June 11, 1976
Page 17654
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I understand that a conference has taken place on the floor with respect to the item that the Senator from Alabama and the Senator from Minnesota (Mr. HUMPHREY) have been discussing. There are budgetary implications that we should discuss and make a record on, because I gather that what the Senate eventually will face is a conference report that will contain the same item.
Mr. HUMPHREY. That is correct.
Mr. MUSKIE. So I think it still would be useful to clarify this item from the budget point of view and have the record made now, so that Senators will know what the budget implications are. I shall explain the matter, and then I will ask the Senator from Minnesota for his response and his reaction to it.
During markup, the Committee on Foreign Relations added $85 million for countries of central and southern Africa. This amount had not been anticipated by the Committee on Foreign Relations in its March 15 report to the Committee on the Budget, and it was not assumed in Congress' first budget resolution for fiscal year 1977, and it was not a part of the President's original budget. Consequently, the pending bill is $100 million in budget authority over the target set in function 150.
Let me emphasize that. This item was not in the President's budget and it was not in the congressional budget; it was related to an event or events that took place after the submission of the President's budget and after the adoption of the congressional budget resolution. The report of the Committee on Foreign Relations makes this very clear.
Mr. HUMPHREY. The Senator is absolutely correct on those matters.
Mr. MUSKIE. What I am saying is not intended as a criticism of the committee at all.
With respect to the President's budget, on May 25 the Office of Management and Budget Director, James T. Lynn, sent me a letter acknowledging the provision of the Foreign Relations Committee in this connection, in which he said that the President supports enactment of legislation to provide $85 million for Zaire, Zambia, and other south African countries.
I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Lynn's letter be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET,
Washington, D.C.,
May 25, 1976.
Hon. EDMUND S. MUSKIE,
Chairman, Committee on Budget,
U.S. Senate,
Washington, D.C.
DEAR MR. CHAIRMAN: Section 501 of S. 3439, the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976-1977, contains provisions which authorize 1977 appropriations of $85 million for additional aid to Zaire, Zambia, and other southern African countries. The President supports enactment of legislation to provide $85 million in supporting assistance for these countries and will transmit a budget amendment for this purpose.
Sincerely yours,
JAMES T. LYNN, Director.
Mr. MUSKIE. We now have from the President a budget submission which we did not have in the budget and which Congress had not received when the congressional budget resolution was adopted.
Mr. HUMPHREY. Again, the Senator recites the facts correctly.
Mr. MUSKIE. It is, of course, the prerogative of the President to submit amendments to his budget at any time in the course of a year, and Congress has some responsibility to respond.
So this $85 million takes on these dimensions:
The money was not in Congress budget or in the President's original budget. The new congressional budgetary process is flexible enough, I think, to respond to new developments, as it did last fall, following the Sinai accord. But unless we decide to increase the budget total at some point down the line, or unless other requirements change in the national defense or international affairs functions, it will be necessary to assume that if we approve this $85 million, adjustments in other programs will be necessary to accommodate the new African money.
Mr. HUMPHREY. I understand.
Mr. MUSKIE. At this point, another disturbing fact is that details of how the $85 million will be spent are sparse. We have in the record already such details as are available, and I will not belabor that; but those details will later be available to the Committee on Appropriations, I assume.
Mr. HUMPHREY. We have made that very clear to the Department of State and the OMB, that those details must be made clear.
Mr. MUSKIE. Then Congress will have that information and the benefit of that information before it acts finally on the appropriations which will implement this authorization bill.
Mr. HUMPHREY. The Senator is correct. The legislative history of several days ago, when we commenced debate on this measure, so indicated.
Mr. MUSKIE. I understand. My last point is this: This $85 million is a one shot requirement. It cannot be construed as anything more than that. It is not seed money for an African Marshall Plan or Alliance for Progress.
Mr. HUMPHREY. I say again to the Senator from Maine that in my discussion of this amount, I stated categorically what the Senator has just said, that this does not in any way prejudge any further commitments, that this is an $85 million request for fiscal year 1977, period.
Mr. MUSKIE. Those are the points I wanted to emphasize, Mr. President. Mr. President, the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act (S. 3439) authorizes appropriations for security assistance and related programs for fiscal year 1976, the transition
quarter, and fiscal year 1977, totaling 6.7 billion in budget authority, and $3.3 billion in current outlays.
This bill contains the same fiscal year 1976 and transition quarter levels which were agreed to by Congress in S. 2662 but were unfortunately vetoed by the President on May 7. My earlier remarks on the fiscal year 1976 and transition quarter authorization levels made in connection with the passage of S. 2662 are in the RECORD, and I shall not repeat them here.
