November 13, 1975
Page 36510
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I did not expect to get the floor so quickly. I am delighted to have the opportunity to give this report on behalf of the Committee on the Budget as it relates to the pending legislation.
The defense appropriations bill, as reported by the Committee on Appropriations, fits into the National Defense function ceilings which were adopted by the Committee on the Budget in the second concurrent resolution. On the whole, I believe this measure more than adequately funds the Department of Defense for fiscal year 1976 and the transition quarter.
I say for the benefit of the Senate that the second concurrent resolution is scheduled to come to the floor next week, and I hope we can dispose of it before the recess. So, in a sense, we can in the course of this debate cover the defense function as it will be presented to the Senate then.
In my view, the amount of this large spending bill certainly could have been smaller, although it becomes increasingly difficult to find prudent cuts as the fiscal year progresses. That point was discussed at some length in the mark-up deliberations conducted by the Committee on the Budget last week.
The House of Representatives passed the Defense Appropriation Bill at a lower level. Representative GEORGE H. MAHON, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, pointed out at that time that the committee's reductions were made with the objective of eliminating unnecessary spending without impairing essential defense programs — he said —
I believe that most Americans would agree that $90.2 billion for the Defense Department is, if managed and spent wisely, adequate at a time when no United States military forces are engaged in combat and the nation is faced with a huge deficit and an increase in the national debt of $80 billion this year.
I fully share Chairman MAHON's viewpoint.
The Senate Committee on Appropriations chose to go beyond the House levels, and restored $564 million in budget authority and $548 million in outlays to the defense appropriation bill.
I regret these increases, particularly since some of the items put back into the bill, such as the stock funds, are fast spending, and make this year's deficit even higher than it already is.
Our colleagues will want to know how this bill fits into the Budget Committee's calculations. Last week, during the Budget Committee's markup of the Second Concurrent Resolution, the recent action of the Senate Appropriations Committee was a major factor in our consideration of the national defense function. The increases in the defense appropriation bill were taken into account in arriving at the Budget Committee's revised national defense ceilings, and the recommended target for defense efforts accommodates the bill before us today. I wish to point out, however, that the House has adopted a defense target which, excluding the Middle East package, is considerably lower than ours. There is every prospect that when the final budget ceilings are adopted, the allowance for defense will be somewhat less than the Senate Budget Committee has recommended. There is then certainly no room for upward amendment of the bill before us, and every reason to make every prudent saving during this debate and in the House- Senate conference on the defense appropriation bill.
For several reasons, the ceilings in the national defense function were raised in the Second Concurrent Resolution, as reported, to $101.5 billion in budget authority and $92.1 billion in outlays. First, the Budget Committee acted to accommodate congressional action on spending legislation as well as congressional inaction to date on naval petroleum reserve production legislation. In the case of potential savings resulting from strategic stockpile sales which could have provided considerable off-setting receipts this fiscal year and which the administration recommended. The administration has chosen not to submit draft legislation.
Second, the Office of Management and Budget failed to anticipate the upward adjustments in outlays from prior-year budget authority amounting to about $500 million. Another $184 million from prior years budget authority for Indochina will be spent during this fiscal year. The Committee on the Budget had assumed there would be no spending for Indochina, and included this amount in our Second Concurrent Resolution. There was considerable discussion of this in the Budget Committee especially by the distinguished Senator from Georgia (Mr. NUNN) who is also a member of the Committee on Armed Services.
The President's request for the security assistance bill submitted just last week also required an upward adjustment of the ceiling. As OMB director James Lynn wrote 2 days ago:
I recognize the great reluctance we all feel at adding in any way to the already substantial deficits both this year and the next ... the costs associated with the administration's Middle East proposals will lift those ceilings above what they would otherwise be. Fully recognizing that fact, the administration, nevertheless, urges the action recommended above.
Which action is to provide for the foreign assistance spending proposals in the Second Concurrent Resolution. The Budget Committee has done this with the clear understanding that if Congress subsequently authorizes and appropriates less than the amounts requested by President Ford, the remainder should be deducted from the overall budget totals in the Second Concurrent Resolution and from the totals in the National Defense function, and should not be used for any other purpose.
Because of the Nation's pressing economic problems, it is vital that Congress control and limit expenditures wherever possible in the budget. It is my strong recommendation to the Senate to make every effort to reduce spending programs, whether related to the military or to other programs so that our ceilings are not breached and the deficit is held down.
Finally, I add this personal note: Several weeks ago Chairman McCLELLAN stood on this floor wrestling with the complexities of the new budget process. I think that exercise had us both a little frustrated. Since that time there has been increasingly close cooperation between the members, and staffs of our two committees. And I think I can report from my part, at least, a desire to make the process work.
I think that that cooperation is paying off.
I express my personal appreciation to Senator McCLELLAN and his staff for that cooperation which greatly expedited our work in the Committee on the Budget as we dealt with this function in the second concurrent resolution and which led us to come to the Chamber with numbers that accommodate each other.
Mr. McCLELLAN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. MUSKIE. Yes, I do yield.
