April 28, 1976
Page 11527
SPENDING REFORM
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, on February of this year, Senator ROTH, Senator GLENN, and I introduced legislation which would terminate all Federal programs and activities every 4 years and require a zero base review and evaluation of these programs before they could be reauthorized. That legislation, S. 2925, the Government Economy and Spending Reform Act of 1976, now has 28 cosponsors in the Senate. Companion legislation in the House, introduced by
Congressmen JAMES BLANCHARD and NORM MINETA, now has about 80 cosponsors.
Those of us who have introduced this legislation believe that it is a critical starting point for the Congress to begin exercising greater control over the way the Federal Government spends the American taxpayers' money. I have been very pleased to note that the legislation, though largely unnoticed by many in the Congress, has received considerable news interest and editorial support. I would like at this point to insert several news stories and columns about S. 2925 in the RECORD for my colleagues' information. I ask unanimous consent that the articles be printed in the RECORD at the conclusion of my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 1.)
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, the Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations has now completed 7 days of hearings on this proposal. The subject of these hearings has often been very technical and tedious. But Senator GLENN, Senator ROTH, and I believe that this is important work. I would like to thank and congratulate both the junior Senator from Ohio and the senior Senator from Delaware for the hard work and thoughtful attention they have given to the hearings and to the development of a workable proposal. Their support and cooperation has been most important in raising questions about and building the case for this kind of reform.
The subcommittee has scheduled markup sessions on S. 2925 for May 12 and 13. I think I can speak for both Senator GLENN and Senator ROTH when I say that I am very encouraged about the prospects for reporting out a spending reform bill at that time.
EXHIBIT 1
[From the Portland Press Herald, February 13, 1976]
REVIEWING THE PROGRAMS
For years now there has been protest against the proliferation of government programs.
New programs are created with every legislative session at the state and the federal levels. But, the complaint runs, no programs are terminated. Once a program is enacted it goes on and on regardless of the need. No one even bothers to review them to determine whether they have fulfilled their purpose or have been duplicated by something newer.
The complaint has been much like the weather. Everyone has talked about it but no one has done anything about it. At last, someone has done something. Sen. Edmund S. Muskie has filed a proposal which would require Congress to reexamine each federal program at least once every four years. There is hope that some action may be taken on the proposal because the measure, originating with a Maine liberal, quickly drew support from conservative quarters, notably Sen. Barry Goldwater who asked to have his name attached as a cosponsor.
In view of the continuing discontent with the present arrangement, one might have expected more positive reaction to the Muskie measure than has been displayed.
Of course, the bill would add to the congressional burden. It puts all programs on a four-year reauthorization basis and all those not explicitly continued by congressional vote would be abolished. Exempt from the measure would be those programs to which individuals had made payments in expectation of later compensation — programs such as Social Security, railroad retirement, civil service retirement, Medicare, etc.
When Senator Muskie spoke on television to present the Democratic view of the state of the nation, he devoted several minutes to his concern about the people's attitude toward government. He said that in talking with Maine folk he had found that they are disenchanted with government, don't believe that government can meet the problems of the day or that it is responsive to their needs. This bill is a further expression of that concern.
Government has "become out of touch and out of control," he said in introducing the "government economy and spending reform act," as it will be known.
It seems to us a responsible and progressive course for government, one that might be applied equally well to state governments.With the support it has attracted from both sides of the aisle, we hope it will get the momentum it deserves to move through the congressional machinery.
With this measure, Senator Muskie is doing something many people have been requesting for years.
A GOOD IDEA
Taking a look at various government programs to see if they're working out seems like a simple idea, and it is; but little or nothing's been done about it.
Now, Maine's Sen. Edmund S. Muskie says it's time the Congress did examine the operations of the federal government on a regular basis and scrap programs that have proven useless, duplicative or inefficient, and continue those of proven worth.
He has introduced the "Government Economy and Spending Reform Act of 1976" which would require virtually every federal program to receive a formal review and reauthorization at least once every four years.
The senator says, "Government inefficiency is becoming today's number one villain. Horror stories about bureaucratic bungling make good copy, and I'm sure that all of us at one time or another have been guilty of taking a ride on some well-intentioned government worker's mistake. But I think the time has passed when the American people will be satisfied with such press release exclamations of outrage. They are ready for hard evidence and real results that prove we are serious about making government more productive."
Basically, what Senator Muskie is talking about is a zero based budget approach to government spending. Instead of merely renewing each government program on the assumption that once started it must ever after be worthwhile, the programs will automatically end after four years unless specifically renewed by the Congress.
It will, even if approved by the Congress, be a long process of reform, but it is one that is desperately needed.
As matters now stand, nobody really knows which government programs are working and which are not. How can they considering the federal government now operates 228 health programs, 156 income and social security programs, 83 housing programs. There are well over a thousand programs that touch upon virtually every aspect of national life.
It's no wonder that, for example, communities all over the country are having to hire professional planners and assistants just to fill out grant applications for money under the 1975 Community Development Act.
Some means must be found to pull some of these programs together. Why should there be 83 housing programs, for example? Everybody from the departments of Housing and Urban Development to Agriculture to Health and Welfare is involved in housing. Is it any wonder there is no coherent national housing policy?
Yet the Congress continues to pour money into these varied housing programs without any clear notion of whether they're worthwhile or not.
This is the kind of thing Senator Muskie's proposal is designed to halt, and it's about time.
PROGRAM REVIEW
A plan devised by U.S. Senator Edmund S. Muskie to give Congress better control over the many federal programs and the budget which finances them is being well received in Congress. Sen. Muskie's work as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee caused him to conclude that government has "become out of touch and out of control." His proposal seeks to reverse the trend.
The Muskie plan of reforms would put all federal programs and activities on a four year reauthorization schedule. Those which Congress did not specifically vote to continue automatically would be abolished, with some exceptions. Those to be continued would have to start on a "zero base"in determining money allotments.
The exceptions to the automatic termination would be such programs as Social Security, Medicare, and the retirement plans. They would remain subject to review, however.
In seeking support for his plan Sen. Muskie contends that Congress has not paid enough attention to how well programs have been working. He feels that only if spending for ineffective programs is brought under control will there be enough money or public trust to adopt needed new programs.