The fiscal year 1977 portion of S. 3439, fully funded, would produce budget authority of $2.8 billion and outlays of 1.2 billion. In the national defense function, the budget authority in the bill is 1.3 billion less than the President's request and $0.1 billion less than the level assumed in the first budget resolution approved by Congress on May 13.
The situation in the international affairs function is more complex. During markup, the Committee on Foreign Relations added $85 million for countries of central and southern Africa. This amount had not been anticipated by the committee in its March 15 report to the Committee on the Budget; it was not assumed in Congress first budget resolution for fiscal year 1977; it was not a part of the President's budget. Consequently, S. 3439 is about $0.1 billion in budget authority over the target set for function 150.
On May 25, 1976, Office of Management and Budget Director James T. Lynn sent me a letter acknowledging the Foreign Relations Committee provision in section 501 of S. 3439 and saying the "President supports enactment of legislation to provide $85 million" for "Zaire, Zambia, and other southern African countries." Mr. Lynn said the President would "transmit a budget amendment for this purpose."
Subsequently, on June 8, the President sent Congress a budget amendment which officially requests this $85 million for Africa.
The dimensions of the additional $85 million in S. 3439 are these:
The money was not in Congress budget or in the President's original budget. The committee's action and the administration's request for central and southern Africa funds came after the congressional budget resolution had been adopted. The new congressional budgetary process is flexible enough to respond to new developments, as it did last fall following the Sinai Accord.
But, unless we decide to increase the budget totals or unless other requirements change, it will be necessary to assume that adjustments in other programs in the international affairs function will be necessary to accommodate the new Africa money.
Details of how the $85 million will be spent are sparse. What is known is that $30 million is for Zaire, $30 million is forZambia, and $25 million is for other southern African countries, such as Botswana, Tanzania, and Mozambique. However, neither the State Department nor AID has provided Congress in-depth details on the actual programing for the money. It appears that much of the money would be available to support friendly governments in this volatile area of the African continent; security supporting assistance normally has a short term political life to it.
I conclude that the $85 million is a one shot requirement and cannot be construed as anything more than that. It is certainly not seed money for an African Marshall plan or Alliance for Progress. Upon his return from his Africa trip, Secretary of State Kissinger told the Committee on Foreign Relations that "the responsibility to assist Africa cannot be a purely American effort, requiring large new outlays." I want to assure the Secretary and the Senate that this is how this Senator, knowing our budgetary priorities and problems, looks at the issue.
Before any of these new Africa funds are appropriated, I believe it is necessary that the administration submit detailed descriptions as to how the moneys will be utilized and administered, and for what purposes. In fact, both the Committees on Appropriations and the Budget should require the full details this summer before the markup of the second concurrent resolution begins.
I reserve the right to review my vote on S. 3439 in light of the details we do not now have regarding the $85 million for central and southern Africa.
The historical relationship between foreign assistance authorization and appropriation is that the appropriation level always runs around 8 to 12 percent lower than that which Congress has authorized. I presume this will be the case for fiscal year 1977.
On balance, I plan to vote for S. 3439. It is a necessary bill. It asserts the role of Congress in developing a rational arms transfer policy. Potential to exceed the first budget resolution assumptions exists; offsetting reductions in other legislation or historical cuts may leave the function totals within the targets.
I commend Senator HUMPHREY for his leadership on the critical arms export and control issues. I appreciate his efforts to work within the budget process, and I note the forthright statement in the report on S. 3439, where the relation between this bill and the budget resolution is clearly stated.
Aside from this $85 million item, the bill before us is consistent with the targets we adopted in the budget resolution. I compliment the distinguished Senator from Minnesota and his associates in the Committee on Foreign Relations for undertaking to do that. I understand, of course, that there are those who think that even what we have provided in the budget resolution is too much money for that purpose, but our function is to tell committees whether or not bills are under the targets in the first budget resolution. This bill is under those numbers, except for this item.
I think, in all candor, that the budget process must be flexible enough for the President to make requests outside of his own budget submissions and for Congress to give them full consideration when it is ready to do so. It is in that spirit that I entered into this colloquy. I appreciate the response of the distinguished Senator from Minnesota.
Mr. HUMPHREY. I thank the Senator from Maine for his observations and for his assistance in this matter. I assure him that we shall try to be as helpful as possible in supplying the details necessary to properly document the support for the funds being authorized.
Mr. MUSKIE. I say to the Senators, including my good friend from Alabama, that I am going to vote for this, reserving the right to change my mind about this item when we have the details and when we have the full budgetary impact of the appropriations to back up this bill.
I think every Senator ought to feel he can reserve that right in light of this development. Otherwise, Presidents would be tempted to send these items up to us at the last minute and expect us to rubberstamp them on the instant without the kind of mature consideration that the budget process envisages. In this instance, I think we do have to give the President's proposal full consideration.
Mr. ALLEN. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. MUSKIE. Yes, I yield.
