April 5, 1976
Page 9388
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, first of all, let me try to discuss the technicalities of the Budget Act, the way in which it poses procedural issues.
There are two sections of the act which have been referred to this afternoon. The first is section 303. As I understand the distinguished Senator from Idaho, he is raising a point of order under section 303. In my judgment, section 303 does not raise a point of order issue with respect to this legislation. I do not think that a point of order lies under section 303. Let me read it. Section 303 provides as follows:
It shall not be in order in either the House of Representatives or the Senate to consider any bill or resolution (or amendment thereto) which provides—
(4) new spending authority described in section 401 (c) (2) (C) to become effective during a fiscal year until the first concurrent resolution on the budget for such year has been agreed to pursuant to section 301.
What does that mean with respect to entitlement legislation?
If this bill would be first effective by any means in fiscal year 1977, then its consideration would be prohibited under section 303 and subject to the waiver resolution provisions of the act.
But the bill before us does not become effective in fiscal year 1977. It becomes effective in fiscal year 1976, and as such, does not come under section 303.
So a point of order does not lie under section 303. So I would oppose a point of order under section 303. It simply does not apply.
Now, if it did — and I make this point to the distinguished Senator from Nebraska — if it did, section 303 gives the Budget Committee no veto over this legislation.
It simply provides that the waiver resolution would have to be introduced, referred to the Budget Committee, and the Budget Committee would have to either act to approve it or disapprove it.
Suppose the Budget Committee refused to disapprove it or refused to report back the resolution.
Under the terms of the law, if the Budget Committee does not act on a waiver within 10 days, it is discharged automatically from consideration and the bill can then be considered anyway.
So that even under section 303 we have no veto over the legislation. We would simply be a vehicle for cooling off the legislation and for giving the Senate the benefit of such insight as we might develop. But we could not block it, we could not hold it up and we would be discharged of the resolution if we tried to do any such thing.
So the notion that has been implied, that somehow if we could invoke section 303, the Budget Committee, pursuing the goal of fiscal prudence and responsibility, could grab hold of this legislation and block it from consideration by the Senate is simply unreal and certainly is not provided for in the Budget Act.
Section 401, in my judgment, does apply. Section 401 is very apt to this piece of legislation. It says in section 401(b) under the heading Legislation Providing Entitlement Authority:
It shalt not be in order in either the House of Representatives or the Senate to consider any bill or resolution which provides new spending authority described in subsection (c) (2) (C), (or any amendment which provides such new spending authority) which is to become effective before the first day of the fiscal year which begins during the calendar year in which such bill or resolution is reported.
This bill has been reported to the Senate in calendar year 1976. Because it provides new spending authority which is to take effect in this calendar year, it is not permitted under this provision of the Budget Act to have an effective date prior to October 1 unless the Senate suspends the impact of section 401.
The purpose of this was to give the Budget Committee and the Senate an opportunity in the second resolution and reconciliation process to evaluate new entitlement authority in the context of all of the demands on the Public Treasury which are generated under the first concurrent resolution to be acted upon in the spring.
If Members will remember the debate on the Budget Act, there was a considerable debate on the question of how to bring entitlements into this process, how to bring them under the purview of the Appropriations Committee, if possible.
There were some proposals on the floor to route entitlement bills through the Appropriations Committee in order to give the Appropriations Committee a bigger umbrella over spending legislation.
Section 401 was part of the compromise.
So it requires us to make deliberate, positive decisions involving new entitlement authority.
Why do I not invoke the point of order that is available under section 401?
For the simple reason that in last year's first concurrent resolution and in last year's second concurrent resolution, the two Budget Committees and the Congress as a whole mandated reform of this food stamp program to put in place cost savings provisions. We mandated it in December, just a few months ago. Now it is said that the Budget Committee, having mandated this reform, should take advantage of a technicality to block it until next October 1.
Mr. ALLEN. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. MUSKIE. As chairman of the Budget Committee, would I engage in those kinds of technical games with other Senate committees? We would not last very long around here.
There are those who were concerned, as is the Senator from Alabama — and I will yield to him in just a moment — as to the fact that by waiving section 401 we may be opening the door to increased entitlements.
I say to the Senator that section 401 makes provision for that by requiring that all those also be subject to the point of order.
I yield to my good friend from Alabama.
Mr. ALLEN. The distinguished Senator speaks of a mandate from the Budget Committee to effect economies in the food stamp program.
Now, there was no mandate to increase expenditures under the program, was there?
Mr. MUSKIE. No, there were not.
Mr. ALLEN. Yes.
