate returns to the consideration of H.R. 15155, the Public Works Appropriations bill.
Mr. STENNIS. Mr. President, what is the pending business?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The pending business is the motion of the Senator from Florida (Mr. CHILES) to recommit with instructions.
Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, may we have order in the Senate?
Mr. STENNIS. Mr. President, I yield myself 5 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will suspend until the Senate is in order.
The Senator may proceed.
Mr. STENNIS. Mr. President, we are going to vote in a few minutes. This is the appropriation bill for the Atomic Energy Commission, the Bureau of Reclamation, Bonneville, TVA, Appalachia, rivers and harbors, all the U.S. Army Engineers civil works projects, and other agencies. Amendments have been completed. The motion is to recommit the bill to the committee, with a 5-percent reduction.
Mr. President, we have a new system on these reductions, if any, how to make them after the committee has acted on the bill. I ask the Senator from Maine if he would permit me to ask him just a few questions.
Mr. MUSKIE. Yes.
Mr. STENNIS. I would appreciate it.
The Senator from Maine has been appointed, as we know, as chairman of our new committee on the legislative budget. I call the Senator's attention to the present situation that we have for this method of making reductions and bringing matters in line. I noted yesterday, I think it was, he voted against a motion of this kind.
Is that correct?
Mr. MUSKIE. The Senator is correct.
Mr. STENNIS. I ask the Senator what his idea is now. I know the membership would be interested in the approach, the method, and the plan that he understands that he and his committee will propose to follow and what he thinks about this particular reduction at this particular time?
Mr. MUSKIE. I shall be glad to do that, may I say, to the Senator.
Mr. President, may we have order?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will be in order.
The Senator from Maine is recognized.
Mr. MUSKIE. I shall try to do it under the time restraints.
Mr. STENNIS. I yield additional time.
Mr. MUSKIE. First of all, the Budget Committee has not been formed, organized, or staffed, nor has it adopted policy applicable to this year. But I think it might be useful, and this was the question the Senator put to me privately, to undertake to put this debate in the context of the procedure that will be given its first trial run next year.
Next year, in the spring, we shall be asked and the Budget Committee has the responsibility of recommending to the Senate a first concurrent resolution establishing an overall ceiling, and then subtargets applicable to all programs and functions, and, of course, to all committees of the Senate. That will be debated. The Senate will vote on it. That will be the target for all committees as we proceed through the appropriations process.
The appropriations bills will then move through the process as they now do, bearing in mind the targets set by the first concurrent resolution.
When that work is finished, to the extent that there are discrepancies between the targets set up in the spring and the appropriations bills, those must then be reconciled by the Senate, first by the Budget Committee then by the Senate as a whole. The philosophy of that approach is that if we are to operate within constraints, those constraints ought to be applied on an overall basis from the point of view of the overall perspective we have of the resources available and the priorities that ought to be applied.
I do not know what, if anything, the Budget Committee, when it is formed this year, feels it would like to do with respect to this year's problem. We have a problem that concerns all citizens. The use of budgetary restraint is obviously a useful tool. I think it not unlikely that the Budget Committee, even though it is not in its first year of full operation, may undertake to recommend a policy to the Senate which applies, overall, the total results achieved by the Appropriations Committee and the Senate. Then we can balance our priorities. The Senators can decide whether or not, overall, there ought to be a cut; how much it ought to be; and if it ought to be more than a general cut or a selective one, what that ought to be.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. STENNIS. Mr. President, I yield an additional 2 minutes to the Senator.
Mr. MUSKIE. There are indications already from some of the Senators who would be on that committee that they would welcome that kind of initiative by the Budget Committee. As soon as we are organized and staffed, as soon as the minority members have been selected and we are in a position to meet as a group, I would not be surprised but what this kind of initiative was taken. Indeed, I would welcome it.
In the budget reform legislation we are given a watchdog responsibility over the budget. We are not in a position today, of course, as a committee, to take a position on the amendment offered by the distinguished Senator from Florida, joined in, I think, by the distinguished gentleman from South Carolina. They are both going to be members of the Budget Committee. They feel very deeply about this. I honor them for that.
As far as I am concerned, I think my preference this year would be to take a look at what we finally achieve by the appropriations process, and then decide whether or not we ought to vote a rollback.
Let me say that I have watched the operations of the Appropriations Committee under the chairmanship of the distinguished Senator from Arkansas. I have been impressed by the commitment to fiscal budgetary prudence he has reflected in his leadership of that committee, matched, I believe, by the distinguished Senator from Mississippi. I think we do not go amiss in this transition period in the full budgetary process when relying on the judgment of Senators of this kind. We still reserve upon ourselves the option of adopting an overall policy this year, or at least recommending it to the Senate.
