August 15, 1978
Page 26078
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I am not sure how relevant my remarks may be to the discussion which has just taken place or how it may influence the final outcome of that discussion, but I wish the conferees all good luck in arriving at a time agreement on this issue.
Since they have left the floor. I take it they are not interested in anything I might say or that anything I might say would influence the result of the conference.
Mr. DOMENICI. Will the Senator from Maine yield for a question to him at this point?
Mr. MUSKIE. I have not made my speech yet.
Mr. DOMENICI. I did not know that. I apologize.
Mr. MUSKIE. I wonder if I might proceed. This is not a long statement today. May I ask, is it a question related to the speech I am about to make?
Mr. DOMENICI. Actually. it relates to asking if the Senator would let me try to exchange an approach I have, to see if the Senator would have an objection. I have an unprinted amendment. I would like to submit it so that I may make reference to it in the deliberations about time agreements.
Mr. MUSKIE. I yield for that purpose.
Mr. DOMENICI. A parliamentary inquiry, Mr. President.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will state it.
Mr. DOMENICI. Is it in order for the Senator from New Mexico to submit an unprinted amendment to the bill at this point?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. It requires unanimous consent.
Mr. MUSKIE. If it requires unanimous consent
Mr. DOMENICI. I do not intend to call it up. I just want to submit it.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has that right.
Mr. MUSKIE. Will the Senator withhold just long enough until we find out what the procedure should be? I will be glad to yield shortly.
Mr. DOMENICI. I thank the Senator from Maine.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I have followed with respect and interest the forceful presentation Senator HOLLINGS has made against this tax credit bill.
I share his view that we cannot afford this new multibillion dollar program for tuition assistance.
I share his concern that such tuition aid may be abused by those who would establish private schools to perpetuate racial segregation.
I oppose this tax credit bill because it must be deficit financed.
I oppose this bill because it provides the same benefits to the richest family in America as it does to the poorest family in Maine.
And it does so at higher tax cost to all our citizens, whether they ever personally benefit from it at all.
I think we underestimate the citizens we represent here if we think they want this bill when it means more deficit and more inflation.
These are compelling reasons to vote against this poorly designed, budget-busting, deficit-deepening bill.
But I am unable to see how one part of this bill is any more acceptable than the other.
If the Hollings amendment is adopted, we will save only 40 percent of the $8.5 billion cost of this bill during the next 5 years.
We will save only about 40 percent of the deficit it will cause,
And all the inequities in the bill will continue in the college tuition part of the bill, which accounts for 60 percent of its cost:
The rich will still get exactly the same aid as the poor;
Those millions of taxpayers whose children are beyond college age will pay higher taxes for benefits to other families, including the very well-to-do, whose children do go to college;
The '70 percent of all our young people who will never go to college will pay the bill in higher taxes all their lives for those who do go to college;
And the deficit will be deeper for the indefinite future by the full $1.5 billion cost of the college part of the bill.
I intend to vote against this entire bill because we cannot afford it, because it is a poorly designed response to the problem it seeks to address, and because our fellow citizens want a balanced budget before the Treasury is tapped for new Federal programs which must be bought by higher taxes and deeper deficits.
I am concerned about the potential abuse of Federal tuition aid to start private schools which perpetuate segregation. The basis for my vote against the entire bill includes that concern.
Frankly, if I thought we could afford even half of this bill, I would be hard pressed to decide for which half to vote.
I see no compelling reason to vote against the elementary and secondary part of this very expensive bill which does not apply to the college part as well. We cannot afford either half, but I find no less merit in one half than the other.
In my own view, the preservation of a private elementary and secondary school system is a legitimate and important national objective. Several of my own children have attended parochial grade and high schools, so, perhaps I have a special appreciation of the valuable role such schools play in a wholesomely diverse society like our own.
The argument has been made that tuition aid to private elementary and secondary schools is unconstitutional, because such aid may violate the constitutionally required separation of church and state. Supreme Court decisions have been frequently cited in this debate as if they had settled this difficult question.
