June 23, 1976
Page 19826
Mr. STENNIS. Mr. President, I am pleased that this amendment was brought up first. I followed the arguments closely. But I did not see the Senator from Maine in the Chamber before debate on the amendment started — if he was here, I just failed to see him. I want to yield him 5 minutes to see just where we are with respect to the budget before we pass on any of these amendments.
So I yield 5 minutes on the bill, Mr. President, to the Senator from Maine, and then we will proceed with the consideration of amendments.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Maine.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I thank my good friend from Mississippi, the floor manager of this bill, for his courtesy. I will say I arrived a little later than expected, and I apologize for that.
I would like to comment generally on H.R. 14236, the fiscal year 1977 public works/energy appropriation bill which provides funds for the Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Tennessee Valley Authority and several other smaller agencies.
This is the first fiscal 1977 appropriation bill to be considered by the Senate. In the next few weeks we will be taking up the 12 remaining regular appropriation bills. As we take up this first bill, I want to congratulate the Senate Appropriations Committee, and particularly its distinguished chairman, Senator McCLELLAN, for laying out a schedule for consideration of appropriation bills that will help the Senate meet the deadlines established by the Congressional Budget Act. This schedule is considerably accelerated compared to previous years.
The Budget Act provides a basis for judging how appropriations compare to the amounts contemplated for spending in the first budget resolution. Under this system, the Budget Committee informs the Appropriations Committee and other committees which have spending jurisdiction of the portion of the total amount of spending contemplated by the budget which is allocable to those committees. Those committees in turn divide the amount allocated to each by subcommittee in the case of appropriations and by program in the case of other committees. This is the so-called crosswalk procedure under the Budget Act. It is being implemented for the first time this year. Through it, we will be able to tell for the first time whether each appropriation bill is "within the budget" when we consider it. The crosswalk does not prevent supplemental requests from coming before the Senate at a later date. These supplementals, if appropriated, could exceed the amounts contained in the budget resolution. But we note that the Appropriations Committee has held a considerable amount of the funds allocated to it under this crosswalk process in reserve for supplementals.
All in all, this newly implemented part of the budget process would eliminate much of the uncertainty and frustration we faced last summer in dealing with spending bills and trying to compare them to the Congressional budget.
Unfortunately, a number of standing committees have yet to make their crosswalk reports to the Senate. This has resulted in some inconvenience to the leadership, since entitlement bills cannot be taken up in the Senate until the amounts allocated to these bills, which are really spending bills, can be determined through the crosswalk process of the committees which report those bills. The Appropriations Committee is setting the pace. It has reported its crosswalk. It is thorough and complete. It will be an invaluable aid to the Senate in assuring adherence to the congressional budget we have adopted.
I want now to comment on the relationship between this bill and the targets set out in the first concurrent resolution for fiscal year 1977.
H.R. 14236 provides budget authority in fiscal 1977 of $9.7 billion with outlays estimated to be $5.6 billion. In addition there will be outlays of $3.1 billion arising from previous public works/ energy appropriations so that total outlays in the programs covered by this bill are estimated to be $8.7 billion.
The funds provided in this appropriation bill are within the totals allocated by the Committee on Appropriations to the Subcommittee on Public Works pursuant to section 302(b) of the Budget Act. That allocation was $9.8 billion in budget authority and $8.9 billion in outlays. By providing $9.7 billion in budget authority and $8.7 billion in outlays, H.R. 14236 stays within the amounts allocated.
This bill provides $200 million for relief to the victims of the Teton Dam disaster, an appropriation that I fully support. The funds will become available immediately upon enactment of the bill, which I assume will occur prior to the beginning of fiscal 1977. Hence they are not part of the $9.7 billion budget authority total that I have indicated this bill provides for fiscal 1977.
Were H.R. 14236 to be signed by the President in fiscal year 1976, the $200 million will be classified as 1976 money. The fiscal year 1976 second concurrent budget resolution we enacted last December contains sufficient room to accommodate this amount. The same is true with the budget ceilings for the transition quarter. Were the $200 million classified as transition quarter money the budget ceilings for the transition quarter would accommodate the amount provided.
The funds provided in this appropriation bill fall into four of the budget's functional categories. In three of these functional categories — defense, general science, and community and regional development — the amounts in H.R. 14236 are entirely consistent with the assumptions of the budget resolution. In the fourth functional category — natural resources, environment and energy — the amount in the bill is slightly above what is assumed in the resolution. But the new budget process is not a line item process and the Budget Committee is not a line item committee, and since the amounts in this appropriation bill fall within the section 302(b) allocations of budget authority and outlays to the Subcommittee on Public Works and since we do not anticipate any major new funding demand for the amount allocated but not used, this bill is entirely within the guidelines of the budget resolution and I am therefore happy to support it.
Mr. President, I want to comment now on the provision in this bill which appropriates $170 million to begin work on a new Federal uranium enrichment plant. I support this provision because it seems evident that the Nation needs additional enrichment capacity, though exactly how soon and how much capacity is needed by the year 2000 is not at all clear.
