July 26, 1975
Page 25155
BUDGET COMMITTEE COMMENTS ON S. 66 AND H.R. 8070
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I sought recognition between the two roll call votes just taken for the purpose of giving my colleagues information bearing upon the second of those two votes, but unfortunately, apparently I had not been sufficiently alert to insure that I would have the time to provide the information when it might have been most useful. As the Senate knows, I have tried to give the perspective of the Budget Committee on spending bills, and I think that there are some points that ought to be made with respect to S. 66 and H.R. 8070 which we have just taken that may be useful in the future.
First of all, with respect to the vote overriding the President's veto of the Nurse Training Act: As was brought out in the debate, S. 66 is authorizing legislation. As such, it is difficult to evaluate its impact on the first concurrent budget resolution. Nevertheless, it has implications for future expenditures which I think the Senate might do well to bear in mind as we act upon the various appropriations bills which provide for the health function.
The budget resolution did provide some leeway in the health function for new legislative health initiatives. If it is the will of the Appropriations Committee, supported by the Senate as a whole, to utilize a portion of those funds toward S. 66, then, of course, that is the privilege of the Senate and of the Congress. But the Senate cannot fully fund that legislation and all other health legislation which is pending and underway. At some point, each Senator will have to make choices between health priorities. Further we will have to make a decision about whether or not we should stay under the target set in the budget resolution. I want to give the Senate some indication of what the orders of magnitude are.
The total of spending legislation which has not yet been reported in the Senate and the authorizing legislation, which includes S. 66, is found on page 33 of this week's Senate budget scorekeeping report. I ask unanimous consent that the applicable page be printed in the RECORD at this point.
There being no objection, the excerpt from the report was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
[Tables omitted]
Mr. MUSKIE. The total estimated budget authority for both spending and authorizing legislation which would have to be funded if finally enacted into law is $1.7 billion. Of that, S. 66 if fully funded would use $600 million.
The second subject on which I would like to make some comments is with respect to H.R. 8070, the HUD-Independent Agencies appropriations bill, which we have just approved.
H.R. 8070 appropriates funds for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, the Veterans' Administration, and eight other smaller agencies.
Six functional categories of the budget comprise the bulk of the bill. They are: commerce and transportation; community and regional development; income security; general science, space and technology; natural resources, environment and energy; and veterans' benefits and services.
The appropriations in this bill are generally consistent with the recommendations of the Budget Committee in connection with the concurrent resolution adopted in May. But a few comments are needed in regard to the functional targets affected by the bill.
The first point relates to section 8 federally assisted housing programs. Compared to the budget proposals of the President, H.R. 8070 decreases budget authority in this area by $25.4 billion. This enormous decrease in budget authority is accounted for principally by a reduction in the administration's budget request for certain multi-year housing programs. Instead of providing budget authority for these programs on a year-by-year basis, the President requested this year all the budget authority possible for the maximum 40-year life of the programs. The result is that the President's budget requested $26.1 billion in budget authority for the section 8 assisted housing program in this fiscal year when, in fact, most of this budget authority will not be used until far into the future. In the meantime, program changes and revised re-estimates may lower the total budget authority required for these programs.
The second point relates to the commerce and transportation function. The bill seems to exceed the budget resolution's target by $5.1 billion in budget authority, although this apparent add-on does not affect the outlay totals anticipated in the budget resolution. The apparent add-on is due to a procedural technicality. Last May when we adopted the budget resolution, the Emergency Housing Act of 1975 had not yet been passed. We expected that it would pass but did not know when that would happen, although we anticipated that it would occur in time for the budget authority to be credited to fiscal year 1975. In the budget resolution for fiscal year 1976, therefore, we made provision only for the outlays expected to be derived from the housing bill and not for any budget authority, which we expected to appear in 1975. Since the bill did not pass until fiscal year 1976 we have now credited this authority to 1976. I want to emphasize that in terms of outlays, H.R. 8070 is consistent with the budget resolution in the commerce and transportation function.
Finally, the last point relates to veterans' benefits and services. H.R. 8070 appropriates $17.8 billion for veterans — approximately two-thirds of the new budget authority included in this bill.
