August 19, 1974
Page 28914
Several Senators addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine (Mr. MUSKIE).
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, the amendment of the Senator from Wisconsin, which has just been presented to the Senate, is evidently about to be handled in a summary way. But I think its implications are so serious that I want to take at least a few minutes to explore them for the record.
There are two processes now underway in this body, and in Congress as a whole, for dealing with the issue of budget cuts. One is the regular appropriations process which, I think, is making its own record with respect to budget cuts, as was illustrated last week in the case of the defense budget.
Second is the new budget reform process, which Congress as a whole developed this year and the President signed into law. The second process is not yet fully equipped to deal with the 1975 fiscal year budget but, nevertheless, we are pressing to give the current budget our consideration.
One of the purposes of the new budget reform process is to provide a means for the Senate and Congress as a whole, to deal more effectively with the question of priorities in Federal spending.
The second sentence in the pending amendment, however, reads as follows:
The proposal submitted pursuant to this section shall include separate ceilings on expenditures and net lending for each major department and agency of the Government.
Now, the effect of that sentence is to delegate to the President the authority to establish priorities, and we will get in response, if the language is literally followed, a figure for each major department and agency without any indication of the impact of that spending figure on activities within those departments and agencies – and the impact upon particular programs.
Now, the next sentence of the amendment reads:
Such proposal shall become law in 20 days– now 30 days – following–
Mr. PROXMIRE. It is still 20 days. We did not modify that.
Mr. MUSKIE. Still 20 days–
– following its submission to the Congress unless prior to such date the Congress by concurrent resolution disapproves of or modifies such proposal and any modifications so made shall have the full force and effect of law.
Now, we will have 20 days. Within that time, we would first have to conduct hearings on the implications for budget priorities of the numbers that the President sends us. Then – still within that 20 days – we would have to develop a consensus in each House on possible modifications of those spending priorities. And then – still within the same 20 days – we would have to take action in each House on a concurrent resolution, then resolve differences in conference, and finally come to a formal agreement of both Houses, so that our spending priorities, and not the President's might become law.
Mr. President, in the little more than 3 weeks since I have been chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, we have begun the laborious process of getting organized, and begun conducting hearings to understand the implications of questions of this kind. And in those brief 3 weeks I have been chairman, it has become clear to this Senator that the Federal budget is even more complex than it is generally understood to be; that the options available to us within that $304 billion or $305 billion total outlay level are not all that great; and that the total number of dollars available to us for reductions of actual outlays or spending this year are much less substantial than it would seem merely by citing the size of the total.
I have no objection to the objective of my friend from Wisconsin of reducing spending – actual spending – now. The Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. PROXMIRE ) has made the point in his remarks that if we are going to cut $10 billion in spending we would have to cut much more than that in appropriations. So the actual cuts are going to be difficult to make.
Any Senator – and especially the Senator from Wisconsin, who has devoted so much time to this question – is, of course, within his rights in offering proposals to cut Government spending. In addition, of course, the newly created Senate Budget Committee now has a mandate to try to bring a discipline to Government spending. I do not know how many processes we must establish before we are convinced that we are moving in the right direction.
Before I lend my support to this amendment, with its delegation of a blank check to the President, I would want to know much more about the implications.
In a year when Congress has undertaken to swing the balance of power with respect to the public purse back to Congress, this proposal seems to go in the reverse direction. I, for one, am willing, as a Member of the Senate, to take responsibility to do the work, to decide where we can cut responsibly, and what our priorities should be. I am not yet ready to delegate that power back to the President after we have made such an effort this year to get a handle on it for ourselves.
Mr. PROXMIRE. Mr. President, in response to the Senator from Maine, let me first say that I agree with almost everything he has had to say. I think he has done an excellent job in starting the Budget Committee, and moving as he has.