Mr. ALLEN. As the Senator knows, I oppose the entire $85 million, because I do not believe that the American taxpayer should finance guerrilla activities, subversion, and violence aimed at toppling one of the few stable governments in Africa. I ask the Senator, in which category of foreign aid would the Congressional Budget Committee place this $85 million? Would it come out of economic assistance items, or would it come out of a military assistance item?
Mr. MUSKIE. This $85 million is in the international affairs function. Military assistance would be in the defense function.
Mr. ALLEN. What function would this be in?
Mr. MUSKIE. In the international affairs function; it is regarded as supporting assistance. It is not in the defense function, where we find military assistance.
Mr. ALLEN. The Senator does not have a breakdown of the international assistance? He puts military assistance and economic assistance both into the same category?
Mr. MUSKIE. No, we do not.
Mr. ALLEN. That is why I asked which category is this $85 million to be found in.
Mr. MUSKIE. Let me put it another way. Military assistance is found in the defense function. Supporting or economic assistance is in the international affairs function. This is not military assistance, as I understand it.
Mr. ALLEN. We have this in the military assistance bill.
Mr. HUMPHREY. Mr. President, I beg the Senator's pardon; I regret I was not attentive. Would the Senator repeat that?
Mr. ALLEN. I was trying to identify the type of money, the function or the use to which the money is to be put. Is it economic or military?
Mr. HUMPHREY. It is not for military purposes; it is not for paramilitary purposes; it is not for harboring guerrilla bandits behind borders or engaging in guerrilla activities in other people's countries. It is simply economic assistance, what we call supporting assistance. We have made the record manifestly clear that none of this money shall be used for military or paramilitary purposes.
Mr. ALLEN. I thank the Senator.
Mr. MUSKIE. May I add to that that it is on that understanding that, in the Budget Committees' bookkeeping, we have put this in the international affairs function. I think that might be some assurance to the Senator, because we do not understand the $85 million to be military assistance.
Mr. ALLEN. I appreciate that.
In budgeting the international affairs category, I assume, in arriving at the overall amount in that category, the Senator had to approve certain budgeted figures for certain approaches and he approved those in a given amount to reach an overall total in that particular category. Is that correct or not?
Mr. MUSKIE. Let me say, for 2 years now this is the hardest point I have found to make to Senators, that the Budget Committee is not a line item committee.
Mr. ALLEN. I understand, but how does the committee arrive at that overall figure in that one category?
Mr. MUSKIE. We use, of course, both the executive budget and congressional sources as a basis for evaluating—
Mr. ALLEN. Is it a total of separate items that it approves, separate functions or programs, to get an overall total?
Mr. MUSKIE. It is not. In the defense function, for example, we do not decide how many battleships or how many planes or how much ammunition or how many men. Those are details—
Mr. ALLEN. The committee would notjust come out and say, we are going to allocate $1.5 billion in this program. It has to arrive at that figure by adding up the various program items included in that overall category.
Mr. MUSKIE. Let me try to find a way to explain this more successfully than I have in the past for the Senator from Alabama. Let me explain how the process starts.
It starts, first of all, with the submissions of the President's budget. Second, it continues with March 15 reports, which we get from every committee. In those reports, the committees undertake to inform us what the program needs in their areas of jurisdiction will be.
Third, we get an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office of what we are doing currently; in other words, the current services level of spending for these various functions.
With this information, we also do our own staff analysis of the broad requirements in every function. Our function is to determine the overall ceiling on spending that makes sense in terms of all of this information, in terms of the economic condition of the country, in terms of available revenues insofar as we can project them; then to divide that overall sum among the 17 functions of the Government in an equitable manner, taking into account current requirements, taking into account new proposals, and taking into account — and here we exercise our own balance and judgment as a Committee on the Budget — how to divide the whole pie.
Members of the committee then weigh all this information and make a recommendation to the Senate.
It is true that, with respect to big major programs, we discuss them in committee in considerable detail in order to check our judgment about the overall figure, but we do not add items until we get a total, whether it is to the international affairs function or community development function or the health function and so on. We do, of course, try to understand the major components of each of these functions and make some judgments.
Mr. ALLEN. I am no accountant, but I think that to arrive at a grand total, you would have to add up the various items going to make up that total.
I make no point of that, but the fact is that this $85 million would have to come out of programs and functions thatthe Committee on the Budget has more or less approved in those various amounts. Is that not right?
Mr. MUSKIE. If I were to say that we had done it on a line item basis, I would have a revolution on my hands, with myself confronting every other Senate committee chairman. That is not my function.
Let me discuss international affairs a little more, if I may.
Mr. ALLEN. I am just wondering where the Senator is going to place this $85 million.