Our senior senator correctly is assessing the mood of Maine and the American people. Big government and big spending are in disrepute. The office holders who continue to espouse either or both are likely to find themselves on the outside looking in.
REFORMING GOVERNMENT
It used to be that young Turks at every level of government came to us tattooed with the firebreathing slogans of Keynesian politics, Growth Through Spending, Programs Mean Progress. They formed a coalition with the special interests so that nearly everyone was for big, bigger and biggest government.
No longer. Big government has sapped our purses and wrecked our illusions. Now the young Turks are the likes of Rep. James Wilfong and Rep. Richard Spencer of Stow and Standish respectively, who promote reform.
Two of their proposals bear the earmarks of Sen. Edmund Muskie, once a young Turk himself. Muskie's plan on the federal side would require reapproval of virtually every government program at least once every four years. Without it — ZAP! Self destruct. Wilfong and Spencer would like to see the same idea promulgated in Maine. Their "sunset law" is modeled on one adopted in Colorado, which puts an expiration date on programs and requires that their existence be justified periodically.
"Since the New Deal, we have been going in the direction of more and more government programs," Wilfong is quoted saying, "At some point this country is going to have to reverse that trend." And no time like the present.
The second part of the Wilfong-Spencer Initiative 76 is budget reform. Sen. Muskie is deep into this, also at the federal level, and Wilfong points to the state worker pay raise issue as indicating the need in the state's budget. With full debate and panoply, spending and taxing priorities would be established early in the session. The big spending issues would not be left for the heated hours and frantic maneuvering at the very end. As Senate chairman of the budget committee, Muskie is enthusiastic about its success in setting a mandatory spending ceiling.
The third part of Initiative 76 is equally reasonable. It would enable the Public Utilities Commission to levy a surcharge on the utilities it regulates in order to provide it with more staff and resources to present the consumer viewpoint on rate increase cases. Such a bill had been approved by two sessions of the legislature, and then vetoed by Gov. Longley. As Spencer puts it, the people are paying indirectly for the legal power the utilities muster on their side; why shouldn't they be entitled to equal clout as consumers? The PUC can't afford such an investment now but it should be given the resources to do so. Whether such funds are found through an assessment system or regular state appropriations, the cost will be borne by consumers in any event.
Sunset law, budget reform, regulatory agency upgrading: three steps toward limiting and revitalizing government, a government that is manageable, a government that works.
[ From the Portland (Me.) Press Herald, Feb. 4, 1976]
MUSKIE'S PLAN GETS BARRY OK
(By Donald R. Larrabee)
WASHINGTON.— Declaring that government has "become out of touch and out of control," Sen. Edmund S. Muskie Tuesday filed his long discussed proposal requiring Congress to take a fresh look at each federal program at least once every four years.
The proposed "government economy and spending reform act", promptly drew significant support from conservatives, notably Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz.
In theory, the plan would give Congress a vehicle to review and wipe out any runaway programs after four years.
And even if Congress decided to continue the program, it would have to start from a "zero base" in determining the amount of money to provide.
Goldwater listened to Muskie explain the plan and then approached the Maine senator to ask that his name be attached as a cosponsor.
The Muskie legislation would put all government programs; and activities on a four-year reauthorization schedule. Those that Congress did not explicitly vote to continue would be automatically abolished.
The only exceptions to the unprecedented process would be those under which individuals make payments to the federal government with the expectation that they will be compensated later.
This would include Social Security, railroad retirement, civil service retirement and Medicare, among others. Interest payments on the national debt would also be exempted.
But every program, except for the debt interest payments, would still have to be reviewed every fourth year.
In his speech, Muskie acknowledged congressional failure to deal effectively with such problems as health, education and aid to the cities under existing programs.
The Maine senator said Congress had not "paid enough attention to how well the programs we adopted were working."
And only if spending for ineffective programs is brought under control, he said, will there be enough money or public trust to adopt needed new programs.
Muskie told colleagues that Congress is blamed by the public as much as anyone for the way government works.
He said the spending reform bill is one way of responding to the criticism "that we are not in control of our own house,"
EXCERPT FROM CBS EVENING NEWS WITH WALTER CRONKITE,
FEBRUARY 10, 1976
WALTER CRONKITE. Eric Sevareid comments tonight on a movement in Congress to bring the federal bureaucracy under control.
ERIC SEVAREID. Everybody complains about the weather, as the man said, but nobody does anything about it. Nearly every political candidate on the stump complains about the costs and complexity of government programs but nobody does anything about it — almost nobody. But it can be done, not very effectively by Presidents because laws are laws, but by the Congress that makes the laws.
Congress took one big preliminary step last year when it reformed its own budget making procedures. For the first time, it has what looks like a rational system of constructing and controlling budget expenditures.
The next great step would be to reach out for the hundreds of domestic programs, as well as defense, and get them under some control by making them demonstrate, in a systematic way, their necessity and their effectiveness. That's the aim of legislation introduced by Senator Muskie and several of his colleagues. This, if passed, would put the Congress neck deep into a whole new river of work. It would be a huge, continuing project, but it's hard to see that it would require any more energy than Congress expends in thinking up and putting into action agency after agency and program after program.
Very few government bureaus self-destruct, even when their work is essentially finished. Long ago, Supreme Court Justice Douglas unsuccessfully urged Mr. Roosevelt, so he recalls, to put a terminal date on every new bureau and program — ten years and they would die automatically.
The Muskie bill would give all new and existing programs a statutory life of four years, except of course those into which citizens have been paying money for future return like Social Security. None could continue after four years unless Congress took positive action to reauthorize them, and Congress would begin with action by the General Accounting Office to identify programs that duplicate each other or are inactive.
The Muskie group proceeds on the assumption that the public protest about the maddening complexity and delay in dealing with government is real and well founded, that putting money into many of these programs is like pouring water through twenty-five layers of blotting paper.
The federal government oversees around a thousand programs affecting nearly all aspects of life: over two hundred health programs, a hundred and fifty-six income security and social service programs, eighty-three housing programs — at that point, the Muskie statement to the Senate resorts to "et cetera".
But no mention is made of the Congress itself. It is breeding committees and subcommittees like rabbits or wire coathangers, to an overlapping, duplicating total now getting around the four hundred mark.
