June 16, 1976
Page 18528
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I thank my good friend from New Mexico, the floor manager of the bill. I also express appreciation to him and to the distinguished Senator from West Virginia for their leadership in taking this bill to conference and respecting the Senate will, as expressed in action on this bill, and bringing it to the floor.
In response to my good friend on the other side, with whom I regret being in disagreement, let me make two points: One, no single committee has jurisdiction over all elements of this bill. Second, all elements of this bill were contemplated by last year's budget resolution and this year's budget resolution. So that, although no single committee has jurisdiction over all elements of the bill, the Senate as a whole has expressed itself positively with respect to all elements of the bill.
So I am not particularly impressed with the argument that because the bill, as it came out of the Committee on Public Works, did not contain the other elements, therefore, the Senate is out of order and the House-Senate conference is out of order in adding them to the bill.
If I may address myself to the bill as it comes out of conference, this legislation offers us a second attempt to enact into law a program which has been designated a congressional priority in both budget resolutions for fiscal year 1976 and in the first resolution for fiscal year 1977.
The provisions of this bill are not new to this body. The major substantive provisions of S. 3201 are identical to those of the bill which was vetoed by the President. S. 3201 does differ from H.R. 5247 in one significant way. Its total authorization level is less than $4 billion. H.R. 5247 would have authorized expenditures well in excess of $6 billion.
The conferees on S. 3201 have recommended this reduction in recognition of improvements in the state of the economy since we began this debate well over a year ago, as well as in hopes that the President will sign this scaled down proposal.
While acknowledging that unemployment has improved, the conferees also recognize that we still have a long way to go. One need only look at the unemployment figures to know the recession is still very much with us. And the President's own economic advisor conceded just last week that we can expect unemployment to hover around the 7 percent mark for the rest of this year.
The bill before us offers us a modest but effective vehicle for easing the pain of lingering high unemployment. If enacted, the various programs in this bill could provide as many as 300,000 jobs. And they would be solid, productive jobs, not make work employment.
Title I of the bill would fund community projects on which construction can begin within 90 days. Only high priority local projects, for which the initial planning stages have been completed, could be funded under this title. The building of schools, libraries or recreation centers, for example, is hardly my idea of make work jobs.
Title II of the bill would provide general budget assistance to State and local governments which are still experiencing high unemployment.
That this is still the case, Mr. President, is well documented in an article which appeared today in the Wall Street Journal. I shall not read it all, but ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the RECORD at this point.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows :
MANY MUNICIPALITIES LAG BEHIND THE NATION IN ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Nationwide economic statistics indicate that the tide of recovery is rising fairly steadily. But many of the nation's cities are still being battered, and some are being relentlessly swept along by an undertow of disastrous economic forces.
In city after city, an informal survey by Wall Street Journal reporters finds evidence of two related problems: lagging upturns from the recession and long term, possibly incurable, ailments.
"My gut feeling is that (over the next few years) the Philadelphia region won't be as healthy in terms of recovery as the nation as a whole,"says James H. Savitt, an economist for Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates.
"Detroit is suffering from long term deterioration, offsetting any improvements from the cyclical recovery,"says an economist there.
Everyone has heard about New York City's intractable problems — the sag toward bankruptcy, the physical deterioration, the high crime rates, the flight of people and businesses, the irritations unlimited. But perhaps not so widely recognized is the extent to which the Big Apple isn't just a rare rotten apple in the U.S. municipal barrel. In many cities, block after block of gutted buildings and rubblestrewn lots suggest that quite possibly much of the barrel may be rotting — a frightening possibility in a nation in which nearly a third of the population lives in cities of 50,000 or more.
WIDE RANGE OF WOES
The problems of economically lagging cities spread over a wide range.
They affect Seattle, where two props under the economy early last year — steady work at Boeing and jobs related to the Alaskan pipeline — gradually sagged, and seasonally adjusted unemployment in the metropolitan area lingered at 9% in April despite a favorable array of other statistics.