Mr. MUSKIE. There are five major components in the international affairs function: economic assistance, supporting assistance, Food for Peace, the cost of conducting foreign affairs — in other words, State Department activity — and Export-Import Bank. Those are the five major functions.
We have a history, when we take up the budget in April and begin to try to put the budget together. So we make judgments about whether or not economic assistance, for example, ought to be continued at that level.
Each Senator in the committee votes whether we are spending too much on international affairs. Maybe he is voting his belief that economic assistance ought to be cut out, or that Food for Peace ought to be cut out, or that the State Department ought to be able to get by on less money, or the Export-Import Bank ought to be spending less. So each Senator's vote may be conditioned by what he thinks ought to be a proper level in these areas. What is done in the Budget Committee is that any Senator who thinks a function ought to be cut or increased, for any reason, offers a number in the total. Then the rest of us look at his amendment in the light of these major areas of the functions and decide whether or not they can be accommodated. We vote on the overall number.
In that process there is a discussion of what would be squeezed out.
Mr. ALLEN. I would think so.
Mr. MUSKIE. What would be in the lower number and what is permitted in the higher number. But we do not, for instance, vote on what countries ought to get economic assistance or what countries ought to get supporting assistance.
Mr. ALLEN. Somewhere down the line, though this $85 million is to be squeezed into the overall total, and the overall total not raised, somewhere along the line the Appropriations Committee then is going to have to adjust some of the present programs.
Mr. MUSKIE. Exactly.
Mr. ALLEN. And take it out of some of the present programs.
Mr. MUSKIE. That is right. That is where the pressure comes, and it is a healthy one because the Appropriations Committee looks at the details.
Mr. ALLEN. So I would think most of the existing programs that we have would be more constructive and better programs than this $85 million program, and yet this $85 million is going to have to come out of presently approved authorized ongoing programs; is that correct?
Mr. MUSKIE. Yes. But may I say — and then I will yield to my good friend from Idaho — that the Appropriations Committee traditionally appropriates less money than is approved in the authorizing legislation. That was true last year, and I know I raised a red flag at the time the authorizing legislation was on the floor, and I said that we cannot approve this number finally as an appropriation without reaching our ceiling. Senator INOUYE looked at those numbers that we gave him and he came back with an appropriation bill that was under. This has been more true of the international affairs function, I think, than almost any other one, the tendencyof the Appropriations Committee to cut below the authorized totals.
Mr. ALLEN. One further comment, and I will then yield. I am very much pleased that the distinguished Senator from Maine (Mr. MUSKIE), the outstanding chairman of the Senate Budget Committee — and I say that advisably because I think he has done an outstanding job — I am glad that he is fearful that this is far from being a one time authorization because we know that Federal programs, once started, mount and mount and mount.
I would say that in all likelihood this $85 million request this year will mushroom to at least twice that next year, and I hope the distinguished Senator will be on guard against that request.
Mr. MUSKIE. We certainly will be and may I say, I made that statement about this being a one shot item only after discussing it thoroughly with Senator HUMPHREY, Senator CLARK, with Senator CASE, and, through them, with the administration, so that there is no doubt.
Mr. HUMPHREY. That is correct, one fiscal year with no commitments beyond that.
Mr. MUSKIE. That is right.
Mr. McCLURE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield? I only wish to make this point, if I may, and I think it is absolutely imperative that the Senate understand the Budget Committee's approach to these problems.
I think the Senator from Maine has stated it very clearly, as clearly as it can be stated, that we are not a line item committee. We certainly do look program by program in order to make some estimate of what the functional total will be, and we can carry that one step further than was indicated before, and that is when, during the authorization and appropriation processes, it looks like there may be precommitment of a larger proportion of that function, we may point to other items that may be coming along later and raise a warning that the functional totals are apt to be exceeded if this action is taken, and then the later action which might be taken comes along anticipated.
But we are not a line item committee, and it is totally within the prerogatives of the authorizing committees and the Appropriations Committees to change the allocations of moneys within the function, even after the concurrent resolution is adopted. That is the prerogative of the authorizing and Appropriations Committees. It is not the prerogative of the Budget Committee to try to do any more than direct a consideration of those line item considerations within the functional total.
Mr. MUSKIE. There is this further discipline involved — and I thank my good friend from Idaho, who is such a valued member of the Budget Committee, for supplementing what I had to say — and probably the real discipline is that we are in position to alert every Senator to the consequences of spending decisions in the light of what was assumed by the Budget Committee so that they can be alert to any upward pressures on spending that would be created by a pending piece of legislation, and when a Senator votes, he is aware of such pressures. If we have done that much then, hopefully, we have done something to bring some discipline around here.
I must say that committees and my individual colleagues in the Senate have responded very well to a growing awareness of the need for this kind of discipline, even though individually we may disagree with some of their votes.