MUSCLEBOUND — AND FAT BOUND
Sen. Edmund S. Muskie (D-Me.) has come up with the refreshing idea that the best way to restore public faith in government is to weed out federal programs that, however well-intentioned, aren't working well enough to earn their keep. More refreshing still, he has gone beyond easy rhetoric to offer a practical means of achieving this result.
Legislation introduced by Muskie early this month would require virtually every federal program to be reviewed by Congress every four years to determine if it should be continued — and, if so, at what level of spending. Those failing to win reauthorization would expire.
The only spending programs exempt from the automatic quadrennial review would be interest payments on the national debt and programs, such as Social Security, under which individuals make payments to the national government in the expectation of later compensation.
Because Muskie's proposal calls for fundamental changes in the psychological atmosphere in Washington, as well as in actual procedures, it is likely to encounter stiff resistance.
But it strikes us as one of the most sensible ideas to come along in years.
The way the political system now operates, members of Congress concentrate on generating new programs to solve real and not-so-real national problems. But once the legislation is enacted, they move on to new frontiers and show scant interest in following up to determine whether the hoped for results are in fact achieved. In the meantime, the programs gain powerful constituencies of their own in the bureaucracy and in the public. Social and defense programs alike generate pressures for their continuance, and against their reexamination. The question, "Should we be doing it at all?" is too seldom asked.
The cumulative result is a government in which performance increasingly falls short of promise.
Muskie notes that the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance lists, among other things, 228 health programs, 156 income security and social service programs and 83 housing programs. The federal government manual lists not only 11 Cabinet departments and 44 independent agencies, but also 1,240 advisory boards, committees, commissions and councils. And while dozens of new such bodies are created each year, the old ones rarely go out of business.
As an all-too-typical case of overlapping social programs, the Maine senator told of one city where the General Accounting Office found eight clinics operating in one neighborhood under several different programs — each proceeding without regard to what the others were doing. The GAO has found agencies that were unable to say how much they spend on administrative costs as opposed to actual services.
The American people are understandably turned off, Muskie added, by a government that is too musclebound to do the things it is trying to do. He cited complaints from citizens who had to wait 18 months for a ruling on claims for disability compensation, and from towns that had to wait many months for federal approval of sewer systems mandated by federal law.
Muskie, who has done a highly creditable job as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, says the point is not that there should be a freeze on new programs to help people, but that the country cannot afford new programs unless Congress is willing to eliminate old ones that are ineffective, unnecessary or redundant.
The same sort of waste and duplication is to be found in military programs; they would be subject to the proposed reauthorization procedure, too.
As part of the quadrennial review process that would be required by Muskie's bill, congressional committees would have to make "zero base" evaluations. That is, they would consider the comparative effects of eliminating a program, of funding it at existing or greater levels, or of funding it at various levels in between. Their findings would be reported to the full House and Senate.
Congress took a big step toward rational setting of national priorities when it established the House and Senate budget committees last year. The Muskie proposal is a natural followup; it deserves the support of everybody in and out of Congress who believes in responsible, effective government.
[From the Washington Star, Feb. 5, 1976]
MORE BANG FOR THE BUCK
Senator Edmund Muskie has come up with a legislative proposal that has the look of a winner.
Instead of following the usual practice of plowing more money into federal programs year after year whether they work or not, Mr. Muskie says, why not take a fresh look at them periodically?
Indeed, why not? Congressional failure to reexamine what it creates is a major reason why the budget keeps getting bigger, the bureaucracy keeps growing, and the taxpayers keep wondering why they don't get more bang for their bucks.
The way Mr. Muskie and the bill's cosponsors — Republican William Roth of Delaware and Democrat John Glenn of Ohio — see it, the government will never have enough money for new initiatives if it continues to throw good money after bad programs.
Under the Muskie bill, beginning in 1979 almost all federal programs would be put on a four-year authorization cycle. This means that each program, with the exception of such things as servicing the federal debt and Social Security pensions, would be examined every four years to see if it is doing what it was established to do. Any program that was not reauthorized would automatically be abolished.
There's more. Programs deemed worthy of keeping would not necessarily be retained at existing or greater size. Congress would start at "zero base"in its reexamination and every dollar of authorization would have to be justified as to the job it is supposed to do and the impact on overall government spending.
To help the process, the executive branch would be required to make a "zero base review and evaluation" of programs scheduled for extension or termination.
Enacting the Muskie proposal will not be easy. Congress is a world of 535 fiefdoms and each potentate has pet programs that he's determined to hang onto. Then there are the special interests — the lobbyists, if you will — that cajole, badger and even now and then bribe congressmen to keep programs going that benefit the special interests. The government bureaucracy itself is an important influence in keeping programs going long after they have served their purpose or proved to be inadequate; abolished programs mean abolished jobs, and paper shufflers can always find arguments to keep them in business.
Inertia is a factor in keeping programs going. Unless there is an external force to change its direction, a program continues on its course. Congress is not a body that works very hard at overcoming inertia.
As Senator Muskie said, there is no valid basis for the assumption that old programs and old agencies deserve to be continued simply because they existed the year before. "Government," he said, "has become out of touch and out of control." The time may be ripe for doing something about it, given the growing public sentiment for cutting back the government — and the Muskie plan seems a good place to start.
[From the Washington Post, Apr. 27, 1976]
SUNSET FOR BUREAUCRACIES
Out in Colorado, an intriguing experiment in regulating bureaucratic growth is getting under way. Gov. Richard D. Lamm has just signed a novel "sunset law"which would terminate every one of the state's regulatory agencies — let the sun set on them — within seven years unless the legislature votes to continue them. This unique self-destruct measure, initiated by Colorado Common Cause, was passed with broad bipartisan support, extending from consumer oriented legislators to Republican conservatives. However much these factions may disagree about the proper role of regulation in the state, they shared a desire to make the regulatory agencies leaner and more accountable.
The great advantage of the "sunset" approach is that it establishes a framework for systematic, periodic scrutiny of the bureaucracies involved, and makes the advocates of each agency openly justify continuing public investment in it. This can focus legislative and public attention on some corners of government that have grown very cluttered and musty over the years. The Colorado law, for instance, is aimed at the more than 40 boards and commissions in the state that regulate or license various occupations, from barbers to morticians. Such agencies, which are usually fairly small and obscure, can easily become captives of the professions they are supposed to regulate — or can do nothing at all except provide sinecures for a few employees.