Mr. STENNIS. I thank the Senator very much for his constructive views.
I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from Arkansas, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee.
Mr. McC LELLAN. I thank the distinguished Senator.
I have about the same view of this situation as the distinguished Senator from Maine. Let me point to what can happen and what you are encouraging by this kind of procedure that you are undertaking to follow here today. If everybody knows his bill will get a 5-percent cut when it gets on the floor, all he has to do is to up his appropriation, and, with a 5-percent cut, it’s about at the level he wanted to begin with. That is not the way to proceed in this thing. We have established this budget control committee. I would like to see it this year, as the conclusion of all the appropriations bills, take into account the total of what we have accomplished, evaluate it, and then come to the Senate with their best recommendation. But if we are going to take this kind of a procedure – that every time a bill comes up you just whack it 5 percent no matter what is in it, how conscientious the committee has been, how much they have achieved – if you are going to apply a meat ax operation like that across the board, then there is no incentive for me as chairman of my subcommittee to try to hold it down. Just let it go. Let it come before you. You are going to take 5 percent off of it anyhow.
That same thing is true with every other committee. I am sure in all of them the chairmen do what they can, with their views and convictions, to try to hold down expenditures. But there are some appropriation bills that exceed substantially the budget. There are others that are cut below the budget.
If you proceed to apply a 5-percent meat ax across the board, you are going to cause a great deal more injustice than you will if we go along with the law that is enacted and with what it was intended to do.
I have announced heretofore that I am going to try to cooperate with that committee to help make it a success.
Mr. PASTORE. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. McCLELLAN. I yield to my distinguished friend.
Mr. PASTORE. There is another element that should be emphasized this afternoon. After all, there is no need in spending hour after hour listening to the witnesses if we are just going to have an across-the-board cut. You might as well take the budget estimate of the administration, without holding hearings, and say, "Let us cut it by 10 percent across the board."
What happens then? We are delegating away to the administration the power of Congress. It is our duty to make our priorities; our duty is to cut 15 percent where 15 percent can be cut, and to retain the estimate where it can be retained. I do not think we ought to delegate that away.
A meat cut or an ax cut across the board, in my humble way, takes away from the Congress the discretion to discriminate between priorities. I do not think we ought to abandon that, and I do not think we ought to delegate it to the agencies downtown.
Mr. STENNIS. Mr. President, I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from North Dakota. He has to go to a committee meeting.
Mr. YOUNG. Mr. President, I think this is the last kind of bill to which you would want to apply a meat ax cut.
First, this committee worked hard and diligently and listened to hundreds of witnesses. They were prudent, in fact, cut at least $400 million below requests. We are dealing with wealth creating, wealth producing projects. For example, if it had not been for the late Senator Ellender and his hard work in behalf of navigation, our transportation would be in far worse shape than it is today. There were the improvements for navigation including docks, the deepening of harbors, irrigation for parched agricultural lands of this country to produce more food; to produce more electricity with hydroelectric dams, nuclear power and flood control. Cities suffered from floods.
This whole bill is so meritorious and so different from many other bills that this would be the last one where you would want to apply a straight across-the-board cut.
Mr. STENNIS. I thank the Senator very much, Mr. President, for his remarks.
Mr. CHILES. Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the distinguished Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I had not planned to do so, but I appear as a proponent of the meat ax, the meat cutting course.
You know, you learn from experience.
We had this situation one time before, I remind the Senator from Oregon, the Senator from Mississippi, and the Senator from Maine. It was back in 1967 when Lyndon Johnson was President. After we had gone through in the Appropriations Committee and cut $5 billion, we got down to December, 5 months after the fiscal year had started and what we proposed by a vote of 74 to 0 was a delightful meat ax. That meat ax said to cut 2 percent of all civilian personnel and 10 percent of all controllables.
We put in a contingency fund of $300 million for President Johnson, and we did not touch Vietnam, but we did cut 10 per cent into the other military employees and programs. The Senator from North Dakota voted for the meat ax. We cut $5 billion by meat ax unanimously in December of 1967, and it was overwhelmingly agreed to by the House of Representatives, because that is the only way we are going to get our hands on this monster. Do not come back and give me this reply about the number of witnesses. I happen to serve on the Appropriations Committee, and I know we hear the witnesses. The distinguished Senator from North Dakota is loyal in supporting me, as is the Senator from New Hampshire (Mr. COTTON). They do attend the hearings.
But we have to listen to all our own, and then we get the letters from all the Senators, and then there is a sort of poker game of dividing up the cards.
