September 17, 1976
Page 30971
EFFECTIVE GOVERNMENT: OUR NEXT BIG CHALLENGE
Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the article authored by Senator EDMUND MUSKIE entitled "Effective Government: Our Next Big Challenge," which appeared in the Policy Forum of the April 3, 1976, edition of the National Journal, be printed in the RECORD at the conclusion of my remarks.
Senator MUSKIE has been a diligent, hard-working advocate of beneficial governmental reform. Under his able leadership, the congressional budget process has become an effective mechanism to temper potential excessive spending and to highlight the budgetary implications of congressional actions.
To further control Federal spending and the ever-expanding growth of Government, I joined Senator MUSKIE and Senator ROTH in introducing S. 2925, the Government Economy and Spending Reform Act of 1976. This highly significant legislation requires a zero-base review of all Federal Government budget authorizations and, due to an amendment which I proposed in committee, all Federal tax incentive provisions on a rotating 5-year cycle. Enactment of this bill will prove to be a meaningful step toward the elimination of inefficient and unnecessary Government spending.
On August 6, S. 2925 was reported to the Senate by the Government Operations Committee. It is presently scheduled for floor action sometime after September 15. In order to acquaint fellow Senators with the necessity for, and implications of S. 2925, I take pleasure in bringing the following excellent article by Senator MUSKIE to their attention.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
[From National Journal, Apr. 3, 1976]
EFFECTIVE GOVERNMENT: OUR NEXT BIG CHALLENGE
(By Senator EDMUND MUSKIE)
One of the most common grievances against government, expressed by the American people in one public opinion survey after another, is that they do not think they are getting their money's worth out of the tax dollars they pay. Judging from the Presidential campaign trail these days, this message promises to make a major mark on the direction of national debate over the next few years.
The rising chorus of "anti-Washington" themes in the campaign may strike a popular chord with the American public. Yet in my opinion, much of it not only overstates the problem, but understates the difficulty of solving it. Because I do believe there is a very real problem — a Federal government that is not as productive or effective as it should be — I am concerned over the dangers of political rhetoric which is long on scapegoats but short on practical solutions.
Making the Federal government more productive could well be one of the most difficult tasks any of us — either in Washington or out — has ever undertaken. It demands not breezy promises which can never be met, but diligent, unexciting scrutiny of the nuts-and-bolts operations of Congress and the Executive Branch.
On February 3 of this year, I introduced legislation which is designed to provide a process for applying such scrutiny to the operations of the Federal government. The legislation, "The Government Economy and Spending Reform Act of 1978," S 2925, is intended to accomplish for the individual partsof the Federal budget what budget reform has begun to do for the budget as a whole — lend discipline and cohesiveness to the way the Federal government handles the taxpayers' money. It is a logical follow up to budget reform.
As now written, this proposal would dramatically alter the way we do business in Washington. It will not do so overnight, nor in a very exciting way. But it is a starting point for serious debate on what I believe is one of the most important items on the congressional agenda this year.
Briefly, the legislation would do the following things:
First, it would put all government programs and activities on a four-year reauthorization schedule. All would have to be reauthorized every four years, or be terminated. The sole exceptions of this provision would be payment of interest on the national debt, and programs under which individuals make payments to the Federal government in expectation of later compensation — e.g., railroad retirement, Social Security, civil service retirement, and Medicare.
Second, the bill would establish a schedule for reauthorization of programs and activities on the basis of groupings by budget function. Programs within the same function would terminate simultaneously, so that Congress would have an opportunity to examine and compare Federal programs in that functional area in its entirety, rather than in bits and pieces. The schedule would be set up so that all of the functional areas would be dealt with within one four-year cycle.
Third, the bill would reverse the assumption that all existing programs and activities deserve to be continued simply because they existed last year, by incorporating the principles of zero-base review into the reauthorization process.
Fourth, the bill would make maximum use of the timetable for authorization bills already required by the Congressional Budget Act, and it would encourage Congress to make better use of the program review already undertaken by the General Accounting Office.
A number of factors have led me to introduce this kind of proposal.
First, I suppose, are the regular public opinion polls which tell us that the American people have lost faith in their government. The only government worker getting high marks from the public is the local trash collector, because at least people know whether he is doing the job or not.
A second major factor has been my brief but very educational experience with the new congressional budget process. Under that process, Congress is finally beginning to reassert control over the Federal budget — the most important statement of national priorities that we have.
The progress we have made thus far is very encouraging. Nevertheless, I — and I believe other members of the committee as well — have been frustrated by the limits of the system within which we have to work.
To illustrate from the coming year's budget — the cost of continuing all 1976 programs in the 1977 budget will be approximately $45-50 billion higher than last year's spending level. Thus, without a single new program, FY 1977 spending will be in the vicinity of $420 billion. Most of this growth is attributable to the increase in uncontrollable spending, which in 1967 accounted for about 59 percent of that year's budget, but which in 1977 will take up roughly 77 percent of all Federal spending. Over this same period, taking inflation into account, discretionary or controllable spending has not increased.