As I understand the Senator's conception of the point of order before the Senate at this time — I believe the Chair has already ruled on it, but I want to make sure the distinguished Senator from Maine understands it that way — the waiver that is provided in the motion of the distinguished Senator from Georgia, the chairman of the Agriculture Committee (Mr. TALMADGE) is that the waiver be as to the bill as it now stands, but that any change of that bill would require an additional waiver, is that correct?
Mr. MUSKIE. The Senator is correct.
Mr. ALLEN. I thank the distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee.
Mr. MUSKIE. May I go beyond that to say that if the Senate works its will and it goes to conference and the conference changes the entitlements so that they are above the mark, then that, too, is subject to section 401.
So the section 401(b) technicality is a useful handle, but it does not give the Budget Committee a veto. I do not think it ought to be or constitute an invitation to the Budget Committee to impose technicalities upon other committees or other committee chairmen when the basic policy question really has been decided. That is, whether or not legislation which would implement the cost savings objectives of the second concurrent resolution hits the floor, that the Budget Committee ought to block it, because the Senate acting as a whole might conceivably use that legislative vehicle to increase the costs of the program.
I do not think the Budget Committee can block that, even if the bill were to be referred to the Budget Committee. I do not think it can under section 401, but even if it could under section 303(a) the Budget Committee even then would not have the authority to block the Senate from working its will. Under the provisions of section 303, if the committee did not act within 10 days it would be discharged automatically and the Senate as a whole could work its will.
The heart of this new budget process is not that the Budget Committees have been created with dictatorial power over the legislative process. The Budget Committees have been created as an analytical and informational tool, and for coordinating. It is the instrumentality for bringing to the attention of the Senate the options and the budgetary consequences of the options which the Senate should consider before acting on spending legislation.
With respect to this bill, those options have been spelled out. We know what they are.
With respect to the cost saving provisions, they have been mandated.
As every Senator knows after he has been here less than a day, once a bill hits the floor then amendments can change the character of that bill in an infinite number of directions. There is no committee with advance authority which can prevent that, the Budget Committee or any other committee.
What I am saying — and the Budget Committee has not met on this specific bill except in connection with the First Concurrent Resolution for next year — is that with respect to the cost saving provisions this bill responds to the Second Concurrent Resolution. With respect to its cost, it is still subject, as it goes through Senate consideration, to the provisions of the Budget Act. The Budget Act has not been waived.
If the costs exceed what we have set as targets, it is the duty of the Budget Committee to say so. If it is the intention of other Senators to greatly increase the entitlements, they should seek the same kind of a waiver or suspension that the distinguished floor manager of the bill is seeking for the bill as it came out of committee.
That is the nature of the discipline.
We do not have a veto power. As a matter of fact, if we tried to write one into law, the law would never have been passed in the first place, as my colleagues sitting around me would agree.
Mr. TALMADGE. Mr. President, I commend the distinguished Senator from Maine, the distinguished chairman of theBudget Committee, for his observations.
I have sat here listening to some of my colleagues and wondered if I was in Alice in Wonderland.
What we have here is a bill that our committee has been working on for well over a year. It reduces expenditures by some $630 million a year. Yet we are informed by some of our friends that if we pass this thing it will destroy the Budget Act and that in the future no one will ever control the expenditures of government. We sit and listen to them talking in circles about a bill that we have brought before the Senate to reduce expenditures and to try to eliminate some of the waste, some of the abuse, some of the fraud in the stamp program. There are some people who, one would think, would be in favor of the same thing, who now are trying to say that we ought not use this procedure at all because it will do something unjust to the Budget Act.
I was one of the original supporters of the Budget Act. We set up an ad hoc committee. I think it was my motion on the Senate side in the ad hoc committee that brought it to fruition.. I was representing one of the members of the Finance Committee. I am strongly in favor of that act. I do not want to do anything that will weaken it because I think it holds some opportunities for us to bring our expenditures under control.
But here is the scenario of events, Mr. President: Last February the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, by resolution, asked the Secretary of Agriculture to make some recommendations to correct the abuses under the Food Stamp Act.
Several months later, if my memory serves me correctly, in June, he made some sort of milquetoast recommendation that was absolutely meaningless. Our committee went forward to try to mark up the bill.
I commend the distinguished Senator from Alabama who is chairman of the subcommittee that held the hearings. For 2 long weeks he had hearings day after day. He heard hundreds of witnesses and did a masterful job.
