December 15, 1975
Page 40546
Mr. MONDALE. Mr. President, on Saturday, December 13, 1975, an article appeared in the New York Times entitled "Congress Succeeding in Curbs on Spending." This article by Richard Madden sets forth, I believe, the really very impressive development which has followed upon the enactment of the Budget Control Act, and recounts the very successful progress that we have made to date in the work of the Budget Committee.
I think this is a great compliment to its chairman, the Senator from Maine (Mr. MUSKIE) and the ranking member on the minority side(Mr. BELLMON). I ask unanimous consent that this article be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
CONGRESS SUCCEEDING IN CURBS ON SPENDING
(By Richard L. Madden)
WASHINGTON, December 12.— To the surprise of some of its own members, Congress in less than a year's time has taken the first cautious but so far successful steps toward gaining control of the Federal Government's purse strings.
For the first time, both the Senate and the House of Representatives, despite some close votes, have agreed on an overall ceiling for Federal spending in the current fiscal year and have bound themselves to try to legislate within that limit.
The House completed that step today by voting, 189 to 187, to limit spending to $374.9 billion in the fiscal year ending June 30, leaving a deficit of $74.1 billion. The Senate easily approved these limits yesterday by a vote of 73 to 19. The President's approval is not required.
Adoption of this budget measure, which also directs Congress to keep revenues at $300.8 billion, means that any future legislation that would break through the spending ceiling or lower the floor on revenues could be blocked by a point of order unless the limits were waived or a new budget resolution adopted.
If this newfound fiscal discipline continues next year, when the conduct of the new Congressional budget process becomes more demanding, and perhaps more painful, it could drastically alter the way Congress transacts its business and rearranges its power structure as well.
And ultimately, according to senior members of the Senate and House Budget Committees, the new process could force Congress to reexamine much more closely what up to now have been sacrosanct spending programs that range from veterans' benefits to public works to Social Security.
There is still skepticism that such a diverse institution as Congress can successfully discipline itself into more fiscal restraint. Two previous attempts to create a more coherent Congressional budget process collapsed shortly after World War II. But so far at least, supporters of the new procedure can claim some initial victories, such as the following:
At the urging of the Senate Budget Committee, a massive defense procurement bill, a pet of the conservatives, and a school lunch bill, a pet of the liberals, were sent back to conference committees to be scaled down to meet the budget targets.
A bill enabling Federal workers to retire after 30 years' service with full benefits disappeared quietly in the House Post Office and Civil Service Committee after Representative Brock Adams, a Washington Democrat who is chairman of the House Budget Committee, warned that he would fight the bill on the House floor because of its budgetary impact.
Prodded by the Budget Committees in both houses, Congress limited a pay rise for Federal employees to 5 percent instead of the 8.6 percent that had been sought, and many other bills have been altered without fanfare to ease Budget Committee objections.
Senior members of the Budget Committees say that now many representatives and senators quietly approach them to check that their bills fit within the budget targets.
FAR MORE EFFECTIVE
"It is for real," Representative James C. Wright, Jr., a Texas Democrat, who is on the House Budget Committee, said of the new budget procedure. "I think it has become far more effective than anyone thought it would in the first year," he said in an interview.
And Senator Edmund S. Muskie, Democrat of Maine, who is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, told the Senate yesterday that the new process "has so far succeeded beyond our most optimistic expectations."
The new system is in sharp contrast to the way Congress used to do business. In past years a President would send up his proposed budget each January and then Congress, on a piecemeal basis, would pass various bills authorizing programs and 13 regular appropriations bills (plus supplemental measures) to provide the money. There was no overall assessment of how much money was coming in or how much was going out or how one bill related to another.
"It was almost like hiring 13 carpenters to build a 13-room house and instructing each to build a room to his own liking without any guide to overall dimensions or any real concern for what the other 12 carpenters were doing," Mr. Wright explained in a newsletter to constituents.
Under the new budget control law, which was approved last year and which is to be more fully in operation next year, Congress each May will approve a first budget resolution setting targets for total spending and revenues, plus subtotals for 17 separate governmental functions ranging from defense to agriculture to health to interest on the national debt. Then in September both houses will have to pass a second budget resolution, similar to the one approved today, setting more binding limits.
This year's first run-through focused on the overall spending and revenue totals, and the Senate and House did not vote directly on each of the individual spending categories, although the Budget Committees did. Next year is expected to provide a more critical test because both houses will vote on setting the individual limits, which would cause some intensive battles over establishing priorities for such things as defense and social programs.
Under the more stringent timetable next year, neither house is to consider bills creating new spending authority until the first budget resolution is passed in May. The aim is to have work on all spending bills completed by the final September resolution to coincide with the start of the Government's new fiscal year, which will begin Oct. 1, next year instead of July 1.
