April 29, 1975
Page 12319
CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET DETERMINATION
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the Senate will now proceed to the consideration of Senate Concurrent Resolution 32, which will be stated by title.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
A concurrent resolution (S. Con. Res. 32) relating to a determination of the Congressional Budget for the United States Government for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 1975.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following members of the staff of the Committee on the Budget have the privilege of the floor during consideration of and votes on Senate Concurrent Resolution 32:
Douglas Bennet, John McEvoy, Arnold Packer, Sid Brown, Marc Lackritz, Steve Browning, Rodger Schlickeisen, Ira Tannenbaum, Dennis Sachs, Mike Joy.
Robert Boyd, Bruce Thompson, Franklin Jones, David Blackburn, William Stringer, Bert Carp, Hal Gross, Susan Kinsman, Bill Jackson, Nik Edes, Jon Steinberg.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. MUSKIE. I yield myself such time as I may need.
Mr. President, today we test the new Budget Act for the first time.
The results will say a lot about Congress' ability to manage the Nation's future.
For the Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 is not a bookkeeping tool. It is a policy instrument that gives us new control over the direction America takes.
It enables us to say indeed, it requires us to say – how America's resources will be used.
How much shall we spend? How much can we afford?
How much shall we tax? How big will the public sector be?
Will the transition from energy plenty to energy scarcity be smooth or rough?
How and where shall we invest today to meet the energy needs of tomorrow?
Who will bear the heaviest burden?
What challenges does the world hold for us after Vietnam? How much shall we invest in arms?
How much in trade development? How much in intelligence? How much in diplomacy?
Where shall we encourage Americans to live; in cities or in suburbs, or in rural America?
How much for education?
How much for health; for research; or disease prevention; or hospitals; or doctor training; or clean water and clean air?
Shall we do all of these things, knowing that it will mean not doing something else?
How can we insure 200 million Americans a better life tomorrow, and next year, and for generations?
We will not address all of these issues this year.
We are taking only a first step; we will determine how much we mean to spend altogether, without voting on how we mean to divide the pie.
But we are launching a process which hopefully will serve us all in future years, when these issues are more starkly drawn and when the decisions will, therefore, be much harder.
Why start now?
The act would permit us to put off this concurrent resolution for another year, and this debate and the discipline it implies. But the state of the Nation will not.
If we did not have a means of matching total spending with economic need this year, we would want one.
If we did not have an instrument for making overall fiscal policy and monetary policy judgments; if we did not have a way to total up spending programs before we make commitments rather than after we make them, then we would be searching for one.
For Congress must now shape a recovery program that will help pull the United States out of the worst recession in a generation.
This year, the public looks to Congress for assurance on two counts. People want an end to the harsh cycles of recession and inflation that have dominated the economy for a decade. They want help for people who are suffering because the economy has faltered.
So writing the Federal budget this year is more than a dry exercise in cost accounting. The costs this year are counted not only in dollars, but in the fears and needs of millions of wage earners who leave their families in the morning on their way to unemployment lines, not to jobs.
The act requires the Budget Committee to spell out every year at this time the levels of revenue and levels of outlay for the next fiscal budget, and to describe the size of the surplus or deficit that those levels would produce. Even without the function-by-function allocations which the Budget Committee will report in future years, these overall totals will have enormous significance for America's fiscal policy.
The act requires the Senate to take action on those recommendations at least twice – once in May, to give standing committees a financial target toward which to work; and once in September, to confirm these levels of outlay, or adjust them in light of changed economic conditions. Resolutions to adjust the totals may be introduced at any time that changing national needs dictate changes in the budget, and the Budget Committee will certainly report again before September if conditions deteriorate beyond what we anticipate in our present resolution.
The committee believes that the revenues which will be produced by existing tax laws – including the tax reductions which Congress approved last month – are at an appropriate level: $297.8 billion.
We recommend outlays of $365 billion. It is the judgment of most members of the committee that the deficit which this budget calls for – $67.2 billion – is not only inevitable but necessary.
The deficit contemplated by the committee's proposal is not significantly different from that which would result from the administration budget. But there are major differences in emphasis. Some money which the administration would spend for defense, for example, can be moved into programs that will help families buy food and clothing. Some money which would have been sent abroad can be invested here at home to develop resources for the future. The committee's proposal allows for $4.5 billion in emergency antirecession programs including the Emergency Employment Appropriations Act passed last week.