Surely the first amendment's guarantee of religious liberty is one of our most treasured freedoms. It derives directly from the religious intolerance and persecution our early settlers experienced in the Europe from which they fled.
At the same time, it is also clear that the application of the first amendment's bar against "the establishment of any religion" is not self-evident. It has required substantial and continuing interpretation by the courts.
I do not believe we are in a position today to determine what the Supreme Court would say about this bill. The Supreme Court has not settled this issue.
As an opinion by the Library of Congress has summed it up: The constitutionality of a bill such as this one "cannot be said to have been definitely determined."
The Supreme Court has found State government tuition aid to be unconstitutional in some cases. But those same cases have refused to formulate any general principle against all such aid, such as the GI bill of rights, which can be used for seminary training, or the Federal deduction for charitable expenses, which may be used to establish sectarian schools. An the court has specifically upheld local property tax exemptions for charitable institutions even though without them, many sectarian schools would find it too expensive to operate.
Also, the tuition cases so far considered have not produced the end of general aid contained in this bill which is directed to both elementary and secondary, and public and private college education.
The Senate has a duty to uphold the Constitution in clear cases. But the Senate is not the Supreme Court. The Founding Fathers could have given the Senate , like the British House of Lords, a duty to interpret the laws. But our Constitution places the burden of interpreting the laws squarely on our Supreme Court.
It is premature to judge the constitutionality of a proposal such as this one. A vote against this is not compelled on constitutional grounds.
The Hollings amendment confronts us with many difficult questions.
It would reduce the cost of the bill, but not sufficiently to make the bill acceptable.
It would eliminate the major constitutional issue the bill presents, but would do so prematurely, since the courts should, and would, eventually decide this open issue.
It would reduce the possibility of segregationist abuse, but it would do so at the expense of every other private elementary and secondary school established for legitimate purposes.
If the Hollings amendment is adopted, it will not reduce the most expensive part of this bill. That is the part which passes out deficit-financed payments for college tuition without regard to need. In fact, success for the Hollings amendment would enhance the chance for passing the more expensive portions of the bill.
We can afford neither this bill nor any of its parts. If our citizens could afford the $8 million in deficit this bill will cost in the next 5 years, the choice might be more difficult. But looking into the jaws of a $40 billion deficit this year — and with more to come — the choice is easy.
The choice is clear: It is to vote no on this amendment, and no on the entire budget-busting bill.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I should like to say to the Senator from Maine that no one envies his responsibility in this Chamber and that few could equal his performance. I attempted yesterday to make an economist's point about the elementary and secondary school provision of our bill — a point that is not without some relevance to his concerns. A very large proportion of the non-government schools in this country comprise a sector which could very easily go out of operation entirely, as the considerable decline in their enrollment over the last decade would indicate. If they do, their students would begin attending public schools, and, as a result the cost per student to the economy would treble or quadruple. I simply make the point that the nonpublic sector is an efficient sector of education, at least to the extent that it spends less. I do not mean by "efficient" anything other than less expensive.
On the second point, I should like to thank the Senator from Maine for acknowledging what we have tried to acknowledge — that it is not at all certain how the Court would respond if a statute such as ours were presented to it. I see him nodding in agreement. It simply is not certain. And for that reason, we have said repeatedly there is only one way to resolve the matter logically, and that is to enact the statute and find out.
There may be objections for hundreds of reasons on other grounds. The Senator from Maine, it seems to me, has pointed to the most formidable one, which is the cost.
Mr. MUSKIE. I appreciate the Senator's comment. I will not take up his time, or the time of the Senate as a whole, much longer.
But I would like to say this about the problems of the private school sector at the elementary and secondary level, especially that of the problem facing private parochial schools.
I have been a supporter, of course, as a Catholic, of parochial schools. My children have attended them. All except one have attended and benefitted from Catholic elementary and secondary education through all of their pre-college years. So I appreciate the values that go with it.
As a Catholic and as a parishioner in Maine, two or three parishes at one time or another, and here in Washington, I am concerned about the trends and the difficulties that the schools face, and they are not simple. But there is the problem of cost. There is the problem of recruiting teachers. I suspect that there is also the problem of changing perspectives on Catholic education on the part of Catholic parents in various parts of the country, depending upon how they perceive the quality of the education provided and the values pursued in their schools.