Since cutting back government regulation has become a popular cause, the Colorado "sunset law" may become a model for other states that are also burdened with inefficient or antiquated agencies. At the federal level, a number of similar bills have been introduced in Congress during the past several months. One of the most ambitious, sponsored by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Edmund S. Muskie (D-Maine) and others would require a "zero based" review, or total reassessment, of every single federal program every four years. Other bills would impose periodic termination dates on all or some regulatory agencies. Along this line, the House wrote a 7-year expiration clause into its version of the consumer advocacy agency legislation last fall.
One reason for all the congressional interest in the "sunset"concept is that most other methods of congressional oversight of the executive branch do not work very well. The appropriations process is an inadequate tool for comprehensive evaluation of agencies' performance. Unless deadlines are imposed or great public pressure is brought to bear, authorizing committees seldom bestir themselves to consider structural changes in programs and agencies. Oversight panels tend to function in a scattershot way, directing their attention primarily at programs that become generally controversial or particularly irksome to powerful congressmen. There is widespread interest right now in reining in agencies through legislative review of administrative rules and regulations, but that raises substantial issues of separation of powers.
All in all, some kind of federal plan could have considerable benefits both for the taxpayers and for the government. In exploring such possibilities however, it is vital to recognize that serious attempts to discipline the federal bureaucracy require considerable effort and self-discipline by Congress too. In fact, the broader proposals now pending would involve a staggering amount of legislative coordination and concentration. A few years ago, we might have said that Congress could never manage it. Since the new budget process has begun to take hold, the prospects for more orderly and effective congressional operations have improved substantially. Even so, the Senate and House committee structures are so sprawling, and committees' performance so uneven, that Congress might profitably start by devising a "sunset" program for itself.
[From the Washington Star, Apr. 26, 1976]
AUTOMATIC 'SUNSET' MAY FACE U.S. SPENDING PROGRAMS
(By Martha Angle)
Archy the cockroach and Mehitabel the cat are alive and well on Capitol Hill.
It figures, if you stop to think about it.
These days, the spirit of Archy seems to have slipped into Sen. Edmund S. Muskie, D-Maine. The freewheeling Mehitabel, never one for modesty, has reappeared in the Congress as a whole.
Archy, as readers of a certain age may recall, was a vers libre poet returned to life as a cockroach. Mehitabel, Cleopatra in an earlier existence (or so she always claimed) was a fun-loving cat of easy virtue, perpetually producing kittens which are promptly forgot about.
Archy, with some social conscience, regularly inquired about the well-being of Mehitabel's offspring — only to be met by a blank stare and innocent query, "What kittens, Archy?"
Like Mehitabel the Congress for a decade or so has been happily producing programs — health programs, education programs, veterans programs, energy programs, environmental programs, transportation programs, every size, shape and price program you can name.
And like Mehitabel, Congress never checks up on its progeny. Each new program is sent out into the world to fend for itself and grow willy-nilly. Until Ed Muskie started asking a few months ago, no one ever bothered to inquire how all those programs were faring.
In the last dozen years, the number of federal domestic programs multiplied from 50 to nearly 1,000. The federal budget climbed from $158.2 billion in 1967 to an estimated $413 billion for fiscal 1977.
But the good old days are over. Vietnam, inflation and recession have bent the federal budget all out of shape. There's no longer enough money in the treasury to feed all those programs Congress created, let alone provide sustenance for a new generation.
The American taxpayers are tired of government profligacy. Nothing seems to work right. Benefits don't trickle down to the average citizen. Promises go unfulfilled. Taxes go up, and up, and up — with no corresponding increase in results. People have had it with big government, and the message is sinking in with a few legislators like Muskie.
"Government has become out of touch and out of control," said Muskie, chairman of the new Senate Budget Committee, in a Feb. 3 speech to his Senate colleagues.
"We in Congress have not paid enough attention to how well the programs we adopted were working — and now these years of inattention to performance are taking their toll as we reap a bumper crop of public disenchantment with government."
Under the guidance of the Maine Democrat, a Senate Government Operations subcommittee is preparing landmark legislation that would automatically abolish almost all federal programs every four years unless Congress specifically reauthorizes them.
The only exemptions from the quadrennial review would be interest payments on the public debt and programs like Social Security where individuals contribute to the system with the promise of receiving future benefits.
All programs in a specific budget function would be scheduled for expiration at the same time, to force the executive branch and Congress to examine the total federal efforts in a particular field, such as health.
And when a program comes up for evaluation, Congress and the President would have to apply "zero base budgeting" techniques to the review — a fancy way of saying the program managers would be required to explain what would happen if they got zero funds, half their current funds, three-quarters of their present budget, and so forth.
The Muskie bill, cosponsored by a remarkable array of senators of every ideological stripe, is known as "sunset"legislation. It embodies, at the federal level, a concept which is catching fire all over the country.
Colorado has just enacted the first major state "sunset"law, which will require automatic termination of dozens of state regulatory boards and commissions every seven years unless reauthorized.
The measure, first proposed by the Colorado chapter of Common Cause, the self-styled citizens lobby, was guided through the legislature by a coalition of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans and was signed into law last week by Gov. Richard Lamm.
In Florida, where the state legislature is now in session, a similar "sunset" bill has been introduced with the support of 33 of the 40 state senators.
In Maryland, Del. David L. Scott, D-Mont., succeeded in winning approval during the final days of the legislative session of two resolutions dealing with sunset review and zero base budgeting.
The first resolution calls for creation of a 15-member commission to assess the feasibility of enacting a sunset law like Colorado's. The second asks Gov. Marvin Mandel to select one state agency for zero base budget review as a pilot program.
And Georgia, although lacking a sunset law, was the first state in the nation to adopt zero base budgeting — the other half of the Muskie bill. It did so at the insistence of former Gov. Jimmy Carter, now the frontrunning contender for the Democratic presidential nomination.
A Carter spokesman said last week the former Georgia governor is unfamiliar with the specifics of the pending federal legislation, but said "it appears to entail the sort of philosophy and approach that he would take as president."