Mr. McCLELLAN. Mr. President, I am glad the Senator recognizes that the Senator from Arkansas has never opposed the objectives of the budget processes which the Congress has enacted.
My concern was in anticipation of some of the problems that are developing now. Maybe they can ultimately be worked out — I certainly hope so. The Appropriations Committee has tried to work in good faith, under the original first concurrent resolution. Under those limitations, and with respect to budget authority, we were able to hold down budget authority and be under target. But when it comes to expenditures, it is far more difficult to reduce the outlays to within that target limitation without doing violent serious injury, in our judgment, to the military establishment.
The Senator pointed out that he receives information late from the President. It causes him to have to make readjustments. If we had the target proposed by the Budget Committee in the second resolution that the Senator's committee reported last night, it would have made our work much easier.
We make every effort to try to cooperate. I am concerned, and I will continue to be, about trying to get some control of expenditures. Until now, the Defense Department has borne the brunt of reductions in public expenditures. I do not make that statement on my own. I asked our new Congressional Budget Office to give me the figures on this year's appropriation. These are the figures that were reported, and I put the statement in the RECORD earlier: Defense cuts thisyear are more than $7 billion. All non-defense functions of Government have an increase up to now over the President's budget of $2.437 billion.
So I want to make it distinctly clear that it is not defense spending that is pushing up the deficit.
Mr. MUSKIE. If the Senator will yield,another point has to be made. With respect to the President’s budget, allowances were made for inflation in the defense budget that he did not make in any other functions of the budget. That allowance for inflation amounted to something like $8 billion.
If Congress had undertaken to make some allowance for inflation in other functions, it would have had the effect of demonstrating a reduction in the current services provided by the Government. We may well want, as time goes on, to consider even the current services base of the budget.
In that connection, I remind the Senator that the Office of Management and Budget has just submitted to Congress its first current services budget analysis which we received this week. I have not yet had an opportunity to read it and to analyze it. But the base of the budget is something we really have not been able to probe deeply into this year. We have tried to address ourselves to the President's changes in the budget on current services basis. For that reason, we have not gotten into more fundamental questions that we will have to get into if we are going to get a handle on expenditures.
Mr. McCLELLAN. I thank the Senator. He is correct. If we are going to move toward balancing the budget, we will have to do something about the spending of some of the other agencies, not the military alone.
I mentioned the figures earlier about this year's bill, and I want to point this out to the Senator.
According to the figures prepared, not by my staff of the Committee on Appropriations, but by the Congressional Budget Office, National defense spending for 1966 to 1976 will rise by 65 percent. Education, manpower,and social services rise by 380 percent. Health programs rise by 1,187 percent. Income security rises by 343 percent.
I can go on and on. These are the increases in other functions and agencies of Government during the past 10 years. However, the military has increased by 65 percent. Percentagewise, we are not making significant reductions in the other agencies and functions.
Mr. MUSKIE. Was the first year 1966?
Mr. McCLELLAN. Yes.
Mr. MUSKIE. Let me make this point, with respect to that comparison.
In the mid-1960's, many of these social programs, which were addressed to needs which had been neglected at that point for a long time, were just beginning the process of being funded by Congress. However, in the mid-sixties, defense spending, under the impetus of the Vietnam war, had reached a peak. The Senator must consider what his starting point represents. If the Senator represents our present expense for expenditures with expenditures at the peak of the Vietnam war and then against that sets a comparison between social programs—
Mr. McCLELLAN. My first year of comparison is 1966.
Mr. MUSKIE. We were just plunging in. I was over there in 1965, and we already had built up our Armed Forces to 200,000 troops, and by 1966 that had climbed to more than 400,000. It was still not the peak, I agree. I correct that. But it was at a time when spending for the war was climbing fast, whereas, social funding was dropping at that time.
Mr. McCLELLAN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield at that point?
Mr. MUSKIE. I yield.
Mr. McCLELLAN. The Senator is speaking about the Vietnam war. The cost of national defense in 1966 was $55.856 billion in outlays.
Mr. MUSKIE. I understand, but the Senator is talking about $55 billion and we are talking about $100 billion today, and the Defense Department itself rejects that comparison.
Mr. McCLELLAN. We have had inflation.
Mr. MUSKIE. So that in terms of today's dollars, if the Defense Department wants the advantage of this argument on that point, that $55 billion is probably higher than whatever the number is in the defense function today.
Mr. McCLELLAN. That was supporting about a million more personnel in the Armed Forces at that time.
Mr. MUSKIE. I understand, but that was before the Volunteer Army, which I opposed. I have opposed the Volunteer Army consistently. That was before the Volunteer Army and the enormous manpower costs that have had the result of raising defense expenditures and at the same time forcing a reduction in manpower. Many elements have to be taken into account. That is not to say that we should not be digging into the base.
Let me make another point with respect to last year and this year, which I think is a more interesting comparison. The following numbers are a pretty accurate reflection of what has taken place.