These amounts, taken together with other foreseeable spending, will put us over the congressional budget target for veterans' spending. If my colleagues will turn to page 37 of this week's Senate budget scorekeeping report, which displays the veterans' benefits and services spending targets, they will see that the congressional budget targets for that function are $18.0 billion in authority and $17.5 billion in outlays. Our budget resolution accepted the administration's anticipated upward re-estimates of $0.7 billion for mandatory spending programs, one-half of what these re-estimates have turned out to be. So, we have received $18.1 billion in Presidential requests to date, which include $1.4 billion in recent budget amendments — re-estimates of $1.2 billion for readjustment benefits, plus $0.2 billion for compensation and pensions.
Today's bill contains $17.8 billion for veterans, leaving $0.3 billion which is covered by other appropriation bills. If we assume that the $0.3 billion will be appropriated, we will reach a new figure for budget authority of $18.1 billion, which exceeds our target by $0.1 billion.
In addition, the table shows mandatory spending authority from previous years of $400 million which would bring budget authority up to a level of $18.5 billion, or $500 million over the target set in the first concurrent resolution. This figure allows for funding of none of the additional congressional initiatives in the veterans' area which have either passed both Houses or are now pending and which would add another $700 million. Because of all of these factors the Congress may need to take another look at the veterans' target, as well as other targets which have been affected by re-estimates. Such a review may or may not lead to a decision to exceed any of the targets, but is clearly required because of substantial underestimation by the executive branch of mandatory spending in the President's budget.
May I make this point, in addition, that, even at the time of the first concurrent budget resolution, we were aware of underestimates in mandatory spending in the President's budget, which made it possible for him to hold to a $60 billion deficit.
The distinguished Senator from Oklahoma, Senator BELLMON, the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, supported me in this effort. We undertook to point out those underestimates to the Senate when we made the comparison between the President's deficit figure and the congressional deficit figure.
We were not able to make much of an impact with that point, and I am including the press. Even today, we still hear about the $7 billion or $8 billion difference between the President's deficit and the congressional deficit, with no mention of the magnitude of underestimates in mandatory spending programs. The re-estimates of $1.4 billion for veterans' programs is a good example of this situation.
I want to stress that these underestimates originate in the executive branch, yet we on the Senate Budget Committee try to anticipate what they might be but we have not really been able to develop that kind of insight.
There are those who say that we ought to eat these underestimates by cutting back on other programs in order to absorb the amount of money that is involved. To do that would—
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
Mr. PROXMIRE. I yield the Senator an additional 2 minutes.
Mr. MUSKIE. To do that in many cases would have the effect of eliminating worthwhile programs wholly as the result of pressure from an unforeseen source of budgetary procedure.
Mr. PROXMIRE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. MUSKIE. Yes. I yield.
Mr. PROXMIRE. I commend the Senator, the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, for bringing this to the attention of the Senate. I think it is another indication of the great significance of the Budget Committee, which helps all of us in the Senate to take a fiscally responsible position, to know what we are doing.
The fact is that as to the bill that we just passed, as far as the Veterans' Administration is concerned, we are under the budget by about $7 million. The increase over the original budget estimate which we provided is only what is required by entitlement. So we had no discretion whatsoever except with regard to this request for an additional $13.1 million for sending out education and pension checks, and so forth.
The point is, as I understand the Senator from Maine, that the administration has badly underestimated the demand in these programs and what is going to happen under the entitlement. There is nothing the Committee on Appropriations could do, in fact, nothing the Senate could do, or Congress could do, to hold it down, but the estimates have been, one might say, far too optimistic, because they estimated we would require far less than we did. Is that correct?
Mr. MUSKIE. The Senator has put his finger on the point. With respect to those items in the budget that were controlling, the Committee on Appropriations is within the budget figures. With respect to these uncontrollable items, we are caught in the pressure of underestimates that originated in the executive branch.
Mr. President, that concludes what I wanted to say at this time.
I thank my good friend from Wisconsin for giving me the opportunity to make the point. I really think it is essential to give the Senate as much information as we can on what is involved in this budgetary process if we are to earn the support and the confidence of the Senate.