They hurt Erie, Pa., where unemployment in April was at 10.6% partly because many companies, a job placement executive says, "are afraid" to hire because of a "wait-and-see attitude" toward the economic rebound.
They are highly visible in downtown Providence, R.I., a place of boarded-up stores, a vacant 500-room hotel, dwindling population, high unemployment and low hope of much progress soon.
And they range down to the seemingly incurable maladies of cities like Lawrence, Mass., an old mill town that has been sliding so long that even most of its permanent placement employment agencies have gone out of business; like Wilmington, Del., where the number of abandoned houses — more than 700 — hasn't changed for three years despite big rehabilitation programs; like Buffalo, N.Y., where once-bustling Main Street now bustles with panhandlers and prostitutes; and like Compton, Calif., which City Manager Allen J. Parker terms a victim of "white flight," with over 20% unemployment, 56% of its residents on welfare, and only two housing starts all last year.
SOME CITIES BOOMING
But, in sharp contrast, some cities are booming. Mostly they are in the Sun Belt, the areas across the South to which Americans are flocking. Many such cities, particularly in the Southwest, are prospering not only because of the warm sun above but because of the wealth of oil, gas, and coal below. An agribusiness boom and high technology industry often help.
"This region was only mildly affected by the recession in the first place, and we've rebounded much more rapidly than the rest of the country," says David Ransom, an economist for First International Bancshares, in Dallas.
Even far from the fun in the sun, some other cities are surprisingly prosperous — although few of them are without serious problems, especially in regard to municipal financing. Indianapolis, for example, was hit only lightly by the recession. John Carter, an Indiana National Bank economist says the city was aided by diversification into service industries from its heavy industry base.
The capital goods industry by itself rarely seems to produce a rebound faster than the general economic recovery; usually an additional edge is needed. For example, St. Louis was helped by state employment in aerospace, largely at McDonnell Douglas, and so the auto industry upturn there came atop a relatively prosperous base (although East St. Louis remains a disaster). In Milwaukee, the prosperity of a few major employers — particularly mining equipment makers such as Harnischfegei and Bucyrus Erie — gave the local economy unaccustomed stability during the recession, and now other capital goods companies are recovering.
HEAVY INDUSTRY LAG.
Without such a stroke of luck, an industrial city is likely to suffer from the traditional lag with which capital goods manufacturers respond to a nationwide upturn. Cleveland's economy, for instance, is lagging, and James Dawson, an economist at National City Bank there, notes that the city is subject to wide economic swings because "durable goods are half again as important to Cleveland as they are to the country as a whole." He adds that the three largest employers are the automobile, steel and capital goods industries — all highly cyclical.
In Canton, an industrial city 50 miles away, the recession struck "a couple of months" after it hit most places, and in the recovery, "we're just running a few minutes behind," says Harlan Dobry, executive vice president of the chamber of commerce. In Erie, Pa., Charles Barney of the chamber of commerce says, "As soon as companies start spending for capital goods, we'll come out" of the the slump.
Ironically, some cities may be lagging precisely because they lack much cyclical industry. In the San Francisco-Oakland area, where unemployment in May was 11.4% (compared with 11.6% a year earlier) , a Bank of America economist, Eric Thor, blames the sluggishness mainly on the area's service-oriented economy and adds, "The major recovery nationwide has been in manufacturing, but we don't have much of that."
Too much concentration in consumer oriented lines also can hurt. One economist in Memphis terms the recovery there "mediocre to nonexistent," and among factors cited are layoffs and plant closings by consumer goods makers and the city's role as a regional distribution center. Memphis was harder hit than in previous recessions because consumers, crimped by both recession and inflation, cut back buying sharply. Even last month, layoffs still were being announced.
A heavy stake in agriculture also can be a blight, if area farmers fare poorly. Memphis area cotton and soybean crops yielded $200 million less last year than even in depressed 1974 according to Agriculture Department figures, and so considerably less agricultural money was pumped through the city's economy.