I am aware that the administration's bill to allow ERDA to guarantee the entry of private ventures into the uranium enrichment business is now on the calendar. It is my understanding that as revised by the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, that bill (S. 2035) provides that each contract ERDA plans to enter into with these private enrichment ventures will have to be approved by Congress. If S. 2035 is enacted, several of these contracts will be submitted shortly thereafter. The parameters of the first of these contracts have been disclosed and the contemplated contract can be described as exceedingly generous.
The Federal enrichment facility authorized to be started in the pending bill offers an alternative to at least the first of these guaranteed private ventures, an alternative that should be utilized if ERDA is unable to negotiate a contract that protects the interests of the United States.
I thus support this $170 million appropriation as an important feature of the congressional energy policy. It represents a start toward needed expansion of our enrichment capability. It also represents a means to encourage ERDA to negotiate firmly with the private enrichment ventures.
Let me congratulate the distinguished chairman, Senator MCCLELLAN, and members of the Appropriations Committee for bringing a bill to the floor that is within the guidelines of the budget resolution. I commend them all for their careful review of the programs in this bill and for helping to maintain the discipline of the budget process.
The amounts reported out by the Committee on Appropriations are about $100 million in budget authority and $200 million in outlays, below the crosswalk amount that was allocated to the Public Works Appropriations Subcommittee under Section 302(5) of the Budget Act. So on its face, there appears to be some room here for amendments.
But let me make some points. Among other things, there is provided as I've said before, budget authority of $200 million to be available immediately for the Teton Dam disaster. This may well be just a first claim for funds. No funds were assumed in the first concurrent resolution because it relates to a disaster which occurred subsequently, but there happens to be at this point, before the conference with the House, room of $100 million to accommodate additional needs provided we do not use up that room for other purposes.
Second, the mix in the House bill and the mix in this bill are different, and to accommodate both bills may well require increasing the amount of the bill above the dollar amounts that have been reported to the Senate today. The Appropriations Committee understandably sees the need for some flexibility which will enable the conference to accommodate the House as well as the Senate priorities.
As I understand it, the Senator from Mississippi may want to comment further on that point.
Mr. STENNIS. Yes, if the Senator will yield to me for just 20 seconds, I will comment on it.
Mr. President, the Senator has correctly described what we will be up against. We cannot just take our figures and say, "That's it." We have to go to conference on this bill.
They have their ideas and they will naturally fight for them. We just have to keep our eyes on that now as a fact of life.
I really do not want the responsibility of this bill, Mr. President, on the floor here, unless we come within reaching distance, I will say, of our Budget Committee's resolution.
It is the Senate's resolution. We agreed to it ourselves, so we are bound by it, as I see it.
I thank the Senator.
Mr. MUSKIE. I make the second point that as I understand it, $7 million of the amount proposed by the current amendment is included in the House bill, so that this amendment would be in conference.
Let me mention again now that additional Senators are in the Chamber, if I have a minute or two left, about the fact that this is the first appropriation bill that is to be considered by the Senate for fiscal 1977. So it is the first one to implement what is called the crosswalk procedure which is provided in the Budget Reform Act.
What that means is that the Appropriations Committee has allocated to it by the Budget Committee the amount that is available to it from the totals of the budget resolution conference for distribution among the various appropriations subcommittees.
The amount in fiscal year 1977 which has been allocated to the Appropriations Committee in budget authority is $292.9 billion, in outlays. $273.1 billion, but that is the total amount.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. STENNIS. Mr. President, I am glad to yield 2 additional minutes to the Senator.
Mr. MUSKIE. Now, the Appropriations Committee has distributed all of this budget authority to its subcommittees except an amount for contingencies. It is described as "undistributed amounts for contingencies, pay raises and savings." That amounts to $6.2 billion out of $292.9 billion of budget authority, and $2.2 billion out of $273.1 billion for outlays.
Percentagewise, that is a very small contingency account to take care of supplementals that come down the legislative road in the next year and unexpected developments, like the Teton Dam disaster, that require a response by the Congress.
So I think we ought to be very careful about dipping into that contingency fund. I think we ought to leave it, by and large, to the Appropriations Committee to control, and that we ought not be dipping into it by floor amendments.
If the Senate accepts that all there is left available in the amount allocated to this committee is about $100 million in budget authority, about $200 million in outlays, and if we begin to nibble away at that margin by floor amendments here, we will leave the Appropriations Committee very little flexibility in conference to accommodate the priorities which I am sure will be asserted by the House in conference.
I simply wanted to give that background so that Members will understand there is very little room — very little room, if any — for floor amendments which would have the effect of narrowing the margin that is available for flexibility in conference.
I wanted the distinguished floor manager of the bill and other Senators to understand those budget facts pertaining to this bill at this time.
I thank the Senator from Mississippi for giving me this opportunity of making the record.
Mr. STENNIS. Mr. President, I want to be sure the Senator from Maine hears what I am going to say. For the Senate, I want especially to thank him for his appearance here and for his analysis of the situation, which I think is correct and will be quite helpful to us.
He makes the point, of course, that the House is entitled to consideration at conference. We cannot say that we go by this figure here and by that alone. We have to take into consideration their matters, and that is not trying to detract from this particular amendment.
I thank him again for his courtesy, because what he said will be helpful to the Senate, not just to the Senator from Mississippi and the Senator from Oregon, but to the Senate, and I especially thank him.