At this rate, the much-hailed new congressional budget process could, in the not-too-distant future, become little more than the simple arithmetic sum of predetermined spending levels.
The implications of this trend for discretionary spending, or for innovative Federal programs to meet coming national needs, is of equal concern to me. It is these efforts which stand to suffer most in the competition for increasingly scarce Federal resources.
Because of this predicament — which I foresee only getting worse in the future — I have come to believe that no matter how successful the new budget process is, the statement of national priorities embodied in the Federal budget as a whole will not be complete until Congress improves control over the individual parts — and over services the budget is intended to buy.
S. 2925 has been offered as a framework through which Congress can begin to exert such control.
A third and related reason for my introduction of this spending reform legislation stems from the active support I have given to many of the new Federal program initiatives of the last fifteen years.
Over that period, we have built up an awesome Federal structure for the purpose of solving what are truly serious national problems — hunger, poverty, ignorance, and disease. I personally have expended a considerable amount of energy in helping to nurture that system.
Today, however, I find that many of the goals I have worked for are being thwarted by an unwieldy and unresponsive Federal establishment.
I have often cited the example of the GAO study of outpatient health care facilities in the District of Columbia, where several different Federal programs funded eight separate clinics in one neighborhood. The result of this lack of coordination was that doctors in some of these clinics were seeing as few as four or five patients a day.
I find this example outrageous — not because I no longer believe in a major Federal role to ensure that Americans receive the health care they need — but because I believe so strongly in that Federal role. For if better use were made of these and other Federal resources, more Americans could receive the services which they need and which these resources were intended to provide.
I see the kind of approach embodied in S. 2925 as offering us one of the few chances we may have to locate scarce resources that are not now used effectively — and to redirect those resources where they are needed most.
A final reason for my support of this legislation is more amorphous. I do not know if the situation described by the GAO, to which I referred above, is typical or not. Probably no one knows the real story, on a government-wide basis. And I suggest that the fact that no one knows is by itself a compelling reason to pursue some kind of spending reform.
These numbers invite an obvious but simplistic response — one which we have already heard from the President — that the answer to government inefficiency is consolidation of programs.
Frankly, I do not think this is an adequate reply. For I am less concerned with the numbers than with the questions they raise : How did we get where we are today? and What have we gotten in return?
By now, the recitation of the multiplicity of Federal programs is becoming quite familiar — 228 health programs, 83 housing programs, 156 income security and social service programs, etc.; more than 1,000 Federal advisory boards, committees, commissions, and councils; and more than 4,000 quasi-governmental units, such as law enforcement planning regions, air quality regions, comprehensive areawide health planning agencies and the like.
The answer to the first question is relatively clear. We have gotten where we are today largely by accident, through individual legislative initiatives enacted in a piecemeal fashion. No one has decreed that 228 health programs is the right number of health programs. I am not suggesting that it is a wrong number. What I am suggesting is that it is a number that should be arrived at deliberately, not by default. If Congress determines that we need all 228 of these programs, so be it. At least then we will have a positive comprehensive statement of Federal health policy.
The answer to the second question is not so easy.
Clearly, we have provided health care to many Americans previously unable to afford it. But we still have not cracked the fundamental health problem — providing high quality care at a cost all can afford.
Clearly, we have raised the standard of living for a great many poor Americans. But we have not yet eliminated poverty, nor even corrected the imbalance in the distribution of income to any great degree.
Clearly, we have spent billions of dollars to revive our nation's cities. Yet we still have no national urban policy, and the root cause of the cities' problems, defined so eloquently by the Kerner Commission several years ago, still remains.
Can we not do more? Clearly, I think, we must. But until we bring what activities we now have under control, we simply may not have the reserves we need — either in the budget or the public's trust — to pursue new legislative solutions to pressing national problems.
And Congress must be the one to do it.
The goals we have sought elude us not because we haven't tried. But in too many cases, we in Congress have satisfied ourselves with the rhetoric of legislation, leaving the hard work of implementation — from rule-making to evaluation — to the Executive Branch. Permanent appropriations — funds spent without any review by Congress — have become the fastest growing component of the Federal budget, tripling from $55 billion in 1966 to $165 billion in 1976.
The spending reform proposal I have introduced offers a vehicle for Congress to respond rationally and constructively to the criticism that we are not in control of our own house.
It offers a stronger congressional voice in setting national priorities — out from under a suffocating system which now has the upper hand in the fate of programs we enact.
It proposes a neutral process. It does not propose to judge the success or failure of any program, or for that matter of the totality of Federal programs which now exist. Nor does it propose to judge national priorities. These judgments must continue to be made by the standing committees of the Congress, and by the Congress as a whole, as they are now.
It does propose to open a dialogue on the important task of making government more productive. And I am convinced that this is an undertaking in which liberals and conservatives alike have a vital stake.