September 19, 1975
Page 29539
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, before referring to the conference report, I would like to present a few comments on another subject concerning the budget process.
On September 17, on page 29093, I had printed in the RECORD a column which appeared in the Washington Post that morning authored by Evans and Novak, giving their description of the Budget Committee and the budget process. This morning in the Washington Post there is another column by Stephen Rosenfeld which comments on the Evans and Novak column.
Mr. Rosenfeld, I believe, has a healthier perspective on the Budget Committee, its intentions and results than the Evans and Novak column. I ask unanimous consent that the Rosenfeld column be printed in the RECORD at this point. It speaks for itself and requires no editorializing by me.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
BUDGET DISCIPLINE AND DEFENSE
(By Stephen S. Rosenfeld)
ln declaring the other day that the new congressional budgetary process is "really a Senate shell game to fleece the Pentagon," the Evans and Novak column was doing a good deal more than relaying the Pentagon's jitters that its budget is under the knife.
The column was displaying an unhappy lack of understanding of a fledgling process whose improvement and support as time goes on are surely a good deal more important to the country than whether the Defense Department gets a few billion dollars more or less in any given year.
Since there may be some people in the Pentagon or elsewhere who thought the column described the budget process correctly, it seems worthwhile to point out a few things. If I can understand it, so can you.
First, Congress' purpose last May in deciding to set targets to guide individual committees as they consider federal spending was not to fleece the Pentagon or the school lunch program, as supporters of both now profess to believe, but to gain more control over the budget. The thrust, in brief, was fiscal responsibility, a neutral if painful concept as far as programs go.
Once the size of the pie was set by Congress — at $367 billion — a brisk argument was bound to break out over how the slices should be distributed. Not surprisingly in this city of tough issues, strongly held views and political people, the Democratic Congress wanted to spend something less on defense than did the Republican President, and it is so indicated in the conference report on the budget resolution passed last May. Both houses, of course, accepted that action.
What happened then is extremely interesting. The budget committees decided to take their charge seriously and actually to do what the reform mandated them to do: to keep congressional spending deliberations within the limits agreed on by ... Congress.
The approach of Senate Budget Committee chairman Edmund Muskie (D-Maine) is easy enough to understand. He had an interest not only in establishing the viability and integrity of the new budgeting process but in using it to support the programs he favored — in this instance, reduced defense spending. One notes, however, that he failed to win the funding he sought for his pet domestic project, countercyclical revenue sharing.
The approach of ranking minority member Henry Bellmon (R-Okla.) deserves special note, for he was in the position of having his interest in the budgetary process go in one direction and his interest in certain programs go in the other. I asked him how he handled that one and he said: "I defended the higher defense figure in debate but once it was decided, I went along. I don't count myself as pro-defense or anti-defense, although I want the country to be strong. We can spend ourselves as poor in defense as in any other area, you know."
This, then, is the basis of the bipartisan pro-reform stand of the Senate Budget Committee in asking the Senate Appropriations Committee last month to bring its defense outlay figure down to the level that the Congress as a whole had suggested in the spring. A budget committee that did not make this request would not be worthy of the name.
The alternative, which Congress also provided for itself in its resolution last May, is to cut other programs in order to permit higher defense spending. The vehicle for this is a second resolution (binding, not advisory as was the first) due to be taken up later this fall.
To say that the Senate stand results from a "shell game" run by "liberal anti-defense" Ed Muskie, or from the sly machinations of "softline" staffer Andrew Hamilton, is to miss quite completely the import of Congress' historic decision to try to impose upon itself the fiscal discipline so conspicuous by its absence in the past. "Muskie's tactics" constitute in fact the extremely promising, if tentative, new habit of legislative self-control.
As for the Evans and Novak charge that the budget committee's use of a certain $27 billion housing item involved "figure juggling ... a clever anti-Pentagon operation" intended to conceal a damning rise in non-defense spending, a clear and conscientious footnote indicates precisely the opposite — not concealment of a rise but disclosure of a shortfall.
Where does that leave defense spending? It leaves it right where housing, school lunches and a host of other programs already are: competing with each other for slices of the budget pie.
Frustrating as it may be for the Pentagon to have to make its case on substantive grounds, the Congress has given it no choice.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, turning to the conference report, I believe my comments can be very brief.
First of all, I would like to make the point that the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry (Mr. TALMADGE) , Senator DOLE and Senator BELLMON can hardly be described as big spenders. They have undertaken to do a responsible job on this conference report and they all support it. I believe their support, in the context of their record for budgetary prudence, is a strong argument for the conference report.
Mr. TALMADGE.Will the Senator yield?
Mr. MUSKIE. I yield.
Mr. TALMADGE. I am grateful for the Senator's comments. I point out that this conference report is only about $11 million above the original Senate bill which passed this body 80 to 8.
Mr. MUSKIE. That was the second point that I was going to make. I am happy to have the distinguished Senator from Georgia underline it. That is important. As a matter of fact, our figures show that the conference report may be a little bit under the number that the Senate sent to the conference in the first instance. To demand today that the Senate insist upon a figure substantially below its own figure when the bill went to conference I think is to be unrealistic indeed. So I would like to express my appreciation and to extend my commendation to the distinguished Senator from Georgia and his colleagues for the cut they were able to make in this program's cost in conference.
Mr. TALMADGE. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. MUSKIE. I yield.
Mr. TALMADGE. I also want to congratulate the distinguished chairman of the Committee on the Budget in the Senate and the ranking minority member, the Senator from Oklahoma, for the vigilance with which they have been watching these appropriations bills. I hope that continues.
Mr. MUSKIE. I thank the distinguished Senator from Georgia.
As we look at the budget across the board, I am sure there are many places at which some of us would make greater cuts if we could work our own will, and other places where we would support increases if we could work our own will.
That is understandable. We all have our own sets of priorities. But with respect to the budget process, the responsibility of the Budget Committee is to try to hold the line at the level set in the first concurrent resolution by Congress early this spring, and that is what we are trying to do.
So the question of whether or not we should try to send this bill back to conference really revolves about practical questions. Those are:
First, that this bill is at about the figure the Senate originally sent to conference.
Second, that the House feels very strongly about its position. The original vote on the House bill was overwhelming, and the House vote yesterday on this conference report was 380 to 7, indicating that we have probably reached the end of the line insofar as further cuts in conference are concerned.
The third point I would make that has not been emphasized this morning thus far is that the budget process is not completed. Some of the programs found in this bill are still subject to the appropriations process, and second, they all are still subject to the reconciliation process, which is the last stage in the budgetary process mandated by Congress last year. So the amounts in this bill can still be weighed against expenditures in other functions of the budget and the appropriations processes, and in that reconciliation process, and we can then decide whether, over all, the total expenditures authorized by Congress exceed what would be prudent and what steps need to be taken to meet that condition, whatever we decide that it is.
On those practical grounds, Mr. President, Congress having had an opportunity to work its will with full understanding of the facts, I support this conference report, and repeat my commendation of the distinguished Senator from Georgia and his colleagues on bringing back a conference report which is close to the original figure that the Senate sent to conference. The Senate cannot reasonably ask for more than that.