In terms of the present numbers, budget authority for defense in 1975 was $92.9 billion, now it is about $101.5 billion in defense. In the international affairs function, until the second concurrent resolution, the 1975 number was $4.7 billion and early this year was set at $4.9 billion in budget authority in the first concurrent resolution. In terms of education, manpower, and social services, which is the big social service function, the 1975 number was $15.9 billion and the first concurrent resolution was $19 billion. In health, the change was from $32 to $33,1 billion. In veterans' legislation, it was $17.1 billion as against $18 billion in budget authority.
I do not think we should be making budgetary decisions on the basis of comparisons of that kind. We should be making decisions in terms of our national needs.
Mr. McCLELLAN. Mr. President will the Senator yield at that point?
Mr. MUSKIE. I yield.
Mr. McCLELLAN. We hear over and over that military spending is running up the deficit.
Mr. MUSKIE. I am not making the argument.
Mr. McCLELLAN. It is not the military. It is other functions that are running up the deficits in this country. Military is contributing its 65 percent increase, but that must be compared to other increases of hundreds to over a thousand percent increase.
The point I am making is that I want to cut. In a $97 billion defense budget or a $365 billion Federal budget, we will never be able to cut all the places where the cuts should be made. It is humanly impossible. There is waste in the military; there is extravagance in it. There probably are other items in this bill that should be cut, if we knew exactly where. But, overall, our military cannot bear the brunt of reductions necessary to move substantially toward a balanced budget.
If we are ever going to have a balanced budget, we either have to get a whole lot more revenue, or we have to make cuts somewhere other than in the military.
Mr. MUSKIE. I agree with the Senator on several points. First of all, I do not use that rhetoric, that we can save enough on defense, or on finance programs, or any other program, to balance the budget. I do not believe that. We have to look at each function in terms of the relevance to the national need and the effectiveness of the administrative agencies in spending the taxpayers' money wisely. But I can understand the emphasis on defense spending that has taken place.
In the prosecution of an unpopular war, military spending escalated enormously in the 1960's, a war and its accompanying costs which most people now believe was a tragic mistake. Public reaction against an unpopular war has put military spending right in the spotlight of public attention. That is why there has been all this emphasis and the rhetoric on military spending and less on some of the others.
Let me say to the Senator, getting away from military spending, there is one area in the budget where I think we really have to focus attention. That is in the area of Federal grant-in-aid programs, which now number something around 1,000, and consume something like $55 billion of taxpayers' money. Nobody is effectively monitoring these programs today — nobody, from OMB, through the CBO, through the congressional oversight committees.
Senator BELLMON and I have had one meeting already with Mr. Staats and Mr. Lynn to explore the possibilities of getting a handle on these. We do not know in every case, or in most cases, whether or not a program enacted by Congress is serving the purpose for which it was enacted. We do not know whether, if it is, that purpose is sufficiently important to be funded today. We really have not done a program-effectiveness analysis of these programs, nor are we in a position to do so at the present time. I think that is a very high-priority consideration for the Committee on the Budget and even more so for the Committee on Appropriations and for the authorizing committees which have direct oversight responsibility. So I am going to address myself to that as well, may I say to the Senator from Arkansas.
Mr. McCLELLAN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield further?
Mr. MUSKIE. Yes.
Mr. McCLELLAN. We are talking about the military, their increases in cost. I placed in the RECORD this morning, during my remarks, several comparisons of items that have run up the cost of Government. The Senator referred to the fact that he opposed a Volunteer Army. Of course, we had to increase the pay greatly in order to make it attractive for the volunteers. I think it is interesting to note that in the past 10 years, military pay has risen by 114 percent. Today, we pay a recruit $4,334 a year. Those things are what, primarily — together with inflation — have increased the cost of the military. It is unfortunate, but it is simply a fact of life. I thought I would mention that.
I was just thinking of something else. The Senator talked about grant-in-aid programs. We have that as well as other programs that we have little or no control over. The Senator has little or no control over them, and the Committee on the Budget, and the Committee on Appropriations have little or no control over them. Take revenue sharing — around $6 billion a year. We try to balance the budget, and under the law, I tried to make it subject to review of the Committee on Appropriations every year.We were unsuccessful in that effort. We are basically stuck with $6 billion a year, no matter how critical the situation is here, for revenue sharing alone, unless basic law is changed.
There are other areas that are fundamentally fixed and they run nearly two-thirds of the Federal budget. They are fixed items and we cannot reduce them until we change the basic law.
Mr. MUSKIE. That is right.
Mr. McCLELLAN. And that is something I think we should be looking into, too. I do not believe we shall ever be able to balance the budget until we get better control of the authorizing process, because if we keep authorizing, we will keep incurring and increasing debt. It is like going down to the store and buying something on your account that you cannot pay for now. We keep authorizing more and that runs the cost of Government up.
Mr. MUSKIE. The Senator is correct.One of the benefits of this new concern with the budget, including the process, is going to focus people's attention on the facts that the Senator is laying out. We are learning that in the Budget Committee process, and we look forward to beginning that fundamental kind of work that needs to be done.
Mr. McCLELLAN. We do have a job. It is not just a job for the Senator's committee nor for the Committee on Appropriations. It is the job of all the Members of Congress to try to find a way to legislatively and safely reduce public expenditures in every area.
Mr. MUSKIE. I thank the Senator and thank him again for his cooperation.