July 9, 1975
Page 21772
NAVY SHIP CONSTRUCTION
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I recommend to the attention of my colleagues two Navy shipbuilding issues presently in disagreement between the Senate and House conferees on H.R. 6674, the 1976 military procurement authorization bill. These issues pose an important test of the willingness of Congress and the executive branch to conform to the concepts of budgetary responsibility underlying the Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974. In both cases, the Senate has adopted a position which is consistent with the letter and spirit of the Budget Act, while the House position departs from the intent of that act in significant fashion. And on one of these issues, Mr. President, the executive branch is, it seems to me, guilty of encouraging a departure from sound budgetary practice.
As my colleagues are aware, the 1974 Budget Act is intended to bring more certainty into the budgetary process, increase the predictability of the costs of Federal programs, provide for more complete submission of budgetary information by the executive branch, and achieve greater congressional control over Federal expenditures. Among the declared purposes of the act, the first is the congressional determination to insure effective congressional control over the budgetary process.
Among the abuses which the act seeks to control is the approval of new programs in the absence of the best available information on their lifetime costs. Too often, in the past, we have approved modest sounding but open-ended programs, only to discover through painful experience how far their true costs exceeded our expectations and distorted our priorities.
It is for this reason that the act requires 5-year budget projections, and requires that requests for the authorization of new programs be submitted to Congress a full 18 months before the beginning of the fiscal year in which they are proposed to take effect. Last-minute amendments to the budget are not ruled out, so that emergencies may be covered. But the act demands that most programs be requested far enough in advance to permit the fullest possible exposure and assessment by Congress of their costs.
Mr. President, the House of Representatives, in its version of the military procurement authorization bill, recommends two shipbuilding provisions which contravene these principles.
The first of these would authorize $60 million in procurement funds for long lead time nuclear propulsion components for a new nuclear-powered "strike cruiser." This would be an entirely new class of ship, of great expense. I am informed that the first ship of this class, if budgeted in the 1977 defense program, will cost $1.2 billion. I repeat, $1.2 billion. This ship was not included in the President's February budget submission either for 1976 or for 1977, the Department of Defense has offered no testimony to Congress that defines the ship, and the Senate did not consider the question either in the Armed Services Committee or on the floor of the Senate. Yet if authorized and appropriated, the $60 million item would to all practical purposes commit the Congress to approval next year of this $1.2 billion ship.
The nuclear-powered strike cruiser, Mr. President, raises fundamental questions about the future of the Navy, and about future Navy budgets and defense priorities, which ought not to be decided without careful examination. It was, therefore, with considerable regret that I learned that the executive branch, on June 24, submitted to Congress a budget amendment requesting authorization and appropriation in 1976 of the $60 million item for advance procurement related to the strike cruiser. This last-minute amendment, submitted less than a week before the beginning of the fiscal year and proposed for a bill that is already in conference, is totally inconsistent with the intent of the 1974 Budget Act, and displays a total disregard for sound budgetary practice.
In my view, the substantive objections to the amendment are at least as serious as the procedural ones. Not only does it commit the Congress by a kind of backdoor approach to the approval of an incompletely defined major new class of ships, but it also attempts to foreclose the answer to questions with very large consequences for the national defense and for defense budgets.
One immediate question concerns the mix of nuclear-powered and conventional escort ships that will carry the proposed new antiair warfare missile system known as Aegis. I am informed that an Aegis fleet large enough to offer protection to all 12 attack carriers will cost approximately $30 billion to build and operate for 30 years. This cost will be significantly affected by the propulsion system chosen for Aegis ships. Last year the Navy proposed to build eight nuclear- powered Aegis ships and 16 conventional ones. Now, according to the House Armed Services Committee report on the military procurement bill, the Navy would like to drop all the planned new conventional escorts and build 18 nuclear-powered ships armed with Aegis and designated as "strike cruisers."
The Department of Defense has established through various "life-cycle cost" studies that the nuclear-powered Aegis ship will cost 50 percent more to build and operate than the conventional version, while offering roughly comparable capability as an air defense escort. Thus, it would appear that the new Navy plan will provide less capability than the mix earlier proposed, at a higher cost. The Congress, however, has not been presented with the costs and capabilities of the various Aegis options.