To some degree, of course, the fortunes for most cities are closely linked with a few dominant industries. Most cities are like Seattle, which, as a local economic puts it, "really doesn't boom unless Boeing booms." However, a key employer can, if it so chooses, shore up a city in defiance of an economic downtrend in the area. For the past four years — throughout the recession — Du Pont kept its Wilmington employment stable at about 7,300. The giant chemical company also is responsible for the only private office building under construction in Wilmington; lenders refused a commitment until the builders signed up a major renter. The builders "made it clear to us that they needed us," a Du Pont spokesman says, and "We needed space."
FLORIDA CONSTRUCTION
Although the construction industry is important almost everywhere, in only a comparatively few cities does it attain a position of dominance. Among them are some Florida coastal resorts. In Dade and Broward counties, which make up Miami and its environs, 34,000 condominium units stand unsold, and the consequent stagnation in build.ing activity has kept the unemployment rate at 11.5%. Some nearby cities are even worse off; in West Palm Beach, unemployment is 13.2%, and in the Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood area it is 14.6%.
"Commercial construction has held up pretty well," says Ray Lacombe, vice president and economist at First Federal Savings & Loan Association of Miami. "It’s residential construction — particularly multifamily units — that has slumped so badly."
Even in many non-resort areas, overbuild ing and a subsequent slump in construction have retarded the recovery. Memphis is burdened with upwards of 1.2 million square feet of unrented new office space, a three-to-five-year supply of empty condominium units and a three-year supply of developed but empty single family housing lots. The result: the sharpest decline in construction since 1946. In the first four months of 1976, nonresidential construction was still down 24% from a year earlier; residential building gained 72%, but the surge was from practically a standstill last year.
In many cities, the construction rebound has the same glum aspect. In Detroit, construction activity was up 64% in the first quarter, but Jack Steiner, a chamber of commerce official, notes, "You're working from a very low base." In San Francisco, a 76% rebound in residential contracts still leaves building "not anywhere near the level it should be," Bank of America's Mr. Thor says.
DEMOLITION FACTOR
Housing demolitions may be more significant than construction in some troubled cities. In Buffalo last year, 1,408 dwelling units were demolished, up from 911 in 1974. In February 1976, demolitions rose to 139 units from 87 a year before, while construction permits dropped to 112 from 164. The dismaying trends are obvious not only in statistical summaries but also in the gaps in building facades along Buffalo streets.
Construction in some cities is reviving faster than in others, of course, and even some center city areas are being spruced up. Providence's College Hill area, near Brown University, is enjoying a resurgence. In Wilmington, Bill Waugaman, senior vice president of the Wilmington Savings Fund Society, says, "We're receiving more and more (mortgage) applications for housing within the city," and most of them are from the kind of families "you'd expect would move to the suburbs."
But despite scattered signs of revival, most cities are suffering a drain of population to the suburbs. Providence's population has dropped to 168,000 from 207,000 in 1960, and Wilmington's has barely stabilized at about the 80,000 level reached in 1970 after a long decline from more than 100,000 in 1950. Buffalo and Erie have been shrinking for years. The Census Bureau estimates that Detroit slid 11% from 1970 to 1,346,000 in 1975, and even older Detroit suburbs such as Dearborn and Royal Oak are losing population as residents die off and their children move farther from the city. Warren, a booming Detroit suburb of the 1950s, is desperately trying to sell three surplus schools.
Some cities, like Memphis and Indianapolis, aren't losing people and jobs to the suburbs, simply because their city limits extend so far out. But the downtown areas have been deteriorating for years.
FLIGHT OF BUSINESSES
The flight of people to the suburbs has been accompanied by a flight of businesses. One obvious result is a consistently higher unemployment rate in many cities than in surrounding areas. Joblessness in Detroit in May, for instance was estimated at 13.4%, far above the 10% for the whole metropolitan area and the 7.3% nationwide. In Philadelphia, unemployment in the city usually runs two percentage points higher than in the region.