I disagree in a few very important respects, however. One is the fact that the timing in stopping of inflation is of the greatest importance. If we proceed to move ahead in a way which would enable us to hold detailed hearings in all of these areas, by the time we act we may not be suffering from inflation but from something else, for inflation may have gotten way out of control.
Mr. President, this is not a blank check. This is not a blank check to the President of the United States. This provides, as the Senator read in the third sentence, that "unless prior to such date the Congress by concurrent resolution disapproves of or modifies such proposal and any modifications so made shall have the full force and effect of law." So the Congress will in fact under this amendment have the last word.
Now I think we have to do this in a cooperative way. We cannot expect – I do not think we should unilaterally make – the reduction, and I do not think the President should make it either. It mandates the President to tell us what his plan is, where he would make the reductions. It then gives us ample time to act, and we have the protections here so that it cannot be filibustered. We will have to act within those 20 days. We have the authority to do so. We will then be in a position to say whether we approve of the priorities or disapprove, and designate finally the priorities ourselves.
Mr. President, I did say that an appropriation reduction now does not mean we are going to get a corresponding reduction in outlays on spending in the coming year. I am very happy the Senator from Maine made this point. When we talk about outlays we may not have to make as big an appropriation cut in order to get a corresponding outlay reduction; similarly the President can on our instruction reduce outlays and postpone those expenditures of the Federal Government that are most inflationary, to a much greater extent than we can when we reduce appropriations.
Without this amendment, I am confident the President will not balance the budget this year. With this amendment he may very well do so, and we in Congress will determine just where the budget cuts are made.
We should postpone the inflationary spending until later in the area of steel, oil, and with respect to other products where prices are going up so high. It is this kind of recommendation the President can make, and the Congress can act upon because we are not talking about appropriations, we are talking about outlays, expenditures.
Here is where this kind of proposal I have made here, it seems to me, can be most useful.
Finally, I would like to say that the Senator from Maine is right in saying it would be far better if we could take time, 6 months or 9 months, and have a very careful analysis of this, but the fact is that this inflation is now, and it is getting worse every day, every week.
Just last month we had an enormous increase in wholesale prices, a very big increase. We cannot postpone this.
Mr. President, I do hope the Senate can see its way clear to accept this amendment tonight and move ahead.
It is too bad we could not have gotten action on the similar ceiling amendment we passed last June. Now in August, it is much more harder. If we postpone this again, it seems to me it is going to be impossible. I think the time is rapidly running out on us.
I yield to the Senator from Maine.
Mr. MUSKIE. Everyone in this body shares the concern about inflation expressed by my distinguished colleague from Wisconsin (Senator PROXMIRE). If we could, by wiping out $10 billion in Federal. spending, stop inflation tomorrow morning, I do not think there would be a dissenting vote to such a proposal.
Mr. PROXMIRE. May I say on that point, I think the Senator is absolutely right. This is only one step. We need jawboning, we need antitrust, we need monetary policy, we need many other things to be effective. This is only one step. I think it is a very important step, but it is only one step, the Senator is correct.
Mr. MUSKIE. Of course, fundamental to the Senator's proposal is the proposition that we ought to put together a new budget. The Senator is asking, in his amendment, that the President to do it, and evidently the Senator does not want him to take too much time for the purpose.
We explored the question of new budget submissions by this administration in hearings the Budget Committee held last week. The Director of the Office of Management. and Budget, Mr. Ash, appeared at those hearings, and we asked him for specifics:
Where would he cut $10 billion, or where would he cut $5 billion?
He was not prepared to give us those answers. He said, "We will work out those numbers at the summit conference the President requested with Members of Congress."
I submit that we are not in a position to obtain the kind of information that the Senator's amendment calls for in its first two sentences. I have asked Mr. Ash to give us these kinds of numbers. If they are sent to Congress, the Budget Committee is in a position to deal with them, and the Senator from Arkansas has indicated his receptiveness to further agreements on budget cuts.
