Page 12558
April 30, 1975
CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET DETERMINATION
The Senate continued with the consideration of the concurrent resolution (S. Con. Res. 32) relating to a determination of the congressional budget for the U.S. Government for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 1975.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I am happy to yield 5 minutes to the Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. DOMENICI. I thank my distinguished chairman.
Mr. President, I was listening when our distinguished chairman indicated quite forcibly that he and the distinguished Senator from Oklahoma, the ranking member of the Budget Committee, would be here throughout the year as appropriation matters came before the Senate. That is, as outlay bills came to the Senate, to call to the attention of the Senators and the people, obviously, the real facts about the relevancy of the ongoing budgetary process and our ceiling.
I would say to our distinguished chairman and ranking member that, of course, they started last year on this process, and to look into this year obviously required tremendous courage to even undertake the optional chore for this year, for we did not have to do anything.
Not by way of complaint but just by way of looking at it, I think hindsightedly I wish we had been even more bold and had gone ahead and accepted the challenge that is ours by mandate for next year and set the functional guidelines and limits as part of the resolution.
I know that for a period last year, we looked into this year as an almost impossible chore. But, as a matter of fact, we did a pretty good job of analyzing those functional categories and setting their ceilings as we saw fit. When we added them up, that was our outlay figure.
I was pleased to hear the Senator say that he would be here to talk about the abuses that might occur which might bring the U.S. Congress unwittingly at the end of the budgetary process, say as late as November, with an outlay figure of $10, $12, or $14 billion in excess of this.
I might say to my distinguished chairman and ranking member I have grave concern as to how the chairman and Senator BELLMON, and others on the Budget Committee – and I join you in saying "I will do that" – will do it very effectively. I think we ought to talk about that a little bit today.
We know our functional limitations are not binding on anyone. But it appears to me that it is our responsibility, and I hope that our Appropriations Committee will consider it their responsibility, to have a running total during the year, comparing the appropriation bills to some benchmark figures. I hope the benchmark figures they choose are those that we set in our functional areas.
Even if they choose to say, "They are not binding on us this year," it appears to me that there should be some mechanical means of relating the budget bill and the appropriations bills which come to us. Few of them are limited to one functional area, as the chairman well knows, and most of them cover two, three, and some four functional areas. I hope we will find a way, and that the Appropriations Committee will join us in relating mechanically what is in those appropriation bills to this as a benchmark. I hope that is what our distinguished chairman had in mind when he said that he would be here to remind the Senate and to remind the people if we are indeed going to reach no more of an outlay than that which we agree upon, whether it is agreed upon now or in the second concurrent resolution.
I have been here only a few years, Mr. President, but it seems to me that if do not do that, then what we will be doing is what we have done all these years. I can see in a short 2 years and 3 months where we have had a distinguished Senator come to the floor with a resolution saying, "It is the sense at the Senate that we not spend more than" – and we put a figure in. I remember one at $295 billion. Then we all join in saying we are for that. We send out to America that the Senate has voted a sense-of-the-Senate resolution that we will not spend more than $295 billion.
But that was the one and only time that a majority of the Senators voted for that kind of limitation. On all other appropriation matters they are free to pick and choose, and they are free to not relate one to another. When the year ends and it is $20 billion more than that, they are free to play games with America and with their constituents by saying "l voted against one and for another" and "It was not my fault that it came out $20 billion over for I supported the "$295 billion resolution."
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. DOMENICI. Will the Senator yield another 3 or 4 minutes?
Mr. MUSKIE. I yield another 4 minutes.
Mr. DOMENICI. I thank the Senator.
I do hope, Mr. President, that those who read the RECORD of our proceedings, those who read the chairman's answer to Senator DOLE'S proposal that we cut, clearly understand that neither our figure nor his figure, if it were adopted, nor a figure with $3 billion more or $4 billion more for outlays is going to be effective unless we use some kind of system to relate the various appropriation bills that are going to come before us to benchmark figures and have a running total. We know the Budget Reform Act will give that to us next year and, indeed, it will mandate the CBO to do it for us. If we do not, then I do not think it is very relevant whether we adopt the cut of the Senator from Kansas today, or whether we adopt our $365 billion. I believe our distinguished chairman will agree with me that in difficult times like these everyone has a proposed solution to the problem, a proposed solution which costs money.