Carter has already pledged to implement zero base budgeting in the federal government, if elected, and to reorganize the bureaucracy — a step which would necessarily include termination of some agencies, the spokesman noted.
As it happens, Peter H. Pyhrr, a business executive who helped Carter establish zero base budgeting in Georgia five years ago, is working with the Muskie subcommittee in drafting the federal legislation.
Pyhrr said Carter deserves full credit for initiating the system in Georgia. "He is not an executive who is run by his staff. He has his own ideas, and he is a very quick study. He personally decided to do it, even before his staff knew what the hell zero base budgeting was."
Pyhrr, now vice president of Alpha Wire, Inc., a New Jersey firm which manufactures electronic wire cable and tubing, said Carter contacted him just before taking office after reading an article on zero base budgeting Pyhrr had written in the Harvard Business Review.
"There aren't too many politicians who read the Harvard Business Review, but Carter did. He called me and asked if I could spend a couple of days with him explaining zero base budgeting," Pyhrr recalled.
The days stretched into weeks, and by his second year in office, Carter had implemented zero base budgeting for every executive branch agency in Georgia.
Pyhrr conceded many agency heads in the Georgia government were initially "very hostile" to the concept, having become accustomed to justifying only the annual increases in their budgets — not every penny spent.
"But we gave them no choice. They either produced zero base budgets, or they didn't get any money. It was a super incentive to cooperate," Pyhrr said.
Muskie and his staff are acutely conscious of the technical and political hurdles which must be cleared to win enactment of effective sunset and zero base budgeting requirements for the entire federal government.
They know federal agencies have never been required to justify their existence and aren't anxious to start now. They realize special interest groups with a stake in existing federal programs will descend upon Congress to plead for their favorite causes.
They anticipate an epidemic outbreak of the "Washington Monument" syndrome, a standard bureaucratic response to proposed budget reductions which features threats to eliminate the affected agency's most popular program unless funds are restored.
(The syndrome first appeared one year when the Interior Department, ordered to cut spending by a certain percentage, quickly announced it would be forced to limit visiting hours at the Washington Monument. The cuts were then rescinded.)
During hearings on the Muskie bill in recent weeks, nearly every executive branch official who testified praised the aims of the legislation but insisted they can't be accomplished — at least not all in one swoop.
James T. Lynn, director of President Ford's Office of Management and Budget, called the bill "far too mechanical and inflexible," predicting it would produce mostly "unneeded paperwork and wasted effort."
Secretary of Commerce Elliot L, Richardson suggested a four-year zero base review of every federal program is "overly ambitious," warning, "If we attempt too much, the effort may simply become one of satisfying the form without addressing the substance."
And William A. Morrill, assistant secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, noted his agency alone has over 370 programs. "Undertaking zero base reviews of all these would be a major burden requiring extreme amounts of staff time," he said.
Muskie and other sponsors of the sunset legislation are neither surprised nor discouraged by the dire predictions. Much of the resistance, they suspect, stems from normal bureaucratic terror of anything which challenges business-as-usual.
The subcommittee plans to move to markup of the sunset bill in about two weeks, hoping to steer it through the full Government Operations Committee and onto the Senate floor before the Democratic National Convention in July.
Enhancing prospects for action on the bill is the striking breadth of support it enjoys. Cosponsors range from Democratic liberals like Mike Mansfield to conservative Republicans like Barry Goldwater. Common Cause and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, groups which seldom agree on the time of day, both vigorously support sunset legislation.
"There's terrific political momentum. for this concept right now," said one Muskie aide. "With all the public concern about big government, excessive spending and overlapping programs, it's a natural for an election year."
[From the Washington Post, Mar. 23, 1976]
THE "SUNSET"DEMAND FOR BUREAUCRATIC JUSTIFICATION
(By Neal R. Peirce)
"The great creative work of a federal agency,"William O. Douglas wrote a few years ago, "must be done in the first decade of its existence if it is to be done at all. After that it is likely to become a prisoner of the bureaucracy."
Again and again in the 1930s, Douglas suggested to President Franklin Roosevelt that every agency created should be abolished after 10 years. FDR "would always roar with delight at that suggestion, and of course never did anything about it."
The idea of giving government agencies limited life spans has never died out completely however. Every few years someone suggests — let all programs and agencies periodically rejustify their existence, or face extinction if they cannot.
And now, 40 years and several trillion dollars in government spending later, the idea is embodied in a "sunset" bill about to pass the Colorado Legislature, and in similar bills in Congress.
The leading Congressional sponsor is Senate Budget Committee Chairman Edmund S. Muskie, D-Maine, whose bill would require that every federal agency, commission, board, and program come up for review every four years on a rotating basis. Unless Congress acted to extend the activity, it would be abolished.
Muskie's cosponsors cover the ideological spectrum from Mike Mansfield, D-Mont., to Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz. The idea has been picked up by several liberal House freshmen. And a companion bill, limited to regulatory agencies has been introduced by Sens. Charles H. Percy, R-Ill., and Robert C. Byrd, D-W. Va.
Major hearings on the Muskie bill and related measures started last week before Muskie's Senate Intergovernmental Relations Subcomnittee with several governors and other governmental experts scheduled to testify.
What would make these proposals politically viable in the '70s, when they could be laughed away by FDR and succeeding generations of national leaders? A Republican backer in Colorado says the bill "incorporates Republican philosophy because it demands that government agencies justify their existence." But why do the key sponsors include many program-happy liberals, some of whose pet projects might be jeopardized?
Muskie — himself no slouch at proposing liberal spending measures in past years — provides some clues on the developing support from the left. In their belief that government can materially improve people's lives, he says, the liberals have successfully persuaded Congress to pile up program on program and to spend billions on social problems, until today there are some 1,000 federal domestic assistance programs.
But Congress, Muskie adds, has satisfied itself "with the rhetoric of legislation, leaving the hard work of implementation — from rulemaking to evaluation — to the executive branch. And now these years of inattention to performance are taking their toll, as we reap a bumper crop of public disenchantment with government that can't even perform the simple day-to-day tasks that need
be done."
