June 24, 1976
Page 20201
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I take this opportunity to comment on H.R. 14239, which is the fiscal year 1977 appropriations bill for the Departments of State, Justice, and Commerce, the Judiciary, and related agencies.
I wish to speak to the relationship between this bill and the targets set out in the first concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 1977.
H.R. 14239 provides budget authority in fiscal 1977 of $6.9 billion and outlays that are estimated at $5 billion. In addition, there will be outlays of $2.2 billion resulting from previous years' appropriations. Total outlays for the year will be $7.2 billion.
The funds provided in this appropriation bill are within the total allocation which was made by the Senate Appropriations Committee to the subcommittee in accord with 302(b) of the Budget Act. That allocation was $7 billion in budget authority and $7.4 billion in outlays, and this appropriation bill is thus $0.1 billion in budget authority and $0.2 billion in outlays below the amounts allocated to the subcommittee.
This bill provides new budget authority in seven functions of the budget. I ask unanimous consent to insert in the RECORD a table showing the distribution of budget authority and outlays in this bill by function.
There being no objection, the table was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
[Table omitted]
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, this bill is consistent with the policy framework of the first budget. resolution and, as I have noted, it is below the allocation made to the subcommittee by the full Appropriations Committee. I therefore support the bill. I would point out, however, that this bill and the Treasury/ Postal Service Appropriation bill which has also been reported, cover the bulk of the requirements in function 750, law enforcement and justice, and that the amounts reported in the two bills are likely to put the budget authority and outlay levels for function 750 about $100 million over the first budget resolution targets. However, since the amounts reported in both of these bills are within the Appropriations Committee's first budget resolution allocation, I assume that any overage in function 750 will ultimately be offset by savings in other functions which will appear as the remaining appropriation bills are reported.
I commend the distinguished chairman of the subcommittee, Senator PASTORE, and the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator McCLELLAN, for their dedicated efforts in bringing this bill to the floor.