September 5, 1975
Page 27768
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, before the August recess, Senator BELLMON, the ranking Republican member of the Budget Committee, and I sent each of our colleagues a letter concerning the budgetary impact of two pending conference reports. We announced our intention to oppose both reports because they would have added substantially to the Federal deficit.
One of those bills, the military procurement authorization bill, was disapproved by the Senate on August 1. This was a most significant vote, Mr. President, because it signaled anew the commitment of the Senate to live within its budget and to make our new budget process work. It was a bipartisan vote which made clear that the Congress has its own budget priorities and will work to abide by them, making tough decisions when they are necessary.
Today we have the opportunity to show the breadth of our commitment to fiscal discipline. On August 1 we voted to keep military spending close to the congressional budget. Today we can apply that same sense of constraint to spending on domestic programs by voting to recommit the child nutrition bill to conference.
The programs included in the bill, such as free school lunches for needy children, are valuable contributions to the well-being of American families. These are programs that I and many of my colleagues have long supported and will continue to support.
So in voting today to recommit the school lunch bill to conference, we are not rejecting the child nutrition program. We are supporting it and others like it. We are insisting that the new programs which the conference added to the Senate version of the bill be reduced or eliminated to keep the cost of the whole bill more consistent with the congressional budget. We are insisting on holding the line on new spending programs so that we can adequately fund existing important domestic priorities, including the school lunch program.
What we are doing is to insist that the fiscal discipline which led to the disapproval of the military procurement bill be applied equally to other programs, so that each of our essential national priorities, including national defense and child nutrition, can be funded at a level which is consistent with sound national fiscal policy. This bill, as it passed the Senate, substantially reduced the cost of the bill the House sent over. Even so, the Senate version exceeded the budget resolution, and we defeated a floor amendment which would have raised the cost by another $200 million. But the conference version before us today added $130 million to the cost of the bill the Senate passed.
I do not propose to instruct the conferees as to where the specific reductions should be made in this legislation to make it more consistent with the Senate-passed bill. We believe the least that should be accomplished in a new conference is to reduce the cost for the balance of this fiscal year to a level consistent with that originally passed by the Senate. However, two provisions of the conference version account for the increase in the cost of this bill compared to the Senate- passed bill. One is a 3-cent subsidy for school lunches directed exclusively to children from middle class and affluent families. The second is a provision similar to one rejected
overwhelmingly by the Senate when it defeated an amendment to the same effect to greatly increase eligibility for reduced price school lunches. The 3-cent provision has been criticized, both in Congress and by groups interested in the success of the child nutrition program, as misdirected and costly.
The Senate is aware from our recent debate on the military procurement conference report that the targets contained in the first congressional budget resolution which this bill violates are not legally binding as ceilings on such legislation. But the position the Senate took then, and I believe Congress must take now, is the simple recognition that the spending and deficit figures approved by Congress 3 months ago in the budget resolution are based on the spending priority targets which the statement of managers on the budget resolution clearly spelled out. These targets, in turn, were based on assumptions in each House as to the programs and the program levels which could be accommodated within those targets. There is no way to stay within the overall spending target Congress adopted in the congressional budget resolution without adhering to these individual priority spending targets.
I have received a copy of a letter from two members of the House Budget Committee, who also are conferees on the child nutrition legislation, addressed to Senator TALMADGE as chairman of the Agriculture Committee. In that letter, those two members assert that we should ignore the spending targets contained in the first budget resolution in this case because the budget resolution does not contain any explicit target for the school lunch bill. What the argument overlooks, however, is that the building block for the income security category included in the budget resolution will almost certainly be exceeded by congressional spending decisions this year, and that the addition made to the Senate version of the school lunch bill is further in excess of the likely overrun in the congressional budget.
The income security function of the budget, which includes child nutrition programs, has a ceiling on 1976 outlays of $125.3 billion. The latest CBO scorekeeping report shows that we are running in excess of that level by $600 million at the present time. Any savings we can manage in a return to conference on H.R. 4222 will help to pare down this potential overrun of $600 million. Mr. President, I request that the record show the table on page 45 of the Senate storekeeping report of September 2, 1975, prepared by the CBO.