Many liberals, Muskie charges, are so defensive. about the programs they've passed they have "become the defenders of government, no matter its mistakes." In a landmark speech to the Liberal Party New York last fall, he said:"Why can't liberals start raising hell about a government so big, so complex, so expensive that it's dragging down every good program we've worked for? We must recognize that an efficient government — well managed, cost effective, equitable and responsible — is in itself a social good."
Unless some way is found to escape the hand of "suffocating bureaucracy" and to discard programs that aren't working, Muskie suggests, reserves will be lacking — "either in the budget or the public's trust" — to enact programs when new needs arise.
To assure that the quadrennial review of government programs would be more than pro forma, Muskie and his cosponsors would require both the executive branch and appropriate Congressional committees to conduct zero based reviews and evaluations of programs coming up for extension. (The zero based method, pioneered in government by former Gov. Jimmy Carter's administration in Georgia, requires assessing the effect of no expenditures at all for a program, and then gauging the likely level of program quality and quantity at various levels of funding.)
Another important feature of the proposed legislation is that all activities in a single functional area would be reviewed simultaneously. All transportation programs, for instance, would be evaluated in the same year — highway building, railroad assistance, mass transit, the activities of the Transportation Department and Interstate Commerce Commission.
The idea is that related programs could be judged, not only on their own merits, but also in comparison with each other in terms of efficiency in meeting national needs. Some could be continued, others consolidated, others dropped altogether. Comparing the 238 federal health programs on the books, for instance, Congress might decide that most of them could be scrapped in favor of some form of national health insurance.
At a minimum, the process would trigger elimination of many outmoded and useless government programs and agencies that now hold on, year by year, through sheer inertia because no one in Congress is willing to undertake the battle to assure their demise.
The onus would be on bureaucracies to perform well and prove solid grounds for their continued existence, lest they face their last "sunset"on the next turn of the four-year cycle. (The only exempt federal programs would be those under which individuals make payments in expectation of later compensation, including social security, medicare and civil service retirement.)
At a maximum, the process would trigger concentrated Congressional and national debate on where the country stands, what it can afford, and what the top program priorities are in each policy area. This kind of debate rarely emerges under the present system — but may be indispensable in the dawning era of severely restricted government revenue sources.
The sunset proposal is "fraught with risk," according to Denver attorney Craig Barnes, a member of the Colorado Common Cause board and originator of the idea in that state. "It jeopardizes obviously beneficial programs — programs we liberals have fought for for generations at a time."(Barnes might have added it also imperils less clearly "liberal" programs, from foreign military assistance to farm subsidies.)
The trend of the past 50 years, Barnes added, "has been to delegate more and more of the business of the people to bureaucracies, including many relatively obscure and hard-to-find agencies. Sunset retrieves issues from their immersion in the bureaucracy and resubmits them to politics. That's a good in and of itself. It says to the people — this is a democracy, you once again have a chance through pressure on your legislature, to speak."
And while sunset is a "frightening prospect for some people," Barnes said, "the justification is that the republic can grind to a halt — we can grind out creativity and sterilize ourselves — if we don't risk change. The greater danger we face in the next years is paralysis — and perhaps revolution as a result of government's inability to function. So while we run these risks — and I do not do so lightly — we do so because the republic is not flourishing."
MUSKIE TALKS COMMON SENSE
(By Andrew Tulley)
WASHINGTON.— I hope Sen. Ed Muskie doesn't get all worked up and decide to run for President. These days, as a candidate only for reelection to his Maine seat, Muskie is free to talk the kind of common sense that is still heard in his no-frills state.
For example, Muskie has introduced a bill that in effect would wipe out the "mess in Washington" every four years and start fresh. The bill has two cosponsors, Republican William Roth of Delaware and Democrat John Glenn, Ohio's astronaut hero. None of these three men belongs to the nut wing on Capitol Hill.
Under the bill, Congress would be required to act explicitly on continuation of almost all federal programs and activities beginning in 1979. Any program that was not reauthorized would automatically be abolished. Exceptions would be interest payments on the national debt and programs such as Social Security under which individuals make contributions with the promise of receiving benefits.
Moreover, those programs deemed worth continuing would not necessarily be financed to support their current size or to permit expansion. Starting from "zero base," Congress would be required to justify every dollar of authorization as necessary to do the job. It also would consider the impact of the program's budget on overall government spending.
Nor would the White House escape responsibility. The President would have to review and reevaluate all programs scheduled either for extension or termination, with emphasis — praise be — on affordable costs.
Some critics have dismissed the Muskie-Roth-Glenn bill as too conservative. Fortunately, it does have elements of conservatism. But as Muskie has suggested, there is no reason why liberals should not find something in the proposal for them.
Muskie has said he is sponsoring the bill because "government has become out of touch and out of control." That's what a lot of conservatives and, increasingly, many liberal voters are saying. And it should be obvious to liberal politicians that only if spending for ineffective programs is brought under control will there be enough money and as Muskie puts it, "public trust," to adopt needed new social legislation in a variety of fields.
In short, Muskie and his two cosponsors face the fact that there is only so much money available — or only so much money the electorate will let Congress spend. Some programs will have to be cut if the country wants, say, universal health insurance and public service jobs for the unemployed.
"We still haven't solved the basic problems which prompted us to enact all these programs in the first place," Muskie says. He cites failures in health, education and aid to cities as evidence that Congress hasn't paid enough attention to how well those programs were working. Congress creates monsters and rarely gives them another thought; the result is bigger and bigger governments and bigger and bigger deficits.
All this is not to say the Muskie-Roth-Glenn bill's chances are all that good. Congress has 535 members and each of them is gauleiter of his own little principality which must be constantly nourished with pet programs. Lobbyists spend their days pushing programs that benefit special interests. The federal bureaucracy runs scared; abolished programs mean abolished jobs.
One high-level bureaucrat dismissed the whole idea. "It's not that simple," he said. He's right, of course. Muskie & Co. are suggesting nothing less than changing the nature of Washington. But given the growing public sentiment for cutting government down to size, this just could be the right time for some brave souls on Capitol Hill and downtown to give it their best shot.
[From the Arizona Republic, Feb. 25, 1976]
WHY NOT LOOK FIRST?
In the past year, as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Edmund S. Muskie, the Lincolnesque Democrat from Maine, has been attempting to keep federal spending within bounds.
