December 15, 1975
Page 40561
Mr. LONG. I believe I have made my position clear with regard to this matter already so I will be very brief.
The amendment seeks to control spending for the fiscal year 1977, starting in October of 1976. Neither Congress nor the President has distinguished itself or himself for being able to look. into the future and tell what the situation will be a long time in advance. The President, in a much shorter period of time than we have involved here, changed from recommending a tax increase to recommending the largest tax cut in history.
Under our budget procedures, the President would submit his budget in January, the Budget Committees and the Appropriations Committees, the Finance Committee, and the Ways and Means Committee can study these recommendations, as well as all the other committees that have the responsibility, and they can arrive at a budget goal under the law. This is to be done by May 15 and, I submit, Mr. President, we will be a lot better able to estimate what the Nation's needs will be starting in October if we are looking at that in May than we would if we are looking at that same thing here in December.
No one knows what the future holds in that regard. This measure would ask those of us in Congress to fix a spending figure sight unseen, without having any breakdown, limited merely to a $395 billion overall figure.
That, Mr. President, is an irresponsible way to do business, particularly if, by waiting a few months, you can proceed in an orderly fashion, see what the President recommends, and then see what the figures should be. For all I know $395 billion might be too much. On the other hand, it might not be nearly enough, and who would know unless he would have a chance to analyze it and study it after he had seen it broken down by different functions.
My experience with most budgets has usually been I would think we ought to spend more in some respects and less in others, and I think that is how the majority of the people would look at it.
But to set this precedent, after having passed a law to provide an orderly budgetary proceeding, and to say now we are going to bypass all that, we are just going to get one figure and try to cut the casts to fit the figure, not knowing how adequately that provides for national needs is, in effect, to sidestep the budgetary proceeding that Congress so responsibly agreed to during this year.
I think, Mr. President, that would be a very bad mistake and, I believe, the Senator from Maine can explain that far more logically, precisely and eloquently than I because he is so much more familiar with it, and I ask the Senator from Maine how much time he would desire.
Mr. MUSKIE. Let me start with 10 minutes. I want to try to keep this debate to a minimum.
Mr. LONG. I yield 10 minutes to the Senator.
Mr. MUSKIE. First of all, I want to make it clear this $395 billion ceiling is not the President's proposal. The President proposed a $395 billion ceiling related to a $28 billion tax cut. The pending bill is not a $28 billion tax cut.
The President did suggest at the White House the other day that if the tax cut were less than his $28 billion that the spending ceiling might be adjusted by the difference in the tax cut. I do not know what this would produce in terms of a spending ceiling. It probably would be something more than $400 billion. But in any case what the distinguished Senator has introduced and which is pending before us is not the President's proposal.
I am not for the $395 billion, I would not be for the $400 billion plus, I would not be for the $423 billion; I would not be for any number at this point which would undertake to forecast the economic and budgetary conditions are going to be a year from now.
Let me remind Senators that a year ago this President promised us a balanced budget for the fiscal year in which we find ourselves, fiscal year 1976. He sent up his budget in January of 1975, 5 months later. Was it a balanced budget? No. It showed a deficit of $52 billion. This was in February. A few months later, in the spring, we all remember the President on television drawing an imaginary line and saying, "$60 billion and no more." That was as high as the deficit was going to go.
Now, just within the last month, last few weeks, the President has given us his latest deficit for 1976, $72 billion plus.
Yet, the President wants us to look ahead a year from now and to nail down a specific dollar ceiling.
What we come up to, given variables of economic conditions, the problems with which the budget is forced to deal, such as unemployment compensation, social security, retirement pensions, and so on, given those we might conceivably come up with a lower number than 395, or a higher number, or 395.
But, Mr. President, I have been in the Senate for 17 years and I have seen Presidents suggest these magic spending ceilings. I have seen the Senate in panic endorse them, get to its collective feet with the most patriotic rhetoric endorsing fiscal responsibility. And those ceilings never worked, they never worked because they were not established on a solid basis of fact and they were not based upon an intelligent analysis of what the consequences were.
It was because of this history that the Congress finally established the budget process, and over the 17 years I have been here it is only since the Congress has undertaken to implement that budget process that there has been a sign of effective fiscal responsibility.
If I were a fiscal conservative — and I think I am, but may not be so regarded by others in the Chamber — I would embrace this new process as the first promise, the first meaningful promise of fiscal responsibility.
This proposal, if adopted, would completely torpedo the budget process — completely torpedo it.
I agreed to a unanimous consent agreement which waives section 306 of the Budget Act with respect to this amendment, but I did so only because it seemed to me that maybe in this forum, in connection with this legislation and the President's proposal, this might be the time to discuss this budget process and what it means.
