June 26, 1976
Page 20831
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I shall make a brief statement on this bill from the point of view of the Budget Committee.
The bill we are now considering, H.R. 14231, the Interior and related agencies appropriation bill, provides $6 billion in budget authority and $6.2 billion in outlays to fund the Forest Service, the fossil fuel program of ERDA, FEA, and most of the agencies within the Department of the Interior.
I support this bill. It is basically consistent with the assumptions of the first budget resolution. In terms of budget authority, the bill stays well within the amount allocated to the Subcommittee on Interior by the full Committee on Appropriations under section 302(b) of the Budget Act.
In terms of outlays, the bill is $59 million above the amount allocated to the subcommittee. I would like to take a moment to discuss this overage and to point out some additional demands that we may be facing later.
My impression is that this overage is at least in part due to the fact that the Congressional Budget Office reestimated some of the items in the President's budget while the Interior Subcommittee was considering this bill.
Given the outlay level in this bill, the $6.2 billion in budget authority and $2.2 billion in outlays held in reserve for contingencies by the Committee on Appropriations when it made the section 302 (b) allocation to its 13 subcommittees will have to absorb an extra $59 million in outlays.
In addition, supplemental requests for appropriations pertaining to this subcommittee may have to be considered. There are two such supplementals that we know of at this time. The first is a Forest Service firefighting supplemental of approximately $100 million in both budget authority and outlays. Based on past experience, we can expect to need such an amount this year. The second possible supplemental is less certain. It concerns synthetic fuels. If the Congress approves a $4 billion loan guarantee program for synthetic fuels, then a supplemental appropriation of $1 billion in budget authority can be anticipated. There would be no outlays involved for fiscal year 1977.
Together the two supplementals total $1.1 billion in budget authority and $100 million in outlays.
If we were to relate these amounts to the Subcommittee on Interior's section 302(b) allocation, we see that the remaining $700 million in budget authority would be more than used up. We would find ourselves $400 million in budget authority over the amount allocated by the full committee to the subcommittee.
With outlays — where we already exceed the Interior Subcommittee's allocation — the passage of those supplementals would add to the excess over the allocation by $100 million — bringing the total excess of outlays to $159 million.
I make the point that, in discussing this with the distinguished chairman of the committee (Mr. ROBERT C. BYRD), he indicated that the Senate bill is above the House bill and that some of that $159 million could conceivably be picked up in conference. That is simply informational and not in any way a commitment, as I understand it. That conceivably could happen.
Does the Senator from Alaska want to comment on that?
Mr. STEVENS. I point out to the Senator from Maine that we have added $130.4 million for the Land and Water Conservation Fund. We have $10 million required by the Buckley amendment for outlays for the Alaska Natives land claims fund. It is true that we are some $59 million over our outlay target. We do not know what our colleagues in the House are going to do on these amendments. I could detail about $100 million more that will be in controversy in the conference. I hope that the chairman will consider the outcome of the conference in comparison to the outlay requirements.
There is a little leeway in both the House and the Senate bill as far as what will happen in conference. I cannot predict, but I assume that we are going to be somewhere between the House and the Senate bill when we finish.
Mr. MUSKIE. I understand perfectly, and I am not trying to anticipate what may happen. I simply indicate that possibility to which the Senator refers.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that, at this point in my remarks, a table showing the effect of funding possible supplementals on the section 302 (b) allocation be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the table was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
[Table omitted]
Mr. MUSKIE. The anticipated Federal pay raise supplemental will use $800 million in budget authority and $700 million in outlays of this contingency reserve. The agriculture appropriation bill which was passed by the Senate earlier this week exceeded that subcommittee's allocation by $100 million in budget authority and outlays. That plus the potential $1.2 billion food stamp supplemental may use another $1.3 billion in budget authority and $1.3 billion in outlays. This leaves $4.1 billion in budget authority and $200 million in outlays remaining in the reserve prior to considering this bill.
But as we have noted, this bill uses $59 million in outlays from the contingency reserve. And if the two supplementals come along and require funds, the reserve will be reduced to $3.7 billion in budget authority and, more importantly, the outlay reserve will be used up entirely. So already we are finding that our flexibility later in the year is apt to be severely limited.
I know that the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee (Mr. McCLELLAN), and the committee's distinguished members realize this and know how tight the outlay situation is for fiscal year 1977.
I hope that my remarks here today will help keep other Members of the Senate aware of how tight the outlay picture is. If we are to stick to the budget targets of the first concurrent resolution, which we adopted only last month, we are going to have to exercise a careful watch on spending, particularly in regard to outlays.