In the Albany-Schenectady-Troy region, Sanford W. Huston, president of Denby Stores Inc., a retail chain, says, "we're growing in this area, and we still project growth. But all the core cities in the metropolitan area are dying." Denby is considering three suburban locations for new stores, Mr. Huston adds, but "I wouldn't touch a core city in this area." He says that sales of Denby's only core city store, in Troy, plunged more than 30% from 1970 levels while its seven suburban outlets are thriving.
Frank Dinova, owner of Encounter, a fashionable boutique in Albany, is glum, too. The
economy could come back, and it wouldn't help the (inner) city of Albany. In fact,"he says, "it might hurt, because it would give more people the opportunity to get out." Dean Harold M. Williams of the University of California at Los Angeles Graduate Schoolof Management also notes "a tendency for those who are financially able, to move their businesses and live in more suburban communities."
Even some suburbs are affected by "white flight." The recent federal court decision ordering busing between Wilmington's 90% black school district and the largely white suburban districts has sent some Delaware suburbanites fleeing into Pennsylvania and Maryland.
People and companies scoot across state lines to avoid other problems, too. Lowell and Lawrence have been hurt by an exodus into southern New Hampshire by people avoiding high taxes and insurance bills in Massachusetts.
LURE OF THE SUN
Currently, the interstate movement in the limelight is the flight into the sunlight. To old New England mill towns, the loss of textile and other factories to the South is an ancient, although still agonizing, story. It has turned Lowell and Lawrence into a "longterm basket case," says Dick Syron, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. New Haven and other Connecticut industrial towns are similarly afflicted.
And in a recent securities prospectus, Buffalo attributed its plight to, among other factors, the "general shift in population to the Southwest," coupled with companies' desire "to move production facilities closer to their product markets." According to the New York State Labor Department, 17 major concerns have pulled out of the Buffalo area since the beginning of 1975, for a cumulative loss of 5,200 jobs.
Perhaps just as serious is the fact that the department hasn't received any reports of a major employer moving into the Buffalo area. Many other Northeastern cities are equally worried about their difficulties in luring much new industry. "We haven't had any real industrial expansion projects going within the last year," laments Raymond Weber, executive director of the Manufacturers' Association of Erie.
Expressing his concern "about the so-called Sun Belt problem," Mr. Syron adds in Boston, "What I'm saying is that every time I go to Dallas, I get depressed." Most officials in the Northeast expect the drain to the South to continue. The only way the migrants will be lured back, James Dawson, senior vice president and economist at Cleveland's National City Bank, says wryly, is if "there's such a severe energy crisis that they all have to turn off their air conditioners."
TWO EXCEPTIONS
Ironically, two archetypal sun cities, Los Angeles and Miami, aren't basking in the boom.
In Los Angeles, unemployment continues high; some local companies, particularly aircraft concerns, have encountered downdrafts. Meanwhile, migrants from other states and Mexico keep swelling the labor force. "We don't have the economic base upon which to stage a recovery," Tyler MacDonald, head of the city's economic development panel, says. "We're not creating the hard jobs, the industrial jobs, that become a base from which other employment feeds."
Miami is suffering not only from stagnant construction but also, some people think, from Disney World's competition for tourists. "That area acts as a dam across the state," complains Charles Francis, a vice president of Wometco Enterprises, operator of the Seaquarium near Miami. Other observers, however, doubt that tourists tend to stop and get no further south than Disney World; they note that tourism has been healthy, if not booming, in Miami, and they say the Latin atmosphere created by the energetic Cuban immigrants has attracted many Latin American tourists.
Tourism has been temporarily helping Los Angeles and San Francisco, too, althoughBank of America's Mr. Thor notes that the projected surge in such revenue in San Francisco "doesn't translate directly into jobs." In Los Angeles, tourism is up despite fewer conventions — a decline that a visitors bureau spokesman attributes to a bicentennial urge to visit the East's old Colonial cities. A Philadelphia greeting card store operator confirms that "the bicentennial is bringing people in from all over."
However, tourism's whimsical ebbs and flows can't solve the basic problems — looming up as starkly as a deserted factory — of an aging city.