I also wish to note that, in a scorekeeping report prepared by the House budget committee and circulated to all Members of the House on August 29, that committee estimates that this bill exceeds the amount assumed in the budget resolution by $330 million in budget authority and $317 million in outlays.
Members may correctly say that Congress is free to exceed a particular spending target in the congressional budget. But Members should be frank to say that, in the present state of affairs, such a vote is really a vote to increase the deficit, since there is no reasonable expectation
that cuts are going to be made in other functions of the budget this year. Members who advocate spending which is in excess of the individual budget targets in the statement of managers of the resolution must assume responsibility for exceeding the $68.8 billion deficit we agreed upon in that resolution. The functional targets are the guideposts that keep us on the road toward fiscal responsibility.
Let us also be absolutely clear that the Child Nutrition Act is a spending bill. It result in the direct expenditure of Federal money. It will be virtually impossible to control this cost once the bill is enacted.
Congress can change its mind about budget targets after they are adopted. I have not recently heard anyone suggest that we should spend more than the $367 billion targeted in our congressional budget as the total Federal spending. And I have not recently heard anyone advocate that we should exceed the $68.8 billion deficit ceiling it contains. So let us avoid exceeding any budget target unless we simultaneously decide where Congress will make appropriate reductions in other spending targets.
Mr. President, before we vote on a recommittal motion, I thank the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, Senator BELLMON, for his efforts in keeping both the child nutrition and the military procurement bills within our budget targets. I also thank my colleagues on the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, especially Senators TALMADGE and McGOVERN, and Senator DOLE, who is also on the Budget Committee, for their cooperation in seeking a return to conference. On behalf of the Budget Committee, I express our great appreciation to his committee for his help in our efforts to stay within the budget ceiling, and for the creative, constructive work to accommodate the legislative needs of our society and the demands of fiscal responsibility.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that table 1, fiscal year 1976 budget estimates for child nutrition programs, and table 2, increased fiscal year 1976 cost of child nutrition legislation over current services by program component, be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the tables were ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
[Tables omitted]
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I think that from the discussion that has taken place already, the issue must be very clear.
This conference report was before the Senate before the recess and at the same time as the military procurement conference report.
Senator MCGOVERN, in his remarks, has described that situation, and I express my appreciation for the clarity of the presentation of the issue.
What we are involved with here is a reordering of priorities, at the same time that we undertake to impose budgetary restraint.
I think the Senator's position, and that of the distinguished Senator from Georgia, the floor manager of the bill (Mr. TALMADGE), is on all fours with what appears to be the emergent sentiment in the Senate.
The tables, which I have asked to be included in the RECORD, Mr. President, would show the comparison between the President's February budget, the first concurrent budget resolution of Congress, and H.R. 4222.
I wish to make one point about this table and draw the Senate's attention to it.
The first concurrent resolution, which was adopted by Congress in May, provided budget authority of $2,441,000,000 for this program, reflecting outlays of $2,378,000,000. But in May, following the adoption of that resolution, we had a new estimate of the cost of current services under this program made by the Department of Agriculture, showing outlays of $2,464,000,000.
So, current services as of the May figure were higher than the budget resolution number of May.
This matter of Presidential reestimates of the cost of uncontrollable programs, especially in the income security field, are up to now an invisible part of our budgetary problem.
As the latest scorekeeping report of the Senate will show, these reestimates now total for all programs $2,900,000,000.Unless the estimates are offset in some fashion by cuts in the first concurrent resolution spending level, we already see that the deficit may be higher than that projected in the first congressional resolution.
That ought to be on the mind of every Senator as we approve appropriation bills.
The distinguished Senator from Georgia has appropriately pointed out that H.R. 4222 represents $276 million of additional program costs above current services
With respect to the budget resolution, H.R. 4222 reflects an increase of $362 million in outlays over the concurrent budget resolution because of the reestimating problem, which is going to plague this program and others.
I express my personal appreciation to Senator TALMADGE, Senator McGOVERN, Senator BELLMON, and Senator DOLE for the hard work that they put in on this conference report and the efforts they have made to reconcile the conference report with our budgetary objectives in the Senate.