There is one other point I wish to make. I understand that the Committee on Finance has reported, in connection with the debt ceiling legislation, language which has been referred to the Committee on the Budget requiring the Committee on the Budget to reduce, for every dollar departure from the $15.3 billion reduction in revenues, $1 in spending. For those who will be considering that language next week, I ask them to consider the debates that have taken place this week on the appropriations bills that have come before us, including this one. Each of these has been tight. Each of these has been bumping against the ceiling. So any notion that it will be easy to make up any change in revenues by cutting spending, I think, is thrown in considerable doubt by the history of these appropriations bills as they come to the floor.
That is a fine statement of policy that the Committee on Finance would like to have the Senate impose upon the Committee on the Budget. It arises out of a recommendation made by the President last December. Congress rejected it at that time, because we understood, having gone through one year of the budget process, that it is not all that simple. We found it was not with the first budget resolution this year. If we had accepted the President's advice last December, we would have held spending at the $395 billion level. The first concurrent resolution raised that to $412 billion. That represented a cut, not of $28 billion that the President asked for, but of $12 billion, which was the best that the committee and the Congress could do, taking into account all of these pressing needs. Now, when we are asked to reaffirm that policy in the light of the experience we have already had with this budget, in the light of the experience we are having with these individual appropriations bills, I think the Senate ought to focus on the facts and the realities before the Senate casually adopts a repetition of that policy which we have now tried to live with and implement. It is not possible, Mr. President, and I think that it is appropriate to make those observations this morning.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. MANSFIELD. Mr. President, the subcommittee as well as its chairman, the distinguished Senator from West Virginia, (Mr. ROBERT C. BYRD, has been most generous to the State of Montana through its actions on H.R. 14231, the Interior and Related Agencies Appropriations bill for fiscal year 1977.
In particular, I am most grateful for the committee's continued strong support for the Energy Research and Development Administration's national magnetohydrodynamics — MHD — program. I have noted that this bill contains a $37,986,000 appropriation for the nationwide MHD program operating expenses and a $6,700,000 plant and capital equipment appropriation for construction of the Component Development and Integration Facility in Butte, Mont. I urge the committee to stand firm behind the Senate MHD program appropriation in conference with the House. Although this appropriation will keep the program moving ahead, any reduction will hinder the progressive development of this promising coal conversion technology.
Additionally, I have noted the committee's action appropriating $21 million for the national fuel cell program and $5 million for the small grants program for appropriate technology. Along with Senator GLENN, I personally discussed this detail with Senator ROBERT C. BYRD. I strongly support these important conservation programs.
Finally, Mr. President, I would like to explore in more detail committee report language concerning commercial-sized synthetic fuel demonstration plants. I note and support the committee's concern over ERDA's apparent inability to overcome administrative and technical obstacles hindering construction and operation of such demonstration plants at the earliest possible time. The report states that:
The Committee believes that at least one plant from each of the major synthetic fuel areas is needed in order that they can be used as a benchmark against which cost-shared or industry-owned plants can be measured.
I ask my colleague, (Mr. ROBERT C. BYRD) the subcommittee chairman, if the major synthetic fuel areas referred to in the report are liquefaction, high Btu coal gasification, low Btu coal gasification and modular oil shale plant development?
Mr. ROBERT C. BYRD. Mr. President, generally speaking, the distinguished majority leader is correct.
Mr. MANSFIELD. The committee directs ERDA to expeditiously explore alternate processes and approaches, including Government owned contractor operated plants. Is it the committee's intent that ERDA immediately build these demonstration plants using first generation or first generation improved technology in order to shake out the bugs in the process prior to the testing of already planned second generation technology plans which are expected to come on line in the early 1980's?
Mr. ROBERT C. BYRD. It is the intention of the committee to move this along as rapidly as possible, and that is precisely why the language just cited by the Senator from Montana was included in the committee report. It is obvious that ERDA's present schedule will not move this Nation toward a more independent energy posture within what the committee considers a reasonable time. The committee wants to move ahead with this job and we want ERDA to give us a more accelerated schedule.
Mr. MANSFIELD. Is it reasonable that in the testing through this demonstration plant process, particularly in the high Btu coal gasification area, that every attempt should be made by ERDA to build one plant operating on lignite coal and one plant to operate on sub-bituminous coal?
Mr. ROBERT C. BYRD. Mr. President, this would appear to be a good operating policy.
Mr. MANSFIELD. I thank the chairman of the subcommittee.