Also under the new law, Congress cannot adjourn until it has acted on the second budget resolution and completed any work needed to reconcile or adjust any previously passed legislation that would breach the set limits.
Creation of the Budget Committees has already caused some friction with the other established and powerful committees, particularly in the Senate. Senator John L. McClellan, Democrat of Arkansas, who is chairman of the Appropriations Committee, which in the past handled spending bills without any second guessing, has had some differences with Mr. Muskie over some of the procedures.
By contrast, on the House side Mr. Adams has developed what is described as a close working relationship with Representative George Mahon, Democrat of Texas, who is chairman of the Appropriations Committee.
"There is some tension: that the Budget Committee may be getting too big for its britches," one Senator on the committee said. But so far, he added, the committee has generally prevailed.
As the Budget Committee members of the two houses met in conference last week to reconcile their differences over the spending limits, Mr. Muskie at one point warned his House colleagues, "They're going to walk all over you on the floor if your figures are too vague and hasty. I ran into the McClellan buzz saw a couple of times."
NOT THE MOST POPULAR
At another point Representative Sam Gibbons, Democrat of Florida, who is on the House budget unit, remarked: "We're not the most popular members of the House. Some people would like to get rid of us."
Representative Charles H. Wilson, a California Democrat, has already introduced a bill to repeal the new budget process.
"We seem to have created, without really thinking about it, an all-powerful committee, one which would hold the purse strings for every Federal body in the United States," he said.
Apparently to prevent the members of the Budget Committee from amassing too much power, the House restricted its 23 members to four-year terms on the committee. The Senate does not have a similar restriction on its committee members.
Other criticism has focused on the Congressional Budget Office, which was created by the budget law to provide Congress with fiscal expertise similar to what the President has with the Office of Management and Budget. The director of the Congressional Office, Alice Rivlin, an economist and former senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, angered some members of the House Appropriations Committee earlier this year by her request for 66 more staff members and an automobile to carry the staff to and from the Capitol.
The 48-year-old, boyish-looking Mr. Adams attributes the close votes in the House on the budget resolutions, such as the one today, to the fact that the members were being asked to vote directly for the first time on resolutions contemplating a $70 billion-plus deficit.
"People don't like that deficit,"he said. "And the idea hasn't completely gotten through that the Budget Committee doesn't create the deficit — it simply exposes it."
Representative Delbert L. Latta of Ohio, the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, urged the House today to reject the measure on the ground that it "accepts the policy of deficit spending." He charged that the new process was budget control "in name only" and amounted to what he called "budget accommodation."
Only three Republicans and 186 Democrats voted in favor of the budget measure, while 126 Republicans and 61 Democrats opposed it.
While many conservatives have opposed the budget process because of the large deficit, some liberal Democrats have also begun to realize that the spending limitations, even with a big deficit, have not left room for any major new social or recession fighting programs because just continuing existing programs has eaten up most of the available funds.
COULD GO BACK
Several Budget Committee members said that this could drive Congress to go back and cut down any number of existing programs to make funds available for new initiatives, such as national health insurance.
"I think the most important thing this year is that the Senate and the House have indicated a willingness to accept the discipline," Senator Muskie said in an interview. "I think it is doable. It's going to mean changing some habits," he added.
In contrast to widespread opposition in the House, the Senate's stronger votes for the Budget limitations are attributed to the fact that the 61-year-old Muskie, regarded as a liberal, and the Budget Committee's ranking Republican, Henry L. Bellmon, a 54-year-old fiscal conservative from Oklahoma, have remained united in defending the budget process on the Senate floor.
Mr. Bellmon recalled in an interview that he did not know Mr. Muskie until they were put together on the committee.
"We were in effect a couple of strangers," he said, "but we decided that the process was so important to the country that it had to be made to work. I think both he and I have been willing to submerge our personal preferences to the process and to speak in harmony. We have tried very hard to hold the whole committee together."
DECIDED NOT TO OPPOSE
Mr. Muskie acknowledged that last spring "a lot of votes"went against him as his committee was preparing its first budget resolution and that he considered opposing the measure, or trying to change it, on the Senate floor. Mr. Bellmon also had misgivings and waited to see what Mr. Muskie would do.
"I finally decided that if I pressed my own personal views on the floor the whole process would lose all credibility," Senator Muskie said. "So I told him I was prepared to support the resolution against the left or right in the interest of making this thing stick, if he would," Mr. Bellmon agreed.
Mr. Muskie said that a businessman looking at the new process would probably focus on the size of the deficit, but borrowing a local football analogy, he added:
"The important thing is that control is being established. George Allen (coach of the Washington Redskins) maintains that once he's established ball control he can control what happens on the football field. So what we're doing is establishing ball control here."