The Budget Committee did not endorse that deficit easily. I think it is fair to say that the size of the deficit dominated the final markup sessions that led to this resolution.
But the deficit is a recession deficit, not a spending deficit. With full employment, this budget would product a modest surplus. But we do not have full employment, and the deficit is a direct consequence. The recession will take more than $200 billion out of the pockets of Americans in wages and profits in the next fiscal year alone. The Federal share of that loss is about $53 billion in taxes that will not be paid because people are not working and because plants are closed.
The rest of the deficit will result from payments for unemployment insurance and for food stamps and for other programs whose costs are up because of the recession.
This new budget process will pinch. It is supposed to pinch. It is supposed to remind all of us that some of our favorite programs must be funded at levels lower than we want. My colleagues will be reminded many times during this debate of things we cannot do with a $365 billion budget.
I would like to run through a partial list of the things we can do with $365 billion, which is after all, quite a lot of money.
We can provide some income through unemployment insurance and other assistance programs for millions of families in which the breadwinners have been laid off. It can help them ride out the recession.
We can pay the hospital and doctor bills of the elderly and of low-income families which cannot afford medical care.
We can increase the checks of social security pensioners to help offset the rising cost of living.
We can help thousands of youngsters start and finish college. We can hire unemployed workers to rehabilitate the Nation's railroads and repair veterans' hospitals.
We can support space programs, buy land which is needed for parks, and finance energy research.
And we can pay for a strong defense force that will protect the Nation's interests.
Could the Federal Government spend less, Mr. President? Not when the very economic stability of the Nation is at stake. The Budget Committee's near-unanimous judgment is that we cannot spend less and still help millions of unemployed workers and their families weather the worst recession in a generation. We cannot spend less and still meet our commitments in national defense, transportation, and other programs.
Why cannot the budget be balanced? The surest way to turn a serious recession into a real depression would be to cut spending drastically or increase taxes drastically. Either way, the amount of purchasing power in the economy would decline still further. As Charls W. Walker, former Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Department in the Nixon administration, told the committee during hearings, the Federal Government tried to balance its budget in 1931. As Mr. Walker put it:
They raised the taxes and they further exacerbated the deflationary pressures and incomes dropped and profits dropped and it just did not work.
Is the spending target high enough, Mr. President? Nobody can answer that question with absolute certainty now. As I told the Committee on the Budget, I would have preferred a bigger investment in temporary recovery programs, such as emergency revenue sharing to help cities and States which are losing income because of the recession. I believed we could do more now to fight unemployment without risking renewed inflation, but the committee wanted to move one step at a time, and I support that decision. If unemployment continues to rise as sharply in the next few months as it has in recent months, the committee will consider another resolution to adjust the spending target to meet the changing needs.
Is the pattern of spending appropriate? In future years, spending targets for each function of Government will appear in the concurrent resolutions. This year we have put them in the report only, where they serve as benchmarks which should help the Senate stay within the overall spending totals we recommend.
The committee has moved about $4 billion from the President's budget for defense and international affairs to programs that will help people cope with the recession and inflation. It has added to that some $4.5 billion in temporary recovery outlays. It would not be possible to produce a pattern that would satisfy every Member of the Senate or even of the committee on the budget.
I am persuaded that this budget and its deficit represent the figures which the Budget Act requires the committee to recommend – the appropriate levels of income and outlay. It is not a perfect document. It does not fully reflect the views of every member of the committee. To do that, it would call simultaneously for higher and lower levels of spending on defense. It would leave room both for increases and decreases in existing programs. The deficit would at once be larger and smaller. But it is a budget on which a substantial majority of members of the committee could and did agree.
Is the deficit inflationary? Not when the Nation's economy is operating at a level so far below capacity. This proposed budget will provide between $50 and $75 billion in stimulus. The economy is more than $200 billion below par. Even with this budget, there will be slack in the economy.