But in order to bring the budget under control, this is what the law says:
Sec. 306. No bill or resolution, and no amendment to any bill or resolution, dealing with any matter which is within the jurisdiction of the Committee on the Budget of either House shall be considered in that House unless it is a bill or resolution which has been reported by the Committee on the Budget of that House (or from the consideration of which such committee has been discharged) or unless it is an amendment to such a bill or resolution.
What that says is that nobody else — no single Senator, no other committee — can initiate matters dealing with the budget, except the Budget Committee.
Why? Because the Congress wanted to vest 16 members of the Senate Committee on the Budget with unprecedented power? No. This provision was included because the Congress wanted to put control of the budget clearly in one place, the Committee on the Budget, and that is where it is.
Now we hear this proposal just a few days after Congress has done what? The Congress has adopted a budget resolution which establishes what? A revenue floor which is protected by the right of any Senator to raise a point of order against any legislation that would change it and a spending ceiling not of $395 billion, but of $375 billion for fiscal 1976, and both those numbers are protected by the right of a Senator to invoke a point of order against any spending legislation that would breach the spending ceiling and any revenue legislation that would cut revenues below the revenue floor.
That is a form of discipline, may I say to my colleagues, that the Senate and Congress as a whole have never previously been willing to accept. We heard something about that here this afternoon, and only a few days after we have taken that unprecedented step of adopting the second concurrent resolution.
I hear Senators rising on the floor and suggesting that all that be brushed aside. I have heard a Senator say, "No, we are not really doing violence."
Well, are we not? What does section 300 say? Section 300 says that the timetable with respect to the congressional budget process for any fiscal year is as follows:
November 10, President submits current services budget.
He has done that.
Fifteenth day after Congress meets, President submits his budget.
He has not yet done that and he refused the other night — refused — to give us information which he said he had in hand substantiating the $28 billion in cuts he proposed. So he refused up to this point to take that step.
March 15, committees and joint committees submit reports to Budget Committees.
April 1, Congressional Budget Office submits report to Budget Committees.
April 15, Budget Committees report first concurrent resolution on the budget to their Houses.
That is the resolution which establishes recommended spending ceilings.
That is the timetable that this amendment would sweep aside.
Why have a first concurrent resolution on April 15 which is structured upon all the information that the act mandates. Why have it? Why not throw away the process and slip back to those golden days when Presidents recommended arbitrary spending ceilings, the Congress adopted them with tongue in cheek, knowing they would never be honored, never be honored and they never were.
So now when we get something that will work, we would throw it away.
In my State this year the people acted on a constitutional amendment to make sessions of the legislature annual, and why? Because ever since 1880 we have been trying to budget for 2 years at a time with biennial sessions of the legislature and it did not work.
The people of Maine had the commonsense to understand that and now we are going to deal with the budget on an annual basis in Maine because Maine people understand that is the way to control it.
What does the President want us to do? He wants us to budget on a biennial basis. He wants us to write the 1977 budget — for a year that does not begin until next October 1 — today when he will not even give us a month's notice on what his proposed budget cuts will be in January of that same year.
Is that intelligent budgetmaking? Do my colleagues really believe that it is?
We have got something that is working. I could be just as exaggerated in my view of how it is working as some of the oratory I hear around here.
When we began in March, we took note of the President's budget. We looked at all the other legislation that was pending in committees that had substantial support, and we came up with a total of potential spending legislation that reached $410 billion.
That was the figure. I placed that speech in the RECORD on March 26, 1975.
The Budget Committee had to consider $410 billion in spending. What did we report to the Senate? A spending ceiling of $367 million. We could claim a saving of $43 billion. I am sure that we imposed restraint on a great deal of spending, but the exact amount would only be a guess. My honest guess is that we may have saved the taxpayers $10 billion to $15 billion this year because of the existence of the process, but that is only a guess.
I do know that at a time when the administration was expressing fears that the Congress would run up a deficit of $100 billion, I promised that that would not happen and it has not happened.
We have a deficit of $74 billion. That is a little less than $6 billion more than we projected in May. That difference is totally represented by reestimates of the entitlement programs which are governed by the effect of current law.
With respect to those things that the Congress can control through the appropriations process we have kept our commitment of last May.
So I say this process is working. I believe the country takes great assurance. It has not achieved what we would like ultimately to achieve, but with respect to that deficit let me make this point:
Taking into account the President's proposals for this year as of their current status, including the tax cuts that he recommended, the congressional deficit at this point is $800 million under the President's deficit. I suggest that he does not have any better eye to the future than we have. Last March what I was shooting for was a deficit something like this as the maximum, and it came out pretty much on the button as of this moment.
So I say Senators can go back if they wish to an old fashioned, outmoded, ineffective technique.
It has been tried over and over again in the last 17 years. It has been proposed by Presidents of both parties; it has been proposed by Members of this body. It never worked. But I will say this: If we set this ceiling now, in effect, setting aside section 300 of the Budget Act and all that follows, including section 306, I can only comment as one Member of the Budget Committee. I am going to believe that the punch has been taken out of the budget process.