Meanwhile, the hard task of budget cutting, item by item, is being performed by the Committee on Appropriations under the able chairmanship of the Senator from Arkansas. They have spent all year on it. They have already given the time to the task, and have produced results in the form of budget cuts.
Nevertheless, we can certainly use the information called for in the first part of the Senator's amendment. The more information we can get, even this late in the session, the better judgments we can make.
But what I am concerned about is the last two sentences, or the last three, because what they do is delegate to the President the authority to establish, almost unilaterally, the entire set of priorities for the Federal budget. When we get his new order of priorities – and we do not know whether they would be based on a budget of 295, 297, 300, or 304 billions of dollars – their impact will be concealed under the number for each department and agency. And we will have just 20 days to evaluate and modify them before his proposal would become law.
I would suggest to the Senator that 20 days is so inconsequential that perhaps he ought to change that sentence to read as follows:
Such proposal shall become law following its submission to Congress.
I think, as a practical matter, that the 20 days is so inadequate as to have that effect. The kind of thoughtful job of budget analysis which I am sure the Senator has in mind just cannot be accomplished in that time.
So if we think that such arbitrary action on the part of the President is necessary, given our economic difficulties, then let us wipe out the cosmetics, let us wipe out the 20 days, let us wipe out any pretense that Congress can look at this proposal in a thoughtful, meaningful way – and simply say that our circumstances are so dire that we are forced to hand this blanket authority to the President.
Mr. PROXMIRE. May I say to the distinguished Senator from Maine that this amendment does provide that Congress shall have the authority to decide, Congress shall have the authority.
The Senator from Maine says 20 days is inconsequential–
Mr. MUSKIE. I said inadequate.
Mr. PROXMIRE. Well, whether inadequate or inconsequential, we might as well proceed about giving Congress the priorities because it is so short a time.
In fact, I am a member, chairman of the subcommittee that has a $20 billion budget. I think we can decide within 10 days, but it will not be comfortable. All I say, we may not like it, but if we have to do it, we have to do it. We are in that kind of crisis now.
Mr. MUSKIE. My concern is that we would create the impression with the American people that Congress is looking at the details of the budget in a meaningful way. It would be a deception to suggest to the people that such a job could be performed thoughtfully in a few days. Given the time out of those days that it would take to get legislative action on the floor, how many days have we left over for a meaningful analysis of the President's proposal?
I say we ought not deceive the people on that point.
Mr. PROXMIRE. May I say to the Senator from Maine that the President had that complete authority, now without our doing anything at all over outlays. He always has had. If he wished, he could spend $320 million. He determines the pace of spending. Of spending, not appropriation, but spending.
He has outstanding obligational authority on which he can act. This amendment would limit the President's authority and require him to come in with a limit.
It is true, 20 days is not a year, not 6 months, but it would give us an opportunity to say yes or no and some knowledge of this whole operation.
It would give us some chance on the basis of the hearings we have been holding, our understandings we have been building up, to determine where those priorities are.
Suppose he should come in without any reduction in. the outlay area for defense?
Suppose he should do that? Under my amendment we would be in a position to overrule that and decide that there must be a reduction in outlays, so far as defense expenditures are concerned. We can take the same position with respect to HUD or HEW. It is up to us to make the final decision.
Mr. SPARKMAN. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. PROXMIRE. I am happy to yield to my friend from Alabama.
Mr. SPARKMAN. I may say that this amendment is most likely subject to the Budget Control Act. I do not believe that it should hold up the passage of this bill. After all, both Senator
TOWER and I have agreed to take it to conference, but we have warned about the question of germaneness.
Mr. MAGNUSON. Has the Senator agreed to take this to conference?
Mr. SPARKMAN. What did the Senator say?
Mr. MAGNUSON. Has the Senator agreed to take this to conference?
Mr. SPARKMAN. We agreed that we would take it to conference, but warned the Senator at the time that all in the world the House conferees would have to do would be to object to it on the ground of germaneness and it is out. We did not want to take it to conference under any misunderstanding.