July 28, 1975
Page 25405
THE LEGISLATIVE BRANCH APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1976
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, the Senate on July 22 considered and passed by voice vote the conference report on H.R. 6950, the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act for 1976. This report was well within the budget resolution, and I believe it would be useful to set out for the RECORD the details. This bill includes appropriations for fiscal 1976 and the transition quarter from July 1, 1976, to September 30, 1976, for the Senate, the House of Representatives, joint items of the Senate and the House, the Office of Technology Assessment, the Architect of the Capitol, the Botanic Garden, the Library of Congress, the Government Printing Office, the General Accounting Office, and the Cost-Accounting Standards Bureau.
The conference report provides for appropriations totaling $827.5 million for fiscal 1976 and $207.4 million for the transition quarter to the new fiscal year. This compares with requests submitted in the President's February budget, and taken into consideration during the preparation of our congressional budget resolution, aggregating $835.9 million for fiscal 1976 and $209 million for the transition quarter relating to the items in the legislative branch appropriations
bill. Thus, the conference report constitutes reductions of $8.4 million and $1.6 million for fiscal 1976 and the transition quarter respectively when compared with the budget resolution.
After the President's budget was submitted in February, revised budget requests increased the total requests considered by the Senate Appropriations Committee to $838.2 million for fiscal 1976, and $209.7 million for the transition quarter. The conference report recommends reductions of $10.7 million and $2.3 million for fiscal 1976 and the transition quarter respectively when compared with these revised budget estimates. With respect to outlays, comparable reductions will occur.
So that we can tie together the report of the conferees with the scorekeeping efforts on the part of the Senate Budget Committee of which I am chairman, let me say that the revised budget requests for the legislative branch appropriations totaled $853.7 million, when a $15.5 million item for the site acquisition for a Government Printing Office facility is included.
This request was withdrawn before the Senate Appropriations Committee considered this bill.
The Senate Appropriations Committee considered requests for $838.2 million for new budget authority for fiscal 1976, and as the conference report shows, this report now before us represents a $10.7 million reduction in those requests.
The aggregate budget figures in H.R. 6950, the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act are distributed over three functions of the budget. The Office of Copyright Funds are in function 400 and are about $7 million, the items for the Library of Congress except the Office of Copyright and the Congressional Research Service are in function 500 and total about $93 million, and the other items in this bill for the legislative branch including the Congressional Research Service are in function 800 and total about $727 million.
I am pleased that the amounts recommended by the conferees come within the target totals which the Congress adopted in the first budget resolution. While that resolution did not attempt to establish mandatory functional ceilings for the budget, the budget committees of the Senate and the House did have functional totals to serve as guidelines for the Congress and to provide a bench-mark for the second concurrent resolution.
I point this out so that we may keep in mind as we move toward the second concurrent resolution that we must carefully put together the pieces of spending authority in order to achieve the goals we adopted on May 14 in the first concurrent resolution. The process is new, but it is working far better than most of us could envisage only a few short months ago. It is working because of the devotion of the members of the committees to the disciplines inaugurated under the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.
So, I compliment the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. HOLLINGS) and his colleagues on the conference committee for bringing in a bill that is within the budgetary ceilings established in the first concurrent resolution.