Obsolete industrial plants, for example, plague many Northeastern cities besides New England mill towns. Buffalo's gloomy prospectus complains of "aging industrial facilities." Philadelphia's generally old factories in a recession "get taken off first and don't come back on until later" than newer facilities, Wharton Econometric's Mr. Savitt says.
Aging, deteriorating housing also drags down some cities. In Detroit, a massive federal rehabilitation program backfired miserably and left thousands of abandoned homes scattered across the city; now, inadequate housing impedes attempts to stem Detroit's long term decline.
In some cities, arson has reached calamitous proportions; it has left block after block of destruction. High rates of other crimes, including factory vandalism, every kind of theft, muggings of personnel and even murder, provoke people and businesses to flee, raise insurance costs to prohibitive levels and destroy all hope of encouraging new investment. Compton's crime rate, one of the highest in California, keeps new business away and threatens existing firms, City Manager Parker says. "Our No. 1 problem is arresting the crime rate," he adds.
Even if a company should want to move into a city, it often can't find enough land, Jack Pryor, director of Detroit's development agency, concedes. Los Angeles suffers because it has few industrial parks, which many companies want, says Robert W. Draine, a real estate executive. UCLA's Prof. Williams warns that the strongest businesses, lacking room to expand, depart; as a result, he says, the city suffers from "negative Darwinism, or survival of the unfit."
COSTS OF CONGESTION
In some larger cities, the shortage of land has an unfortunate corollary, an abundance of congestion. Slowed truck deliveries and employee commuting problems raise costs and deter investment.
Costs also are ballooned to uncompetitive levels by strong labor unions in some cities. Currently Anaconda Co.'s brass division is threatening to close three tube mills in Waterbury, Conn., partially because of what the company terms "excessive" labor costs. And in many cities the high costs of municipal workers' contracts are raising taxes and are helping spur the flight of both residents and businesses.
Various local problems hurt specific cities. In Memphis, some bank economists worry that local banks were so damaged during the recession, particularly by ill-advised real estate loans, that they may not be able to finance a local recovery. In Buffalo, the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in the 1950s "was the death knell for the grain industry here,"says Leslie Foschio, the city's corporation counsel, because grain ships from the Midwest can bypass Buffalo and sail directly out to the Atlantic.
Other governmental actions have jolted ailing cities. Providence, for example, was hurt when several years ago the Navy began phasing out some nearby installations; altogether, 6,000 civilian jobs have been eliminated and 18,000 military personnel transferred. Buffalo lost an important lure to industry when its access to cheap hydroelectric power in the Niagara Falls area was eliminated by a statewide rate restructuring.
HIGH LOCAL TAXES
Moreover, most of the sick cities are put at a competitive disadvantage by high local taxes. In Los Angeles, businessmen complain about the city's gross receipts and inventory taxes, which nearby cities don't have. In some places, taxes are headed far higher than they are now. On July 1, Philadelphia will put into effect the biggest tax increase in its history; property taxes will soar 29.3% and wage taxes 30.2%. The mayor of San Francisco has proposed a whole series of tax boosts.
But despite high taxes, city after city is running a disastrous deficit. Even without an immediate threat of bankruptcy, the effects are serious. Detroit, which is running a $43.7 million deficit this year, has reduced city employee totals about 20%, although some of these workers have been rehired with federal funds. Compton, hit by rising costs and stagnant tax revenues, recently announced it will lay off 166 of its 770 municipal workers. Buffalo's credit rating has been reduced, and the city faces a crippling inability to borrow; slated for the ax in the fiscal year starting July 1 are 738 city jobs and 400 more in the educational sector. Such employment cutbacks, of course, retard a city's economic recovery.
Government retrenchment strikes most heavily in cities like Albany, a state capital where almost 28% of the jobs are governmental. Hundreds of state workers have been laid off or forced to take pay cuts. "Government is feeling the pinch and is dampening our recovery," says David J. Nyhan, a state labor department analyst. Local businessmen agree. "The auto dealerships in this area have been hurting," says John S. Murray, general manager of Marsh Hallman Chevrolet Inc. Even local gin mills, their owners say, are feeling the pain.