There are pending in authorizing Committees innumerable approaches to solving the problem of housing; the problem of more public works, and, as the distinguished chairman knows, the countercyclical needs of our counties or States. The list can go on and on and on. Many of those will get out of the Appropriations Committee and will appear before this body without any relevance to what we have considered. I just hope that this year's first effort does not turn out to be a charade because the process has great promise for the future.
I am extremely concerned that, after all of this effort, if we go $10 billion of $15 billion over the outlays by the time we finally send everything to the President, even if it be after the second concurrent resolution, we will have diminished the capacity which is so inherent this committee, the capacity for some prioritizing, some real macroeconomics and some real feeling by Congress
of what it is doing, not only 1 year at a time but over a 3- or 4-year period.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. DOMENICI. I am delighted to yield.
Mr. MUSKIE. Clearly, as the Senator has suggested, discipline in this process only begins now. Whether it will work depends on what happens down the road.
In a sense, an amendment such as the Dole amendment, if adopted, could well undercut the possibilities of imposing this discipline. If what we require here as the result of our votes is an outlay ceiling that is unrealistically low and has the effect of cutting into what a majority of the Senate might subsequently feel is cutting into muscle and not just fat, then the disposition to brush aside the totals we adopt will be greater.
What we undertook to do was take a realistic view of what the requirements are in the light of current services, current spending, the pressures of the economy upon individual citizens, and so forth, in order to come up with a realistic figure.
The argument for the Dole amendment with respect to cutting $3 billion out of $365 billion is that surely there is some way to find that money. But that represents a part of the flexibility that made it possible for Senators to oppose different cuts in defense or to oppose deeper cuts in income security programs, and so forth. It is that kind of discipline that I think the Senator has in mind when he says that we have to monitor this. We do have that responsibility. Many of these costs are not within our control. Unemployment climbs. The cost of unemployment compensation programs is going to rise without the Budget Committee of Congress doing a thing about it, and that will have the effect of pushing the spending ceiling up. Or, if interest costs rise, the cost to the Federal Government will go up.
We have to bear those matters constantly in mind as we consider the controllable outlay figures associated with a particular program.
Mr. DOMENICI. I ask the chairman, is it not going to be impossible to monitor unless we use our functional totals at least as benchmarks from which to draw conclusions and to discuss it publicly in terms of the current relationship of the process to something? Will we not have to use them as basic benchmarks?
Mr. MUSKIE. I think so; certainly not in the mandated sense that they will be next year, but in the sense of calling attention to the consequences of not following these benchmarks.
I think we have to try to force the Senate to be consistent. When it increases a functional total above the numbers that we use, then that should be offset by a decrease somewhere or a deliberate decision to increase spending.
Mr. DOMENICI. I thank the Senator.
Mr. BELLMON. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. DOMENICI. I yield.
Mr. BELLMON. Mr. President, I commend the Senator for raising this point.
As a member of the Appropriations Committee as well as a member of the Senate Budget Committee, it is my intention to help our chairman monitor the progress of appropriations bills through the Senate, and particularly to be in position, on the Appropriations Committee, to call attention to the functional levels of spending that the Budget Committee has contemplated in our present resolution.
I believe I can say that based upon the observations I have made of the actions of the Appropriations Committee since our Budget Committee started to function, we are going to have a high level of cooperation from the Appropriations Committee, which I think will be very helpful and beneficial to this whole process.
Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. BELLMON. I yield the floor.
Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I stress again that I believe strongly in the committee and the process, and I hope I have said nothing that would indicate otherwise.
Adoption of the amendment simply would reduce the deficit from $67.2 billion to $65 billion – if we use the Budget Committee figures, which I think are fairly realistic. It would reduce the administration's forecast deficit from $59.6 billion to $57.4 billion. In essence, that is what the amendment would do.
I repeat that we have had across-the-board cuts and additions on a function-by-function basis. This is not across the board. I recognize that we cannot cut the amount of interest paid on the national debt and certain other programs. But I believe that it would get us back from conference with about the same figure the Budget Committee has now, $67.2 billion.
Mr. BELLMON. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. DOLE. I yield.
Mr. BELLMON. In the interest of preserving the process, would the Senator be interested in withdrawing his amendment?
Mr. DOLE. No. I want to strengthen the process, I say to the Senator from Oklahoma. We can preserve it by defeating my amendment. We can strengthen it by adopting my amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will now proceed to vote on the amendment of the Senator from Kansas. On this question the yeas and nays have been ordered, and the clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
The result was announced – yeas 33, nays 62, as follows:
[Roll call vote tally omitted]
So Mr. DOLE’s amendment was rejected.