I want to emphasize an important feature of this budget which should allay fears of more inflation in the future. A number of witnesses urged the committee to approach this resolution as though it were preparing two budgets. One budget would cover permanent programs which would be required regardless of economic conditions – education, health, defense, social security and transportation. The other would be a budget designed to support temporary recovery programs, such as public service jobs. Although the line between the two cannot always be clearly drawn, our total figure is the result of just such a two-budget approach.
The money which is allocated to basic programs has been increased over fiscal 1975 by just about enough to make up for the effect of inflation. The base budget is about $345 billion. The remainder of the budget is devoted to temporary spending programs that will disappear as unemployment drops and the economy is restored to a pattern of stable growth.
One reason, Mr. President, for the two-budget approach is to assure that outlays for permanent programs this year do not lock Congress into an unrealistic base for shaping the fiscal 1977 budget. Another reason is that it will be of some help to Congress in tracking the budget and other budgets to guard against spending more than the economy can absorb without creating new inflationary pressures.
I am not going to claim that the Budget Committee has solved that very difficult problem. The record as brought out in our hearings and seminars is clear that fiscal and monetary decisions over the past decade often came too late to be effective. In the past 2 years, the policy decisions have simply been wrong, based on a misreading of the real state of the economy. The Budget Committee had that history very much in mind when it drafted this resolution and report.
In my opinion, this budget will meet present needs as we perceive them at this time, and still take fully into account the need to avoid creating problems for the future. I would neither raise nor lower the ceiling the committee recommends. As I have said, if conditions change and a new resolution seems necessary, we will promptly report a new resolution.
Mr. President, the Senate Budget Committee has been gingerly feeling its way into a whole new field of congressional responsibility. I want to congratulate and thank every one of my colleagues for the patience and imagination they have displayed.
Each of us has had to watch cuts made in areas we hold dear. Each of us has agonized over the question of where true fiscal responsibility lies.
While our product may not be as complete as it will be in future years, I put it before the Senate with pride and confidence.
I want to thank every other committee for the cooperation they have given us in advising us of their needs and recommendations, and in understanding why we make the recommendations now before the Senate.
And finally I commend this new process to each of my colleagues. Some of it will seem complicated at first. The pinch of fiscal realism will frustrate them as it has the members of the Budget Committee.
But as our debate progresses, I believe each of us will find himself getting a handle on the real choices before this Nation.
I believe our debate will set a positive and useful precedent for future years.
I believe it will help restore public confidence in America's economic future.
And I believe it will show that our budget reform makes as much sense in practice as it does on paper.
I close finally, Mr. President, by expressing my appreciation to the staff of this committee. The staff is made up of a core staff of professionals who fully serve every member of the committee, regardless of party. I think their performance has been of the highest conceivable professional standard, under the pressure of inadequate time, in learning to live with each other and the committee, as well as to organize themselves and their ideas.
The other part of the staff is made up of the professional assistants which the Senate has provided for every member of the committee, and I must compliment them as well on fitting into what I suspect has been a frustrating role, the work of the committee as a whole. My impression of the staff, both the core staff and the aides of the Senators on both sides of the party line, has been that they regard themselves as members of a unit – the Senate Budget Committee – whose responsibility is to present this kind of report to the Senate as a whole.
I now yield, with full appreciation, to my good friend from Oklahoma, the ranking Republican member of the committee, with my personal thanks for his extensive cooperation.
Before I do that, I wish to make a unanimous-consent request, the necessity for which I find incredible. I ask unanimous consent to use hand calculators on the Senate floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. FORD). Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. MUSKIE. I understand that the rules are so ancient and esoteric that the ability to use these calculators except by unanimous consent seems to be in doubt. I asked whether or not I could use my fingers without unanimous consent – I assume that that is the original hand calculator – and there seems to be doubt on that score, too.
I yield to the Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a unanimous-consent request?
Mr. BELLMON. I yield.
Mr. DOLE. I ask unanimous consent that Jim Wells and Bob Downen of my staff have the privilege of the floor during the consideration of Senate Concurrent Resolution 32.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BELLMON. Mr. President, I would first like to congratulate our distinguished chairman, the Senator from Maine, on the excellent statement he has just made. This is entirely consistent with the extraordinary job he has done so far as chairman of the Budget Committee. During months of hearings and the lengthy deliberations on this resolution, the Senator has been incisive, thorough, tough, and fair, and has led the committee to the introduction of this resolution, which I hope the Senate will support overwhelmingly.