So it is all nailed together, and what does this group use as a response – all the hours of deliberation and the witnesses. This is an answer in light of the raging inflation?
I respect all the Senators, particularly, as a conservative, my friend from Mississippi. He just went over the amount, from 1974 to 1975, by $624 million. If we approve what he requests, it will be $624 million over last year.
If Senators want to keep that train going, that is their business, but I would hope we can only get the 5-percent cut on the new spending, which will not really damage any project.
The Senator from Oregon says that he is going to take a stand for selective cuts, calling the other approach fiscal irresponsibility. Was it fiscal irresponsibility in December 1967 when my distinguished colleague and I voted for it?
I ask unanimous consent, Mr. President, to have printed in the RECORD this joint resolution, entitled, "Reductions in Obligations and Expenditures," together with a chart showing its effect on the budget.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows
[Public Law 90-218, 90th Congress, H. J. Res. 888, Dec. 18, 1967]
JOINT RESOLUTION MAKING CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS FOR THE FISCAL YEAR 1968, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the joint resolution of October 5, 1967 (Public Law 90-102) is hereby amended by striking out "October 23, 1967" and inserting in lieu thereof "December 20, 1967".
TITLE II – REDUCTIONS IN OBLIGATIONS AND EXPENDITURES
SEC. 201. In view of developments which constitute a threat to the economy with resulting inflation, the Congress hereby finds and determines that, taking into account action on appropriation bills to date, Federal obligations and expenditures in controllable programs for the fiscal year 1968 should be reduced by no less than $9 billion and $4 billion, respectively, below the President's budget requests. The limitations hereafter required are necessary for that purpose.
SEC. 202. (a) During the fiscal year 1968, no department or agency of the Executive Branch of the Government shall incur obligations in excess of the lesser of–
(1) the aggregate amount available to each such department or agency as obligational authority in the fiscal year 1968 through appropriation acts or other laws, or
(2) an amount determined by reducing the aggregate budget estimate of obligations for such department or agency in the fiscal year 1968 by–
(1) 2 percent of such estimate for and benefits, plus
(ii) 10 percent of the amount included in such estimate for objects other than personnel compensation and benefits.
(b) As used in this section, the terms "obligational authority" and "budget estimate of obligations" include authority derived from, and estimates of reservations to be made and obligations to be incurred pursuant to, appropriations and authority to enter into contracts in advance of appropriations.
(c) The references in this section to budget estimates of obligations are to such estimates as contained in the Budget Appendix for the fiscal year 1968 (House Document No. 16, 90th Congress, 1st Session), as amended during the first session of the 90th Congress.
SEC. 203. (a) This title shall not apply to obligations for (1) permanent appropriations, (2) trust funds, (3) items included under the heading "relatively uncontrollable" in the table appearing on page 14 of the Budget for the fiscal year 1968 (House Document No. 15, Part 1, 90th Congress, 1st Session), and other items required by law in the fiscal year 1968, or (4) programs, projects, or purposes, not exceeding $300,000,000 in the aggregate, determined by the President to be vital to the national interest or security, except that no program, project, or purpose shall be funded in excess of amounts approved therefor by Congress.
(b) This title shall not be so applied as to require a reduction in obligations for national defense exceeding 10 percent of the new obligational authority (excluding special Vietnam costs) requested in the Budget for the fiscal year 1968 (House Documents Nos. 15, Part 1, and 16) as amended during the first session of the 90th Congress: Provided, That the President may exempt from the operation of this title any obligations for national defense which he deems to be essential for the purposes of national defense.
SEC. 204. In the administration of any program as to which (1) the amount of obligations is limited by section 202(a) (2) of this title, and (2) the allocation, grant, apportionment, or other distribution of funds among recipients is required to be determined by application of a formula involving the amount appropriated or otherwise made available for distribution, the amount available for obligation as limited by that section or as determined by the head of the agency concerned pursuant to that section shall be substituted for the amount appropriated or otherwise made available in the application of the formula.
SEC. 205. To the maximum extent practical, reductions in obligations for personnel compensation and benefits under this title shall be accomplished by not filling vacancies. Insofar as practical, reductions in obligations for construction under this title may be made by stretching out the time schedule of starting new projects and performing on contracts so as not to require the elimination of new construction starts.
SEC. 206. The amount of any appropriation or authorization which (1) is unused because of the limitation on obligations imposed by section 202(a) (2) of this title and (2) would not be available for use after June 30, 1968, shall be used only for such purposes and in such manner and amount as may be prescribed by law in the second session of the 90th Congress.
