August 25, 1978
Page 27790
Mr. MUSKIE. I thank the Senator from New York.
I express my appreciation to the Senator from Oklahoma and the distinguished floor managers of the bill for reaching agreement on the Bellmon amendment, which I think is a constructive contribution to the bill.
Mr. President, I support the Bellmon amendments to the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act.
Since the inception of the budget process in 1975 the Budget Committee has been actively involved in employment and training issues because of the important role these programs play in fashioning a congressional economic policy.
In the first budget resolution for fiscal year 1976 the committee supported expansion of public service jobs as part of a mix of temporary recovery programs designed to alleviate the employment effects of economic recession.
Employment issues and employment programs were again a major focus during the markup on the first concurrent resolution for fiscal year 1977. During Senate Budget Committee debate, Senator CRANSTON offered a proposal developed in cooperation with Senator KENNEDY and MONDALE to provide public service jobs targeted on the low-income, long-term unemployed. This proposal was the forerunner of the 1976 amendments to title VI of CETA.
The committee went on record at that time in support of the concept of targeted public service jobs. The committee stated:
Although Committee members did not formally endorse any specific public service program, the discussion of funding for such programs focused on the possibility of budget savings that would result from temporary programs with low unit costs that would concentrate on hiring low-income household heads now drawing unemployment insurance or other public benefits.
In February of 1977, as a result of continuing economic problems the committee considered a third budget resolution. There was extensive debate among committee members at that time regarding the increasingly structural nature of the unemployment problem as the unemployed population became increasingly comprised of the untrained, inexperienced, young, minority, and female. The third budget resolution allowed an additional $1.5 billion for youth employment, expanded public service jobs funded under CETA from 310,000 to 725,000, and provided significant expansion in programs targeted on older Americans and other special populations. The committee report stated:
Much of today's unemployment problem is not susceptible to the macrostimulus cure. Changing rates of participation by various groups within the labor force and changing mixes of skill requirements dictate that a more targeted approach to training and job placement is the only means of significantly reducing unemployment for a meaningful length of time. Only a relatively small portion of the existing unemployment rate appears to be cyclical in nature, about 1½ percentage points. The remainder is primarily structural, requiring job training or re-training.
In the first budget resolution for fiscal year 1978 the committee again went on record in support of targeting. The report stated:
The Committee continued its support forprovisions to target CETA Title VI public service jobs on the chronically unemployed and low income individuals and recommends that any reductions in jobs that occur as the recovery proceeds be taken in non-targeted public service employment.
During consideration of the first budget resolution for fiscal year 1979 the committee noted that economic conditions had improved and that there was a reduced need for countercyclical employment subsidies. The committee recommended at that time "that half the current spending effort for public service jobs be directed toward employment and training services for the structurally unemployed."
The amendment proposed by Senator BELLMON and the floor managers of the bill further strengthens the targeting in our employment and training programs. These amendments provide individual eligibility requirements more nearly consistent with current law than those included in the reported bill. These amendments also provide categorical eligibility for welfare recipients and additional language that makes welfare recipients a high priority clientele for employment and training services throughout the CETA legislation.
An additional amendment would eliminate provisions requiring Congress to appropriate at least $3 billion for public service jobs targeted on the structurally priority implicit in this provision. I cannot support the provision — and I am glad that the Bellmon proposal has dealt with it — because it reduces the discretion of the Appropriations Committee in providing CETA funding.
I encourage Senators to support these amendments. I am delighted that agreement has been reached to accommodate what I think are the essential thrusts supported by both the floor managers of the bill and their committee and the Budget Committee.
I do not really believe this amendment reflects a sharp division in objective by the two committees.
Mr. JAVITS. Nothing Senator MUSKIE could have told me would please me more than the fact that he recognizes the same priority. Knowing how we do business around here, frankly, the fact that the priority has been eliminated by the Bellmon amendment — which I hope will be accepted, because I agree with it thoroughly — does not disturb me a bit, so long as the chairman and the ranking minority member of the Budget Committee feel that we have pointed out the right way.
I have every confidence that the Appropriations Committee will see it the same way. It is the substance that counts with me, not the pride of authorship, but that is the way we wrote it.
How does the Senator from Oklahoma feel about that priority?
Mr. BELLMON. Mr. President, I agree with the comments of the distinguished Senator from New York.
I feel that the Appropriations Committee and some of the Budget Committees share the same priority preferences with the Human Resources Committee, and I am sure there will be no problem in working out satisfactory funding levels.
Mr. JAVITS. I thank both Senators. Their help is far more important to me than the language of the bill.
I think it is useful to refer for an instant to how this came about. I spoke before the Conference of Mayors late in 1977, and the demand there very clearly by the people who are the prime sponsors — they want this program — was that they were deeply concerned that it would be cut materially and indiscriminately, realizing that one of the major problems of our country, without regard to the fact that unemployment has come down from well over 7 to 6 percent, was the structurally unemployed. That is an endemic problem in America.
They impressed this on me so much that when I came back, I put the bill in that way. That is the genesis of our approach.
Mr. MUSKIE. I think another point should be made clear in this dialog, and it is this: There is a tendency in some quarters to believe that with unemployment down to 6 percent, with many of the changes in the labor market, unemployment as a problem has been reduced to a much less important one, and I could not disagree more. When we get down to 6 percent, what we really have done is dramatize the role of structural unemployment in creating social problems, problems of instability, and problems of lack of opportunity for minorities and the unemployed that we should not overlook. I could not agree more with the Senator.
I assure the Senator that in the discussions on the second budget resolution, structural unemployment was the emphasis of the Budget Committee, and there really is absolutely no distinction between us.
With all of us watching the appropriations levels, we should keep our efforts targeted in the direction the four of us agree upon.