I would also like to join the Senator from Maine in complimenting the staff. The staff has had a difficult job in getting organized under the pressure of time which the committee has faced, to get this resolution in shape for consideration. They have met these challenges, have had a high degree of expertise, and have been invaluable to the committee members as we considered this measure.
Mr. President, the Senate today is embarking upon a historic new procedure as we undertake to establish a more responsible method of managing the fiscal affairs of our Nation. If this venture succeeds – and it must succeed – it will usher in a new era of better informed decisionmaking by the Congress. It will mark the beginning of the careful weighing of the relative worth of various governmental activities so that a proper balancing of available resources with recognized need can be achieved. While today is the first time the attention of the full Senate has been directed toward the budgeting process, many months of work has already gone into this effort by the members and the staff of the Budget Committee. Both members and staff have worked tirelessly and constructively in the preparation of the First Concurrent Resolution on the budget which is now before us.
Mr. President, I would now like to address what I feel are the central issues as regards the overall implications of the Federal budget – the issues of inflation and unemployment.
This resolution contains the Budget Committee recommendations for an overall spending limit for fiscal 1976, our best estimate of Federal revenues and necessarily a recession-induced deficit which the committee believes represents the maximum amount of stimulation our economy can tolerate without rekindling the recent destructive inflation. There are, of course, those on the committee and those in the Senate who believe we can and should do more to stimulate the economic recovery. Likewise, there are those on the committee and in the Senate, myself included, who, while recognizing the need to provide economic stimulation and to reduce unemployment, believe that spending priorities must be set and followed. Fiscal restraint must be used to avoid the mistakes of the past. We cannot afford another dangerous round of inflation with the inevitable and probably more severe recessionary correction which would follow.
Inflation is the result of excesses in our economy that ultimately are corrected by a recession. These excesses themselves are partly the result of past spending practices of the Federal Government. We are all familiar with the basics of Keynesian economics. Specifically, we have been quick to sponsor his ideas of deficit spending. We have, unfortunately, ignored the second portion of his rules which states that deficits incurred in recession years should be retired by budget surpluses in boom years. The budget is supposed to act as a brake on both sides of the cycle, thereby smoothing it. Our budget has been in deficit 14 out of the last 15 years. What we have done in the past is remove the brake on the upside of the cycle.
Admittedly, the expansion that results initially is quite pleasant for everyone. However, we are now paying the price for our excesses. The price is the most severe recession since the 1930's.
Sadly, the vast majority of the blame for these excesses and the current recession must be attributed to our past fiscal irresponsibility. Congress has no one to blame but ourselves.
My concern, however, is not with allocating blame; it is with seeing that we do not repeat the same mistakes. We must realize that we have limited resources and that all our problems cannot be solved at once. We must set spending levels and priorities which reflect national needs and live with them. More importantly, these spending priorities must be set in light of budget revenues. We must say to the American people that, while we recognize the problems, we also recognize that we will create more and worse problems in the future if we do not begin to enforce discipline through the budgetary process. This is why the work of the Budget Committee and the Congress on establishing levels of spending is of such vital importance.
Our most crucial duty to the American people is to deal responsibly with our current problems and those problems that may arise in the foreseeable future. This requires that we concern ourselves not only with current problems, but also the longer term effects of our current solutions. It requires that we discard our short-term approach to problem solving and replace it with an approach that also emphasizes the future results. To do otherwise is to shirk our duty.
As our committee's hearings progressed, I asked virtually every witness to give me their view as to how our economy reached its present state. Dr. William J. Fellner of the American Enterprise Institute and former member of the Council of Economic Advisers stated the causes most succinctly:
"... governments are strongly tempted to engage in inflationary policies that have a short term political payoff and for which later on a substantial price needs to be paid.
"Also, there is a very strong temptation to embark on spending programs without making the burden explicit, and inflation is a method of not making the burden explicit but letting it develop in a fashion at first unnoticed ...
"Inflationary policies have resulted also from the desire to postpone the unfavorable phases of the business cycle, but postponement led to the situation where the unfavorable phase really comes upon us with vengeance now."