It may be argued that the offensive capability planned for the strike cruiser – to include tactical cruise missiles and possibly one or two vertical takeoff and landing aircraft – justifies the additional cost. It is presently estimated that the first conventional Aegis ship would cost $800 million in 1977 budget dollars or about $400 million less than the strike cruiser.
However, the Congress has not been presented with an assessment of the requirement for this added offensive power, nor with an assessment of alternative ways of investing these funds to obtain the most effective increments of striking power. For example, it would be possible to buy both a conventional Aegis ship and another nuclear attack submarine of the SSN 688 class for less than the cost of the nuclear strike cruiser. Until the Congress has had an opportunity to make such comparisons, I believe it would be unwise to authorize the nuclear strike cruiser.
A broader question raised by the House action and the President's amended budget request concerns the application of title VIII of the 1975 military procurement authorization law – Public Law 93-365. This title requires that all new "major combatant vessels" for the Navy, including escorts designed to operate with carrier task groups, shall be nuclear powered unless the President decides that such construction is not in the national interest. The costs associated with an all-nuclear Navy are staggering. Considering the question of carrier escorts alone, I am informed that the Navy now has 84 ships which will require replacement over the next 30 years.
It will cost 50 percent more, or well over $20 billion in additional costs, to build all these escorts as nuclear ships instead of all as conventional ships. If we retain the presently planned mix of nuclear and conventional escorts, the costs would be $19 billion less than an all-nuclear escort program.
A basic question which the Congress has not had an opportunity to consider is who will pay for the cost of these new Navy programs? I am reliably informed that the proposed all-nuclear Aegis fleet is not included in the 5-year budget projections for defense submitted to Congress this year under the provisions of the 1974 Budget Act. If these costs are added to the defense budget, then other parts of the Federal budget must suffer. If the defense budget remains within the 5-year parameters established by the administration – and in my view, even these may be too high – then which service is going to give up something so that the Navy can have a fleet of strike cruisers?
Will the Army give up its new divisions? Will the Air Force give up the B-1? Or will the nuclear Navy advocates sacrifice the size and strength of the fleet, by canceling urgently required new construction programs such as the Patrol Frigate? It is plain to me that if the Navy hopes to maintain and increase its present number of escort ships the most feasible and cost effective route is to pursue the patrol frigate program and similar conventional ships, not to sacrifice such programs on the expensive and arbitrary altar of the nuclear propulsion provisions of title VIII.
I cannot stress too much the importance of this question of priorities. For example, had we been given the information regarding the strike cruiser and the Aegis program at the appropriate time, it is entirely possible that the Budget Committee would have recommended a different set of priorities to the Senate in the first concurrent resolution. For all these reasons, I urge the Senate conferees on the military procurement bill to hold firm to the Senate position, which excludes the $60 million requested for the nuclear strike cruiser, and I urge the Congress to give serious attention to the fundamental questions concerning the future of the Navy in preparation for next year's budget.
The second shipbuilding issue now in conference which concerns me as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee relates to the longstanding policy of full funding Navy ship construction programs. Full funding requires that the Congress be asked to authorize and appropriate the entire sum required to complete construction of a ship, including an allowance for anticipated inflation, before a contract can be let for that ship. The House version of the military procurement bill would abandon full funding and authorize a new policy of incremental funding. This approach would undermine both the predictability of shipbuilding program costs and congressional control of the budget. In effect, it would authorize the issuance of blank checks for Navy shipbuilding programs, which the Congress would be called upon to honor in the future.
I am informed that the Senate conferees on H.R. 6674 are adamantly opposed to the incremental funding approach proposed by the House. The Senate position on full funding of Navy ships is fully consistent with the Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, and I commend the Senate conferees for their stand. I would like to add that the Bath Iron Works, one of the Nation's premier shipbuilding firms which, I am proud to say, is located in my State, completely
endorses the concept of full funding. I commend the management of the Bath Iron Works for their forward-looking and responsible approach to the financial management of our Nation's shipbuilding program.