When he got through, the subcommittee referred it to the full committee. While we were in the midst of the markup, with the primary taking place in the State of New Hampshire, after the administration had delayed for a whole year, they suddenly announced that they were going to take some very drastic steps in the Department of Agriculture to mandate changes in the food stamp program. They did over the violent objection of the majority of the members of the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry because at that very moment we were trying to mark up a bill. The Department of Agriculture knew it and the White House should have known it.
We have representation on our committee that runs the full gamut of the political philosophy of this Senate and of the country. For 5 days, hour after hour, our committee sat in deliberations. As reasonable men we finally marked up a bill and reported it to the Senate to try to carry out what we set out to achieve a year ago, when we tried to achieve what the Budget Committee told us to do, to try to save some money on the food stamp program, to try to do something about the fact that some 40 million Americans are entitled to food stamps under existing law and regulations, and some 19 to 20 million Americans are now drawing those stamps.
I know that the Senate is humane, as is the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry. We want to do all we can to help the truly needy, these who do not have the resources to obtain an adequate diet. I know Members are probably as alarmed as I am when I see these advertisements in the newspaper, "Send me $3.50 and I will show you how to get your family on food stamps if you earn $16,000 a year."
I have had those sent to my office, by the score. We received them in the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry by the stack. The people of the United States of America, honest, God-fearing, hardworking taxpayers who want their Government to leave them alone and let them make a living are fed up with the idea that affluent students in colleges from affluent families, and some people driving Cadillacs and other big automobiles, by loopholes in the law, by a series of deductions, are riding the taxpayers for benefits that they ought not to receive under the law.
That is what our committee brought to this Senate. We hear folks mouthing and grumbling about it, that somehow this is wrong; that we ought not to do it this way; that somehow the Budget Committee has more authority than the U.S. Senate when the Budget Committee is the creature of the U.S. Senate. The chairman of the Budget Committee is standing on the floor of this body making the same plea I am, that we try to do something to save money.
Mr. President, I want to amend my motion
Mr. McCLURE. Will the Senator withhold that for a moment?
Mr. TALMADGE. I will not press for a vote now, but I want to amend my motion.
Mr. McCLURE. I wonder if he would withhold the amendment.
Mr. TALMADGE. Yes, I will.
Mr. McCLURE. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. TALMADGE. I yield to my friend, reserving my right to the floor.
Mr. McCLURE. The Senator had made his motion originally to suspend the provisions of title 4 dealing with section 401. The point of order which I had made was raised under section 303.
Therefore, the motion that the Senator from Georgia had first made would not have covered the section under which I raised the point of order.
I wonder if the Senator would be willing to withhold, until the Chair has had an opportunity to rule upon my point of order. It would be my expectation that the Chair would probably rule that my point of order under section 303 was not in order.
I would not under those circumstances intend to raise a point of order under section 401, and the Senator's motion would not be necessary.
I would say to the Senator from Georgia, the reason that I suggest that is that one of the things. I have been trying to do in all of this is get a ruling from the Chair and on the record as to which of these sections does apply, and whether section 303 does apply to this kind of legislation affecting this fiscal year.
Mr. TALMADGE. Mr. President, I yield at this point to the Senator from Maine, the chairman of the Budget Committee.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I think the suggestion of the distinguished Senator from Idaho makes sense. When I advised moving as the Senator from Georgia has, I assumed the point of order was raised under section 401. Now that it is clear that it is raised under section 303, I personally would like to have a ruling of the Parliamentarian on that.
Mr. TALMADGE. I reserve my rights under my motion and withdraw it, and ask for a ruling of the Chair on the point of order.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. HANSEN). The Chair would hold the point of order not well taken, since section 303 applies to new spending authority for a fiscal year for which there is no concurrent resolution. The Chair regards the new spending authority as becoming available in this fiscal year, and there is a concurrent resolution for this fiscal year.
Mr. TALMADGE. Then the point of order of my distinguished friend from Idaho does not carry; is that the ruling of the Chair?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair rules that the point of order is not well taken.
Mr. McCLURE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. TALMADGE. I yield to my friend from Idaho without relinquishing my right to the floor.
Mr. McCLURE. The other point which I had raised, in regard to whether or not the waiver procedure was necessary for a reduction in spending as well as an increase in spending, I do not think it would be appropriate to raise under section 401. I therefore would not raise that question. But it is one which we still must resolve at some point.
I thank the Senator for yielding.
Mr. TALMADGE. I thank my friend from Idaho.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, will the Senator from Georgia yield to me?
Mr. TALMADGE. I yield to my distinguished friend from Maine.
Mr. MUSKIE. For the purposes of clarification, for the Senator from Idaho, I repeat my intention earlier expressed that I will not raise the point of order under section 401, which I hope will finally lay that point to rest.