Muskie is not a conservative by any means, but, as a Down Easter, he does have a native aversion to waste. Unfortunately, not many of his fellow Democrats share his attitude, so his admonitions against waste generally have fallen on deaf ears.
Muskie has now come up with an idea so eminently sensible that it also is likely to fall on deaf ears. He has introduced a bill requiring Congress to review every four years all federal programs except those which are not subject to review, like the interest on the national debt and Social Security payments.
Muskie points out that Congress is forever starting programs and creating agencies, advisory boards, commissions and committees to run them, and that, once it does so, Congress never bothers to find out whether they are serving the purpose they're supposed to.
It simply renews them automatically.
There are now, he points out, 228 health programs, 156 income security and social service programs and 83 housing programs. Supervising them are not only 11 cabinet departments and 44 independent agencies but 1,240 boards of various sorts, as well.
Congress establishes dozens of these boards every year. It rarely abolishes one.
Many of the programs overlap, many are redundant, many that once served a purpose no longer do. The bureaucracies running them are snarled in red tape.
Muskie cites a city where the General Accounting Office found eight clinics operating in one neighborhood under different programs, with none of them having any knowledge of what the others were doing.
He cites complaints from citizens who had to wait 18 months for a ruling on claims for disability compensation. He cites complaints from towns which had to wait months for federal approval of sewer systems mandated by federal law.
The GAO, he says, has found agencies unable to say how much they were spending on administrative costs as compared with actual services.
In effect, what Muskie's bill proposes is that every agency, commission, committee, what-have-you be forced to justify its existence and the existence of the programs it administers every four years.
Then Congress would have to determine whether they should be continued or killed, whether the programs should be curtailed, expanded or eliminated.
Forced to reexamine the agencies and programs, Congress might discover that it had been voting money for no purpose except to keep people on the federal payroll.
Muskie's bill deserves support. The trouble is that, when it comes to money, Congress so rarely does the obvious.
[From the Journal of Commerce, Mar. 29, 1976)
GROUPS JOIN TO SUPPORT SPENDING BILL
(By Dan Skartvedt)
WASHINGTON.—There are few occasions on Capitol Hill when organizations as widely differing in their viewpoints as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Common Cause testify in behalf of the same bill.
But it happened here last week, and involved a piece of legislation whose sponsors are similarly unlikely allies, ranging from liberal Edmund Muskie, D-Me., and conservative Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz.
The measure, titled the "Government Economy and Spending Reform Act of 1976," would establish so-called "zero based budgeting," under which practically all federal spending programs would be reviewed every four years and allowed to expire unless their continued existence was specifically found to be justified.
When he introduced the proposal last month, Senator Muskie said such a review would "reverse the assumption that old programs and agencies deserve to be continued just because they existed the year before."
The Maine lawmaker, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, pointed out that there are currently "nearly 1,000 federal programs, touching on virtually every aspect of life in these United States." and claimed that his bill "offers us one of the few chances we have to clear out some dead wood."
Existing programs would be terminated unless reauthorized every four years, with the only exceptions being payment of interest on the national debt and programs such as Social Security where individuals make payment to the government in order to receive compensation later on.
PROPOSAL PRAISED
Testifying last week before a subcommittee of the Senate Government Operations Committee, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Richard L. Lesher and Common Cause Chairman John Gardner both had high praise for the proposal, which has been dubbed the "Sunset Bill.
Mr. Lesher pledged that his organization, due to "the great importance and urgency of this legislation," will "do all within its power to encourage active support for its passage."
In a smilar vein, Mr. Gardner declared: "This is no ordinary piece of legislation. It could stand as a landmark in the history of government organization." He added that he considers it "as powerful and fundamental a step as could be taken to improve government."
Also testifying at that session was a spokesman for the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), who endorsed the bill's overall concept, but argued that veterans benefits should be exempted from the four-year review process.
His remarks, predictable as they were, served to underscore a major difficulty the bill will undoubtedly encounter — namely, that groups who have a stake in the continuation of existing programs are certain to demand that those particular ones be retained once the winnowing out starts.
Fears that their favorite programs might not survive the review process might even lead some of those organizations to actively oppose the bill's enactment.
An aide to Sen. Muskie, discussing this problem in a telephone interview with The Journal of Commerce commented that staffers anticipated such a reaction from various special interest groups when the proposal was first being drafted.
However, he stressed, if a particular program is justifiable, those who benefit from it have no reason to worry that it might be killed.
As he put it: If the program is good, then the interest group backing it has no worries. On the other hand, if it can't stand up under scrutiny, then they're in trouble."
Former Office of Management and Budget(OMB) Director Roy Ash, also testifying last week, brought up what he regarded as another potential problem. The rotating four-year review cycle specified in the legislation might be too ambitious, he suggested.
"To start full blown, giving zero base consideration to an average of over 250 programs per year, is like attempting to jump aboard a 747 in full flight," he said.
The former OMB chief also urged that "related tax expenditures also be considered along with a zero base program review."
As a matter of fact, Sen. John Glenn, DOhio, a cosponsor of the "Sunset Bill," announced last week that he was proposing an amendment to it with that precise purpose.
Under the amendment, every individual and corporate tax incentive in the federal code would be evaluated in the same four-year schedule.
A companion measure has also been introduced by Sens. Charles Percy, R-Ill., and Robert Byrd, D-W. Va., pertaining to the continued existence of federal regulatory agencies.
The overall issue, as has been demonstrated, is one upon which persons across the whole political spectrum can agree at least in principle.
The ultimate fate of the "Sunset Bill," however, will depend on how well this broadbased coalition can hang together once things get down to specifics.
[From the Journal of Commerce and Commercial, Mar. 31, 1976]
NOT NECESSARILY HOPELESS
As Dan Skartvedt noted in a Washington dispatch appearing in this newspaper on Monday, the concept of zero based budgeting has brought a surprising flock of sheep and goats into the ranks of its supporters.
There is Sen. Edmund Muskie, who introduced it in the Senate and with whom we seldom agree on anything. There is also Sen. John Glenn, former astronaut and now a Democratic senator from Ohio, who is Sen. Muskie's cosponsor. And there is Common Cause, which we usually view (as it usually views us) through a barbed-wire fence.