Mr. MUSKIE. The headline and first two paragraphs read as follows:
MANY MUNICIPALITIES LAG BEHIND THE NATION IN ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Nationwide economic statistics indicate that the tide of recovery is rising fairly steadily. But many of the nation's cities are still being battered, and some are being relentlessly swept along by an undertow of disastrous economic forces.
In city after city, an informal survey by Wall Street Journal reporters finds evidence of two related problems: lagging upturns from the recession and long term, possibly incurable, ailments.
The article, in two pages that I hold up for the Senators to see, documents this fact, city by city across the country. Thus, there is justification for title II.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. CURTIS). The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. MONTOYA. I yield 2 more minutes.
Mr. MUSKIE. No funds would be authorized under this title unless national unemployment was at least 6 percent. At the local level, funds would be allocated according to the unemployment rate of individual jurisdictions. This money would be used to help State and local governments, referred to in the Wall Street Journal, through the budget squeeze brought about by high unemployment within their boundaries — so that they do not have to raise taxes or cut back on services, both actions which run counter to Federal efforts to stimulate economic recovery.
So, there is still a case, Mr. President, as the unemployment figures are still running above 7 percent. In this story of city after city in economic trouble from this recession, there is still a case for this conference report and the legislation that it includes.
Title III of S. 3201 would provide additional funds for the construction of wastewater treatment facilities by State and local governments.
Mr. President, a majority of the Senate has given its nod of approval to this antirecession package on more than one occasion. Earlier this year, the Senate failed to override the President's veto by only three votes.
The bill before us today represents substantially the same approach as in H.R. 5247, but at a much reduced cost. It is offered in a spirit of compromise to those who said the earlier bill was too costly.
It is indeed tragic, Mr. President, that this recession has been so severe that some of us have forgotten just how bad 7 percent unemployment really is. But the 7 million unemployed Americans have not forgotten. They know it means that we are far from out of the woods.
I urge my colleagues to vote today to reaffirm our commitment to this legislation, so that we can get on with the business of putting America back to work.
I urge the Senate to support the careful, comprehensive, thorough, thoughtful work of the conference, headed on the Senate side by the distinguished Senator from West Virginia and the Senator from New Mexico, who have my congratulations.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. McCLURE. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. DOMENICI).
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I, too, like my good friend from Idaho and from Tennessee, commend the distinguished chairman of the committee (Mr. RANDOLPH) and Senator MONTOYA for their hard work, in particular on the public works part of this bill. It is indeed with reluctance that I must indicate my opposition to it.
Mr. President, it seems to me that while we look at each one of the ingredients in this package, one might conclude that each of them indeed attempts to address a rather significant problem in our country. There is no doubt that the construction industry and those many hundreds of thousands of people who work in that industry who are unemployed are anxiously waiting for an opportunity to go to work. However, it distresses me that the trigger mechanism in the Senate bill that tied the amount of assistance to the degree of unemployment in this country has been eliminated from this bill.
We know that the long lead time in these programs means that frequently, when the recession is over, this kind of program and project continues. What started as an antirecession measure encumbers the economic marketplace well into inflation. Those who are hurt are the very working people we are trying to protect, for their enemy — as it is the enemy of all Americans — is inflation that will follow after this recession if we are not careful as to what role we play in trying to help solve it.
Then, Mr. President, title II of the bill addresses the needs of the cities of our country. My good friend from Maine knows that, having been a mayor of my State's major city, I am concerned about this problem, but I do think it is true that this countercyclical title has been changed so dramatically that it now resembles general revenue sharing rather than an antirecessionary, countercyclical assistance program to those cities most in need.
I do not believe it is a new national urban policy, and if there is any indication that that is why we ought to pass it, I do not think it begins to address the problems of our major urban centers. Therefore, since it is not, in my opinion, aimed at helping those major cities in America that have been most hurt by the recession, I feel we are just adding another major program to the many we have without any direction and without really knowing what we are trying to do to solve the problems of our major metropolitan areas.