Like it or not, and I have listened to the Senator from Nebraska, a Federal budget of $350 billion to $400 billion does have an impact on the economy.
One can argue it should not. How can it be avoided? We cannot neutralize the Federal budget's. impact on the economy.We can misguide it, misdirect it, overstimulate it or overdepress it, but we cannot ignore it. There has to be some sense to what we do.
A little more than a year ago the President saw no recession coming. Two months later we had the biggest monthly drop in gross national product since the Great Depression — 10 percent on an annual basis — and we were plunged into the recession. Two months later we had an unemployment rate climbing over 8 percent and approaching 9 percent, all unpredictable.
Will Senators predict with the kind of finality represented by this number what the economy is going to require next spring or next October? My hat is off to Senators if they can do it.
Do not think for a moment that that sense of fiscal responsibility is going to neutralize the effect of the budget in terms of its impact upon the economy. One could not find an economist to agree with them on any such proposition.
What I am urging is not to approve a ceiling of $395 billion or $375 billion, or $423 billion, or anything else. Under the scenario as it is now written, the tax cut in this bill runs only to the end of this fiscal year. So it is tied to the spending ceiling we have already written into the law. That is all nailed down for this fiscal year.
I promise, not on the Bible but on the record of this year, that before the end of this fiscal year we will put in place another spending ceiling and revenue floor that can be approved or disapproved. It can be looked at in the light of what the President is proposing and a Senator can say no to it or a Senator can say yes to it.
That will be in place so both decisions will be tied together.
This one is nailed down already; that one will be nailed down in the first and second concurrent resolutions for fiscal 1977.
I say on the question of fiscal responsibility and prudence that the record of Congress this year, looking at the deficit totals, matches that of the President of the United States.
Mr. ALLEN. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. MUSKIE. I yield.
Mr. ALLEN. I commend the Senator on his speech. I might say that few speeches on this Senate floor, according to my observation, have affected the outcome of votes taken in the Senate. I believe the excellent speech of the Senator from Maine, the chairman of the Budget Committee, had influenced the outcome of the vote on this amendment.
I would like to see spending for the next fiscal year limited to $395 billion, but I respect too much the fine work of the Budget Committee, which I believe is a fiscally conservative operation, to go against the recommendations of the distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee at this time.
I commend him on this fine speech he has made outlining the work and the thrust of the Budget Committee, and the dedication that the members of the committee have to their task of seeking to get the budget as near in line as possible. I commend the Senator for his speech and for the work of the Budget Committee.
Mr. MUSKIE. I am most grateful to the distinguished Senator from Alabama.
Mr. STENNIS. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. MUSKIE. I yield.
Mr. STENNIS. Mr. President, no one knows what course to follow in this problem which seems to have no full answer. But I do believe that, in spite of the large budget we have for 1976, the Senator from Maine, the Senator from Oklahoma, and their colleagues on this committee have made a contribution. I felt it myself is one reason I say that. The Senator will be more definite next year in his own guidelines, more certain and more positive, so that we can bring these things about. That will be more help. That would be more help. I shall expect more from the Senator next year than this year, because of his own experience, the fact that the Senate has had more experience, and we are all looking at this thing with more experience.
So I thank the Senator very much for the contribution he has made. I believe, everything considered, it is best to follow this route until we have given it another year's trial, anyway.
Mr. MUSKIE. I am very grateful to the Senator.
Mr. HUDDLESTON. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr.. MUSKIE. I yield to the Senator from Kentucky.
Mr. HUDDLESTON. Mr. President, I, too, wish to commend the Senator fromMaine, who has so clearly enunciated here before the Senate the one problem related to budget making and expenditure limitations. The one problem before the Senate and before the House of Representatives in our budget making machinery, as he said, will be to make sure that the Senate works, now, in accordance with that machinery, so that we can responsibly address the question of how much revenue we must have and how it shall be expended for the benefit of the people of this country.
I wish to say further that I think it is somewhat degrading to the Senate of the United States that we have presented such a political ploy, in trying to validate a position taken by the President of the United States, who some months ago determined that he was going to spend his time campaigning for reelection, rather than occupying himself with the problems that confront this country, and to try to set here some kind of a false and fallacious ceiling on expenditures for fiscal year 1977, without first knowing what his spending proposals are, without first knowing what kind of condition our country will be in at that time, where the priorities are going to be, and what the requests and the needs are to be. I think it would be foolhardy for this body to pervert its own machinery for responsible budget making by going off on this tangent in response to a purely and clearly political operation on the part of a candidate for President of the United States.
So I support the position taken by the distinguished chairman of the committee and by the distinguished Senator from Maine (Mr. MUSKIE) . I believe the best interests of this country will be served if the Senate follows that course.
Mr. MUSKIE, I thank my good friend from Kentucky.