I am especially pleased to note the report language indicating that existing Federal facilities should be utilized when possible. As chairman of the Military Construction Appropriations Subcommittee, I am acutely familiar with the many Defense Department facilities that have been closed around the country, some for more than 10 years, for which no acceptable reuse has been found. Given such Federal facilities with built-in alleviation for the major socioeconomic impacts associated with the development of a large demonstration plant, located in an area where there is a present or expected critical shortage of a needed energy supply, and provided that the environmental restraints are insignificant, I believe it would be in the best interest of the taxpayer and the technology development that such Federal efforts be coordinated. I hope that the Defense Department and ERDA work closely together so that acceptable reuse may be found for many of the empty Federal facilities across the country.
I thank the committee, especially the distinguished chairman, Mr. ROBERT C. BYRD, and the ranking Republican member, Mr. STEVENS, for their efforts, and I wholeheartedly support passage of H.R. 14231.
Mr. ROBERT C. BYRD. Mr. President,I thank the distinguished majority leader.
May I say that the language in the committee report had been put into the report at the request of the distinguished majority leader, and I would certainly hope and expect ERDA to carry out the recommendations included in the committee report.
Mr. MANSFIELD. Mr. President, I am once again deeply and personally grateful to the distinguished assistant majority leader.
Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I have one amendment. Does the Senator from Arkansas seek time?
Mr. BUMPERS. I wanted to speak on the energy institutes.
Mr. ROBERT C. BYRD. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator such time as he may desire.
Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, several months ago the distinguished Senator from Idaho (Mr. CHURCH) introduced a bill in this body which was considered by the Interior Committee and which was later incorporated into the ERDA authorization bill which we passed yesterday.
The concept of the so-called Church bill was to establish energy institutes in at least one institution of higher learning in virtually every State in the country. The idea was that each State could conserve energy in a very unique way that would be peculiar to that particular State.
I thought the concept had great merit. At about the same time, the distinguished Congressman from the State of Arkansas (Mr. THORNTON) introduced a bill in the House which he referred to as the energy extension bill. I introduced the same bill in the Senate and it was referred to the Committee on Interior.
During hearings over there, and while the distinguished Senator from Idaho was campaigning for President, we held hearings and agreed to coordinate the two, that was, to galvanize the two bills into one. We first called it the Church-Bumpers approach, but while he was gone I changed the name of it to the Bumpers-Church approach.
[Laughter.]
But it was essentially this, that these institutes for energy conservation in the various universities and colleges around the country would impart the benefit of their research to various volunteer and other public agencies to disseminate the information to the homeowners, to the businesses, and to the agricultural interests of the State.
The extension part of this would work almost identically to the way the cooperative Agricultural Extension Service operates. In my State the Department of Agriculture does extensive research particularly in the field of rice, cotton, and soybeans. The information they gain through this research is given to the cooperative Extension Service which, in turn, takes it on a door-to-door basis to the farmers in my State.
I use my State as an illustration because it is the same way in the other 49 States.
Extensive studies on an energy extension concept show that within 24 months the United States, through a massive conservation effort, with the expenditure of a very small amount of money could conserve the equivalency of the Alaskan pipeline.
Less than 15 percent of this appropriation today goes to conservation. Last week this body cavalierly passed an amendment to the FEA extension which will cost the United States $850 million over the next 4 years.
The distinguished Senator from Maine (Mr. MUSKIE), who is chairman of the Budget Committee and who has been ever diligent in trying to keep this body in line in meeting the targets of the first concurrent resolution, and I engaged in a short colloquy at that time in which he said that these giant spending amendments, which we adopt here with very little budgetary restraint, could subsequent to the second concurrent resolution cause some ongoing absolutely vital programs to be subject to a point of order.
I voted against that energy conservation amendment that was offered the other day for a number of reasons, none of them dealing with the merits of that bill, but one that we had not held hearings in our committee, the Banking Committee had not held hearings on it, the Commerce Committee had held virtually no hearings before it reported the bill. So here was a $850 million approach which everybody championed. Who is against conservation?
But the point I am trying to make is I honestly felt that that amendment was another typical throw-money-at-the-problem approach.
Here is a very small, modest program which our committee unanimously adopted and appropriated $25 million for,and which has been cut in half by this appropriation. We authorized $10 million for the energy institute concept and $15 million for the energy extension service.
The distinguished Senator from West Virginia (Mr. ROBERT C. BYRD) and I have had a conversation this morning because I had originally intended to offer an amendment to restore the full amount of the authorization, but he has been most cooperative in agreeing to look at it in another 3 to 4 months from now to see how we are getting along with the program.
The other part that I wanted to restore was the small grants program. If I have one objection to the way the Energy Research and Development Administration is carrying on in solving the energy problems in this country, it is that they see everything in terms of giant technologies. The ERDA authorization bill, which we passed yesterday, carries $6.5 billion in both nuclear and non-nuclear research. As I said a while ago, less than 15 percent — and I think the figure may be less than 10 percent — is dedicated to the area of conservation where we can make the most dramatic impact on fuel problems of this country than in any other area.
