July 9, 1975
Page 21806
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, pending before the Senate is the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act for 1976. This bill provides funding for the entire legislative branch of the Government, including the Senate, House of Representatives, the Office of Technology Assessment, the Library of Congress, the Government Printing Office, and the General Accounting Office.
Commencing next year, this bill will also include appropriations for the Congressional Budget Office, which was created by the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act to provide Congress for the first time with independent, bipartisan, and objective information on the economy, spending, taxes, and the budget.
It is worth noting that this bill, which provides for the cost of an entire branch of the Government, represents less than two-tenths of 1 percent of the entire cost of Government for the next year. The distinguished Senator from South Carolina, Senator HOLLINGS, chairman of the Legislative Appropriations Subcommittee, has done his usual craftsmanlike job of analyzing, criticizing, and holding the line on expenditures within the legislative branch. I am pleased to be able to report that the bill, as reported, is about $12 million under the budget target for this bill contemplated in the congressional budget resolution passed in May. The entire Appropriations Committee is to be commended for its work.
One function of this bill of special importance to the budget process is its provision for the General Accounting Office. Until the enactment of the Budget Reform Act, the General Accounting Office and the Library of Congress were literally the only sources available to the Congress within the Government for independent judgment on fiscal and economic matters. The role of the General Accounting Office was quite limited in this regard. That role was clarified in the Budget Act. The Budget Act gave the General Accounting Office clear responsibility for program review and analysis and clarified a number of its duties regarding technical features of budget procedures. An important provision of the budget act clarified the General Accounting Office responsibility for program review and evaluation. The act authorizes a new office of program review and evaluation in the office of the Comptroller General. That office is intended to assist Congress by monitoring Government programs to assure that they are carried out at the lowest possible cost and in the manner the Congress intended when it enacted them in the first place.
The Congressional Budget Office, on the other hand, was created by the Budget Act to perform all of the fiscal and economic analysis required by the budget committees and the Congress in the execution of their responsibilities under the Budget Act. Inevitably, some overlap will occur between the clarified responsibilities of the General Accounting Office and these new responsibilities assigned to the Congressional Budget Office. The committee report on the legislative appropriations bill reflects the sensitivity of the Appropriations Committee to this evolution of responsibilities between the CBO and the GAO.
I fully endorse the approach taken by the committee. As chairman of the Budget Committee, which has the statutory responsibility for overseeing the activities of the Congressional Budget Office, I have worked closely with Senator HOLLINGS on this question. I am aware of the diligence and attention with which he pursued this matter in the development of the Legislative Appropriation Act. I commend him for that effort and on the wisdom reflected in the solution arrived at in this legislation. Basically, as the report indicates, the committee takes the position in this bill that there should be no further increase in GAO staffing for program review and evaluation beyond that already reached until the implications of the Budget Act for both GAO and CBO can be completely assessed. This assessment will, of course, include not only the first appropriation for the Congressional Budget Office itself, which is anticipated this fall, but also experience gained by the Budget Committee, the Appropriations Committee, the General Accounting Office, and the Congressional Budget Office under the Budget Act.
I look forward to working on this question with Senator HOLLINGS, with the Comptroller General, Elmer Staats, and with Dr. Alice Rivlin, the Director of the Congressional Budget Office. It is already quite clear that the success of the budget process will require the complete cooperation and integration of the efforts of the General Accounting Office and the Congressional Budget Office. In that connection, I want to take this opportunity to commend the efforts of a distinguished public servant whose judgment and wisdom have been extraordinary, not only in the development of the Budget Act, but in its implementation. Most Members of this body are well acquainted with Mr. Sam Hughes, who is the Assistant Comptroller General for Special Programs at GAO. We have and will continue to rely on his judgments and wisdom for the success of the new budget process. The General Accounting Office has an important role to play in the new budget reform process, and I am confident that, under the guidance of Comptroller General Elmer Staats and with the aid of Sam Hughes, its contribution to budget reform will be fully realized.