But also among the supporters of the "Government Economy and Spending Reform Bill," otherwise known as the "Sunset Bill," are Sen. Barry Goldwater and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Include us, please, in this same unlikely group.
The purpose of the bill is quite simple. Once every four years, all federal spending programs would be taken under congressional review. None would survive any longer unless specifically reapproved by Congress. This would mark such an astonishing reversal of present practice, in theory at least, that it merits serious attention.
Present practice is to continue funding almost any federal program that still maintains a staff able to prepare an annual budget, whether it was originally meant to be temporary or whether it has demonstrably long outlived its usefulness, like the Rural Electrification Administration. That is one reason for our past laments to the effect that it is far easier to get a new spending program on the statute books than it is to get it off again.
We applaud the idea of turning this motheaten concept around and we applaud Sen. Muskie for proposing it. It was after all, Sen. Bob LaFollette, the Wisconsin Progressive, who, back in the New Deal days, proposed some far-reaching reforms for the Senate. They didn't produce much action, but his views commanded great respect.
And during the Truman Administration, it was the conservative Herbert Hoover, ex-president, of the United States, who drew up the first in a series of blueprints for a restructuring of most of the major federal agencies, including some that have yet to be restructured. But his views, too, were respectfully received.
In neither of these prior instances did the supporters and opponents of the proposals split along partisan lines. And even though both produced disappointing results, we are glad to know that Sen. Muskie's move is drawing support from both sides of the aisles. Perhaps it will fare better.
There are, however, practical difficulties, for it is one thing to get Congress to endorse a new and. daring concept, but quite another to get it put into practice. It is already plain, and Sen. Muskie understands this, that not all the government's thousand-odd spending programs could be dropped simply because Congress, on some fourth year, simply forgot to renew them.
Social Security, or at least that part of it supported by taxes on employers and employees, could not be dropped. Neither could veterans pensions, nor a lot of other pensions. So it stands to reason that before a final measure could be considered acceptable, it would have to be studded with a long list of exceptions. How long in proportion to the total? and what would the necessary exceptions be? And how many would, in fact, be necessary?
At this point, very troublesome questions begin to take shape. Roy Ash, former director of the Office of Management and Budget, raised one of these by asking whether Congress could actually manage a thorough review of an average of 250 federal programs a year.
This strikes us as doubtful, especially if coupled with another proposal of Mr. Ash, which has drawn the support of Sen. Glenn, that every individual and corporate tax incentive in the federal code be reevaluated in the same four-year cycle. Quite a large order, we would say.
So the danger is that while Congress might 'vote' for the Muskie concept, that concept would be given only lip service in practice. That danger, as we see it, is that all 250-odd programs coming up for review every fourth year would be lumped together in one omnibus bill and automatically renewed in the last burst of business of each session. In such circumstances, the serious reevaluation conceived by Sen. Muskie and his supporters would be out of the question.
Does this mean his proposal is too hopelessly utopian to be considered seriously?
We are not convinced it is. After all, the concept of a Joint Congressional Committee on the Budget, a mechanism to give Congress greater control over its own budget processes, seemed utopian not too many years ago. It hasn't been wholly realized up to now, but both the House 'and Senate have made encouraging progress toward setting up budget committees of their own.
So where there's life there's hope. And the odd assortment of supporters drawn to Sen. Muskie's side in this instance should provide more than just a hint that his cause is not necessarily hopeless.
[From the Washington Post, Apr. 28, 1976]
IDEAS ARE SOUGHT
(By Jack Anderson and Les Whitten)
Even as we celebrate the bicentennial, some of us have an uneasy sense that government of, by and for the people is slipping away from us.
Events daily reinforce this uneasiness. The tax bite grows ever bigger, except for favored interests, while public services decay. The rapist and robber are forever being let free to prowl again by a legal system that seems impervious to the public demand that dangerous criminals stay locked up.
The residential neighborhood is regularly bulldozed under to make way for the office building or the highway extension, as though only the construction lobbies have the inside track on public decisions.
The businessman is almost hopelessly entangled in governmental red tape spun by a mindless process of bureaucratic accretion that all profess to deplore but none seem able to halt.
Meanwhile, the government that so often seems rented out to the predators and power blocs also seems dried up of genuine ideas. Problems mount, but officialdom gibbers and offers no solutions.
Despite failures that should humble the vainest, the bureaucracy grows more arrogant, more contemptuous of the public, more given to entrenching itself in a labyrinthine fortress wherein it is impenetrable to the people and uncontrollable even by Presidents and congresses.
True participation by the people in public decisions can be made not only just a possibility but a prerequisite. Either we must now make these goals the key items on our national agenda, or we must write the epitaph of the American idea.
As a beginning, we wish to offer a modest proposal. It springs from the fact that we have a line of daily communication with 50 million readers in close to 1,000 newspapers, a line of communication that can be used to combat the individual citizen's despairing belief that no one in government is listening.
We have established a National Suggestion Box which will receive your ideas for the solution of national problems and the righting of governmental wrongs. Millions of Americans have good ideas and valuable perspectives, which are sorely needed to revitalize the nation.
But they feel that they have no place to go with their ideas, for the government has a special talent for resisting outside suggestions and giving people the runaround. So if you have an idea, send it to the National Suggestion Box.
Here's what we'll do with it. We will publicize ideas of special merit. We will follow up these proposals, urging their adoption. We cannot demand that your proposals be accepted; we can merely demand that they be considered.
To run this program, we have set up a small organization. President Edward Piszek of the Copernicus Society of America, a group devoted to good causes, has offered to help fund it. The rest is up to you. Write to us at the National Suggestion Box 20009, Washington, D.C. 20013.
As a typical example, we have previously received suggestions that federal agencies should have to be renewed every four years. Those that become obsolete or unproductive should automatically die.
This would require the federal agencies to justify their reestablishment. It would also offer a real incentive for citizens' groups to monitor the bureaucracy and bring pressure to bear on Congress at the optimal time.
The idea has now been put into legislative form by Sen. Edmund Muskie, (D-Maine). Similar ideas from the public should be presented and discussed.
What we seek to do, in a large sense, is to return government to the people and encourage Americans to rise as never before to the status of true citizenship. We must be more than regular taxpayers and sometime voters.