So, Senator ABOUREZK, the distinguished Senator from South Dakota, and I championed installing a small grants program within ERDA so that little people in my State and yours would have an opportunity to go to ERDA with applications for significant energy savings programs or even an energy alternative program, and have an opportunity to be heard, because right now everything is in terms of billions to convert coal to fuel, billions for nuclear research, and very little to such things as biomass conversion, wind energy, energy storage.
So, Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from West Virginia for allowing me to say these few things about my philosophical feelings and about the energy problem, to express my very strong feeling about the approach of the small grants program and, more especially, toward the research institutes and extension service.
For us to refuse to appropriate $25 million for a program that could, I am fervently convinced, save this country the equivalent of 2 million barrels of oil per day within 2 to 3 years, seems to me like the classic misplaced programs which we so often adopt here.
I hope that within 3 or 4 months the budget will allow us to reconsider restoring these three very small, highly valuable programs to their full strength. I thank the Senator.
Mr. ROBERT C. BYRD. Mr. President, I fully sympathize with the viewpoint of the distinguished Senator from Arkansas. I too support the conservation programs.
Our problem here is that the authorization bill only passed the Senate yesterday, and the program supported by the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. BUMPERS) are all subject to conference approval.
The request for these funds only reached the attention of the subcommittee on Wednesday evening, the eve of the markup by both the subcommittee and the full committee on Thursday. Yet even in the face of those two facts, the subcommittee and the full committee bent over backward and allowed 50 percent of the proposed authorizations.
The committee has very little information on these programs. Normally, the Committee on Appropriations would hold hearings on newly authorized programs after the enacting authorization has been implemented.
In this case, as I pointed out, the proposed authorization only passed the Senate yesterday, and here we are allowing 50 percent of that proposed authorization in this bill when the committee has not had even the opportunity to conduct a hearing.
And even more serious problems are the budget authority and outlay ceilings. At this point, we are about $50 million over the outlay ceiling, as we discussed earlier.
Looking down the road in anticipation of possible supplementals on Forest Service firefighting, which will probably amount to something like $100 million, and synthetic fuels commercialization, looking at this bill as it stands before us today and anticipating supplemental requests, we are faced with the prospect of being over the outlay ceiling to the tune of $200 million and over the budget authority ceiling to the tune of $400 million.
That is really our basic problem, may I say to the distinguished Senator.
I say to the Senator from Arkansas that I assure him I personally will be glad to take another look at those programs when we take up the supplemental. But I want to make it clear that even then, we may have problems with our budget authority and outlay ceiling.
So with that understanding, that we take a look at it at that time, after we can conduct hearings on it, the Senator has my assurance of my sympathetic understanding and support, conditioned, however, on the outcome of those hearings, but mainly on our budget authority and outlay ceilings problem at that time.
It may be that in conference with the House that the Senate will yield on some items which will bring us more clearly into line with those ceilings. Perhaps this will help to safeguard our situation as we anticipate these supplementals coming along.
Hopefully, as the result of the conference, we will be in better condition than we are now. But I thank the Senator for not pressing this today. I think it would be unwise to press it today in view of the spending ceiling problem and the fact that we do anticipate supplementals on Forest Service firefighting and synthetic fuels commercialization.
So with that understanding, we will do the best we can at that time. But I hope the Senator will understand and agree that even at that time our situation is going to have to be largely dictated by the budget authority and outlay ceilingssituation at that time.
Mr. MUSKIE. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. ROBERT C. BYRD. Yes.
Mr. MUSKIE. First, I ask unanimous consent that Karl Braithwaite and John Freshman of the Public Works Committee staff be granted privilege of the floor during the discussion on this and the HUD appropriation bill.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I would Iike to make two points. One is with respect to the reference the distinguished Senator from Arkansas made in the discussion he and I had earlier this week.
That is a point that all Senators should bear in mind. The budget resolution sets ceilings. It does not set priorities under those ceilings.
So the first programs to come along are the programs that will find easier funding. The last programs to come along as we approach the ceiling are going to have the toughest sledding, as this colloquy indicates.
So that as we approach the first appropriation bills, we ought not ignore the priorities issues that are involved within functions, and that the Senate ought to focus on. The Budget Committee does not control that and we would not presume to try.
But the Senator is absolutely right, pointing to the fact that in funding the first programs to come along we may inadvertently hurt some of the higher priority programs that happen to come along down the road on the calendar.
I also appreciate the obligations of the distinguished Senator from West Virginia with respect to the probability of reducing the numbers in this bill as a result of the conference between the House and the Senate.