Approved December 18, 1967.
LEGISLATIVE HISTORY
House Reports: No. 785 (Committee on Appropriations) and No. 1011 (Committee of Conference).
Senate Report No. 672 (Committee on Appropriations).
CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, volume 113, (1967) October 18, December 11: Considered and passed House. October 23-25, December 12: Considered and passed Senate.
NOTE. – The following tabulation sets forth the effect of title II of the foregoing act on controllable obligations as estimated by the Bureau of the Budget on February 8, 1968, but subject to revision as later figures become available:
[Table Omitted]
Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, the first few words of that title read:
In view of developments which constitute a threat to the economy with resulting inflation...
Not a single Senator dissented then. Senators can refer to the schedule which is attached, in which we did not hurt any particular agency of Government.
This is a complex problem. We discuss whether we ought to agree with these increases and come back later with changes. I think it is highly misleading to give budgetary credibility to this approach by calling on our distinguished budget chairman to tell us about what we are going to do next year. If this is what we are going to do, wait until next year for overruns and targets, then I agree with the sticker I have seen which says, "Impeach everybody." We cannot wait until next year. We have to do something this year. And have to do something within our budget committee too.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. HOLLINGS. Not at this time.
The distinguished Senator and I discussed this matter. We on the Budget Committee were waiting on the Republicans to appoint their members. But as these appropriation bills come down the pike now, by cutting 5 percent, we can hold up just one-half of that $600 million increase. Cut my projection in Charleston, S.C., by that percent. I have been working on it for 13 years and it is vital to our economy, but I think it can stand a 5-percent cut in the interest of a balanced budget.
We have to have, as the Senator from Oregon would well have in church, a little Lent, a little self-denial, and self-discipline.
We are talking about the number of witnesses and say that this is fiscal prudence when we jump it by $624 million. We are going willy-nilly down the road to chaos. How are we going to stop it?
I yield to the Senator from Maine.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, first, I should like to make clear that I do not recall saying earlier, in response to the Senator from Mississippi, that I expected the Budget Committee to wait until next year to exercise any of the responsibilities mandated under the budget reform bill. I recall quite clearly saying that I expected – and may I now add to what I said earlier in response to the Senator from South Carolina – that the Budget Committee would address itself, or seek to do so, to the problem this year.
With respect to the question of what is or is not meat ax, I guess one would have to define it.
I recall the resolution to which the Senator referred, and it is a very carefully worded resolution, occupying, I think, a page and a half of text which was carefully examined by those who are expert on the budget in the Senate.
Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I do not want to interrupt, but this could be on the time of the distinguished Senator from Mississippi, because we have only a few minutes.
Mr. STENNIS. I agreed to more time for the Senator than for us. I am sorry, but I am about out of time.
Mr. HOLLINGS. I am about out of time, too. I wanted to yield to the Senator for a question.
Mr. STENNIS. Mr. President, I yield 1 minute to the Senator from Maine.
Mr. MUSKIE. As I recall, it was an across-the-board cut, but it was an across-the-board cut that was carefully evaluated by all those who were in a position to understand the implications.
The Senator offered this as a subject for consideration by the Budget Committee the other day. I have already started the process of evaluating it in terms of this year's budget. I certainly do not object to the Senator's initiative this afternoon; I think it is useful. But I do not think that to compare this proposal this afternoon to the kind of carefully developed policy of 1967 is altogether on all fours.
Finally, let me say that I do not challenge any Senator's right to take any initiative he wishes at any time to cut spending. I only undertook to explain my own position with respect to this year's problem. I have a special responsibility as chairman of the Budget Committee. Second, I undertook, at the request of the Senator from Mississippi, to explain the philosophy of the budget bill for whatever use that may have as a guide to Senators responding to this problem.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, simply put, I think that we on the Appropriations Committee and on the Budget Committee owe the people the duty to look at what we spent in the last fiscal year, what has been requested for this fiscal year and then see what each one of these committees suggested we spend in this fiscal year. If we do not increase them, if we are below the budget estimates, and there is no increase, then we can hold the line. But if there is a $624 million increase in public works and we say we need these projects and all are well conceived ones, then I ask, "Where are we going to cut?"
We know that some are lying in wait to cut HEW, which the President always vetoes, and others are sitting back waiting to cut Defense. I think we ought to do it across the board. A 5-percent cut will not hurt any of these projects. It is sensible; it is sound; it is not meatax. There is a fine, studied precedent.
I think it is misleading to have the chairman of the Appropriations Committee and the chairman of the Budget Committee give fiscal credibility to going over this budget by $624 million as compared with last year.