By way of putting these issues in perspective, I would point out that the net budget deficit for fiscal years 1965-74 was $102.9 billion and the net budget deficit now estimated for the 2 fiscal years of 1975-76 – $45-$67 – is $112 billion. I submit that this may be a difficult burden on our credit markets and on our society. This is a matter the Budget Committee considered carefully at arriving at our spending limit.
The unfortunate result of the prospects outlined above is that the unusually large deficits force the Federal Reserve to expand the money supply at high rate for a lengthy period of time. A slower rate of growth in the money supply would result in even higher interest rates which would tend to choke off the recovery. This combination of extreme fiscal and monetary stimulus significantly enhances the risk of renewing inflation. This would, of course, also choke off the recovery. The Budget Committee recommendation has taken into account these dangers. We have also attempted to set levels of stimulus needed to hasten recovery. This will lessen the low revenue impact caused by high unemployment and result in a lower deficit over the long run.
Dr. Fellner's position is that in reality and over a longer time span, there is no tradeoff between inflation and unemployment. That is, it is not axiomatic that if we are willing to accept a higher rate of inflation, we can have less unemployment. Recent events suggest that inflation causes unemployment; that inflation above a moderate rate increasingly exerts depressing effects on our economy. Fortune magazine, in its March 1975 edition, refers to those depressing effects:
Inflation erodes consumer purchasing power and confidence. It causes interest rates to rise, thereby blighting the stock market, depressing the housing industry and expanding corporate borrowing costs. It creates illusory inventory profits on which businesses have to pay nonillusory taxes. It undermines the financial position of companies, such as regulated utilities whose prices rise less rapidly than their costs, etc.
The probable result of inflationary stimulation is a short term reduction of unemployment, followed by a long term increase in unemployment and other unpleasant factors that accompany a severe economic correction.
The simple fact of the matter is that we still, after enduring the pain of severe inflation and while enduring the pain of historically high unemployment, are in danger of beginning a new process of governmental overspending, deficit financing, and overstimulation. I can only urge that we reexamine the recent events and take heed of the lesson that we absolutely must learn.
The Budget Committee has kept this danger in mind and attempted, successfully, I believe, to balance it against the dangers of deepening recession.
The impact of continued deficits is devastatingly inflationary for our economy. This is particularly the case when the monetary expansion required to finance the deficits is considered.
This dual stimulation increases demand for goods at a rate faster than the capacity to produce these goods is increased. The result is upward pressure on the price level. This effect is bad enough, but probably the most unfortunate result is the undermining of the public confidence in Government's ability to cope with economic realities. The restoration of this confidence must be our primary objective. To accomplish this goal we must begin by exhibiting fiscal responsibility.
Once this process has begun, people can begin again to plan with some degree of certainty and we will have begun the journey back to reasonable economic growth and much less inflation. I support the Budget Committee's resolution because I believe it can help reach their objective.
It is my earnest desire that the Committee on the Budget can work to provide this fiscal discipline by forcing us to make hard choices and forcing us to allocate resources in a manner which is designed to yield the maximum benefit. I am equally earnest in admonishing my colleagues on the committee and in the Senate to realize that we cannot continue to spend with little or no regard for revenues. We must consider both sides of the equation.
It is for these reasons that I favor the lowest level of deficit which is consistent with the Federal Government's responsibilities, to paraphrase the Preamble of the Constitution, to provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and endeavor to insure domestic tranquility.
While the establishment of proper levels of spending to attain these goals is an imprecise science at best, the levels recommended represent the best judgment of the Budget Committee. These judgments were arrived at after many weeks of testimony from well-informed witnesses – witnesses representing a broad spectrum of economic thought and experience.
Mr. President, the apparent differences between the recommendations of the President and the Budget Committee are not large. If the same assumptions of income and levels of unemployment are used, the differences almost totally disappear. In candor I must say that the assumptions made by the Budget Committee appear to be more realistic at this time than those made by the President at an earlier date. Levels of unemployment have continued to rise, reducing prospects for Treasury income and increasing costs of unemployment and welfare programs. Also, the reduced vitality of the energy industry coupled with continued opposition to development of the Outer Continental Shelf reduces the prospects for income from lease sales. Also, there is little prospect for the energy program proposed by the administration ever becoming law.