Mr. President, I believe that, among the many antirecessionary programs considered by the Senate and by the House, the Talmadge-Nunn amendment would not be high on the list of countercyclical programs. It is an attempt to add substantial hundreds of millions of dollars to the process of helping with water and sewer projects in our respective States, but the priority question is to carefully evaluate the existing formula for the waste water treatment program and to decide what to do with the money we are going to appropriate for water and sewer projects.
This amendment has come along because someone wants to amend that allocation process and make it sound like a very important antirecessionary measure in order to get a package together and garner the kind of well rounded support needed.
So when you put all those three measures together, it is with reluctance that I must say I cannot support the bill. I do say that generally the Senate has attempted to address two of the major issues here, the problem of our major cities in this recession and the problem of unemployment in the construction industry.
I do not believe this bill, in its final form as reported by the conferees, does that, and I honestly believe it will turn out to be inflationary and, indeed, will not address the issues that are basically the goals of this package.
It is not anything like the best antirecessionary package we could report. It is rather the victim of happenstance and disagreements between the House and the Senate as to where the thrust ought to be. The result of the disagreement has been to add to the bill both what we agree upon as well as not to have any disagreement, because we have a lot of what many of us want.
So I must oppose it and, in doing so, I once again commend the chairman of the Public Works Committee for his abiding interest in trying to help solve the problems of the construction industry. I just do not think this will do it.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
Who yields time?
Mr. McCLURE. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will state it.
Mr. McCLURE. How much time remains to the proponents and how much to the opponents?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee has 10 minutes remaining; the Senator from New Mexico has 11 minutes remaining.
Mr. BAKER. Mr. President, I yield such time as the Senator from Idaho may wish.
Mr. McCLURE. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for yielding time. I address myself to two matters that have been mentioned. First, the Senator from Maine mentioned that we should not criticize the bill because it was an amalgamation of three different programs.
I do not criticize it on that basis. I recognize the differing jurisdictions. I recognize that once they are brought together on the floor we have a composite that comes from different jurisdictions, all of which were addressed by the Budget Committee. No argument is raised about the question of whether or not this violates budget targets, although I think we might well want to take a look at what we do to the other options under functional targets on other initiatives that may come along later on. That is not the essence of the discussion today.
The other thing I want to mention today is the impact of the spend out rates on public works type projects. When we first were discussing this a year ago we had both the triggering device in here and also we had a very great effort made to put the money into programs that were ready to move. The Talmadge-Nunn amendment was added on the floor in part because it was felt the amendment authorized a group of projects that were ready to go. They could move forward very rapidly and therefore, might have a substantial impact within the period of time that we are seeking to stimulate the economy in the country.
I want to refer to not just the experience we have had in the past — and I think we must — but to a Brookings Institution study that analyzed the spend out rate on the accelerated public works program, which was enacted a number of years ago.
The accelerated Public Works Act of 1962 and public works impact program of 1971 both illustrate the lag problem with which we are dealing. It becomes particularly important because we have been talking about this matter for almost a year, and thus we have already lost almost a year in starting.
Mr. RANDOLPH. Mr. President, will my colleague yield?
Mr. McCLURE. If I may do so on the Senator's time.
Mr. RANDOLPH. Yes, it would be taken out of my time.
Mr. McCLURE. Yes.
Mr. RANDOLPH. The Senator referred to the accelerated Public Works Act of 1962. Let us remember that the unemployment rate in the country at that time was 7.1 percent. That bill passed in the Senate and in the House and became the law of the land. It was needed then.
This bill, with a higher rate of unemployment in the construction industry of almost 15 percent, this measure is needed even more.
Mr. McCLURE. I appreciate the statement of the Senator from West Virginia, but it does not really subtract from the experience that we had under those programs as to when the money was actually spent.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
What puzzles me is that, as I listen to the arguments on that side, all three of the Senators have been in favor of the public works element of the bill standing by itself but what you object to is the countercyclical, which is triggered to the recession, and the Nunn-Talmadge thing. But now you find fault with the public works bill, too.