The Budget Committee has realistically taken these facts into account. I am deeply disappointed that the administration has refused until now to do likewise. When they do, the line the President drew at $60 billion deficit will of necessity be raised to very close to the Budget Committee level of $67.2 billion.
Mr. President, I came into the Senate after serving as Governor of Oklahoma. Oklahoma's constitution wisely requires that our State government operate on a balanced budget. In my opinion the Federal Government should do the same over a period of years. My objective in supporting both the budget process and this resolution is to attain that objective.
The facts are that the present economic difficulty is the direct result of past indiscretions in the levels of Federal spending. Inflation, high interest, reduced consumer confidence, reduced production and high unemployment have resulted, causing the present imbalance between Federal income and outlays.
It would be impractical if not impossible to attain a balanced budget in fiscal year 1976.
However, by achieving a realistic level of economic stimulation, which I feel the Budget Committee resolution does, we can produce a stronger economy and lower level of unemployment making possible a balanced budget within a relatively short time. Once we achieve that objective, the budget process will help Congress avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.
Mr. President, I feel it is significant that while no member of the Budget Committee is completely pleased with this resolution, it was reported out by a vote of 13 yeas and 2 nays. Also, separate views have been entered both by those who would spend more and those who would spend less. The inescapable conclusion must be that the levels recommended by the Budget Committee represent a reasonable and responsible attempt to reach a realistic level of Federal spending for fiscal year 1976.
I urge the adoption of the resolution.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I would like to compliment my distinguished friend from Oklahoma for his excellent statement.
We did not work together to make our statements complementary, but I think that is the way it developed, and I am pleased with the points the Senator selected for emphasis.
At this point, I am delighted to yield to my colleague from the committee, my good friend from Utah, who has given the committee such dedicated, patient, committed attention and good work over the weeks of our labors.
I would like to take this opportunity to say thanks to him, too.
Mr. DOMENICI. Will the Senator yield for a unanimous-consent request?
Mr. MOSS. Yes, l yield for that purpose.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Franklin Jones of the committee staff be granted floor privilege for the remainder of the debate on this resolution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Utah.
Mr. MOSS. Mr. President, the Federal budget is the most important policy document which the Congress considers each year. Through its policy, fiscal, and monetary implications the budget can serve the purpose and causes of progress and enable achievement of national goals and objectives.
The budget is a comprehensive economic, political, and social statement that affects every American.
In considering the first concurrent resolution for fiscal year 1976 and the Budget Committee report, the first to be filed under the budget reform procedures enacted last year, we are pioneering in a new procedure and plowing new ground. I believe the process which the Congress adopted last year, under the Congressional Budget Act, is one of the most significant and positive changes in Government in decades. The Congress has new opportunities in Federal budget making and the policies and programs which flow from it.
As an instrument of the Senate, the Budget Committee has had a unique opportunity to examine and consider the Federal budget.
Testimony of witnesses representing the administration, labor, management, and other public and private sectors and information from a variety of sources were considered. We also received and carefully considered reports of the Appropriations and the several authorizing committees of the Senate in developing the end product.
Developing a budget under the demanding requirements of the Budget Act provides an enlightening and sobering experience. It manifests the foresight and wisdom of the Congress in enacting this budget process for control of the Federal budget. In considering the budget as a whole, to develop the concurrent resolution, the committee was given a mountaintop view – perspective – and I am pleased to have been a participant in the process as a member of the committee.
This was not an easy year for budget making. Rejecting a meat cleaver approach to budget cutting and avoiding inaccurate if politically useful revenue projections, the committee's initial effort proceeded well and resulted in the development of an effective and responsible product for the consideration of this body.
Included in its first concurrent resolution are recommendations on the following five items: First, total budget authority; second, total budget outlays; third, total Federal revenues; fourth, amount of Federal deficit; and fifth, changes in the public debt. These parts dovetail together and logically should be considered as integral parts of a total package if the end product is to be sound.
In future, the concurrent resolution will specify totals for each functional category of Government programs as well as the overall ceiling which appears in this year's resolution. Functional targets are not specified this year, partly to give all committees and Members more time to become familiar with the new budget process and partly to allow Congress flexibility in devising an economic program. I believe the report's discussion of programs by function is useful as a guide to what the Nation can afford this year and what it cannot.