So I suspect that Catholic parochial schools are going through a shaking-down period. I hope it does not mean that they are in danger of fading out. But they are going to a shaking-down period, as are all institutions in our society in the public schools at the present time.
If the problems of these schools as perceived is purely a financial one that can be solved by providing a tuition tax credit of $250 per student per year, no one would be more pleased than I, but I doubt that it is that simple.
I suspect, secondly, that if the problem is principally economic — principally economic — this $250 tax credit is not going to solve that problem. How much it will take to solve it if it does not, we will learn in the years ahead.
I have seen so many entitlement programs grow from so-called modest first year costs. The food stamp program occurs to me. Medicaid occurs to me. Medicare, social security, and all the programs we have tied to it, all have begun with relatively modest costs.
I wrote my senior thesis as a college senior on the Social Security Act, which was enacted the year before I graduated from college.
So I have lived with these so-called solutions to massive social problems that have resulted in massive budgetary impact at the Federal level to which our people are at the present time rebelling in ways we are all seeking to interpret.
My view on this bill is very simple. I am not saying that there is nothing to this proposal that recommends it at the Federal level. But I am saying. No. 1, that at the present time our first priority, in connection with the Federal budget, overriding every other priority, should be the Federal budget, the contribution it makes to the state of our economy, and particularly inflation.
To me, at the present time, it overrides every other priority.
Second, granted that, then I find myself comfortable with the idea that these proposals, both halves of the bill, if we look at it in halves, as I do, require further maturing and evaluation, and the state of the Federal budget and our national economy impels us to give us the time to do that.
So I find my position serving the national interest from both points of view. I do not say "no" forever to the proposal with respect to elementary and secondary schools. I have been for 20 years, long before the budget process was ever created, opposed to college tuition tax credit for other reasons I have not gone into because I wanted to focus my remarks on the two particular points I have tried.
I know the Senator from New York understands my duty and my responsibility. I appreciate that.
Mr. President, I yield the floor at this time.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. I thank the Senator. I said that few would envy his responsibilities as chairman of the Budget Committee and fewer still could equal his performance of them.
It was pleasant to hear that this bill is not totally a work of the devil.
I yield for a question to the Senator from Louisiana.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
Mr. LONG. It seems to this Senator, may I suggest this, that Senators needlessly confuse themselves when they look upon a tax cut as a Federal expenditure. That, I think, is what has caused people needless cause for concern.
A tax credit is a tax cut. It is a reduction of our taxes. It means the Government takes that much less from our pocket, and it leaves that much more in our pocket.
Now, we can cut taxes two ways. We can do as we do with a gift to education or a gift to charity, where we provide a deduction. We just say that we do not tax the money that is to be used for that purpose. That is an old, long-established part of the law.
Now, one can call that a tax expenditure if he wants to. But we can give a tax cut insofar as income is used for a particular purpose, or we can just cut taxes, period. We have done it both ways. Throughout the code we see it done both ways.
Now, we are going to have tax cuts, just depend on it — not as big as the Senator from Delaware (Mr. ROTH) wants, but we will get some big ones, you can depend on it. We will get a big tax cut this year, and there will be a tax cut in future years for the simple reason that inflation is here to stay for some timeand because of the inflationary pressures, the tax laws will be extracting more money from the pockets of taxpayers.
Every Congress will be talking about how we should adjust taxes to take inflation into account and to take various other things into account. The people of this Nation are going to demand tax cuts, if you have not gotten the word. I just read the Economist, a British-published magazine. What happened out in California is sweeping the whole wide world. People are complaining about too much tax and they want their governments to cut back on expenditures.
Mind you, they do not mean the so-called tax expenditures — a tax cut is what they want. That is what they expect. In their mind it does not make too much difference whether we cut taxes by letting them keep some money in their pocket to educate their children or whether we do it by reducing the amount of taxes they pay generally.
So I do not think Senators need to say too much about whether we cut taxes so people can have more money for education or whether we just cut taxes so people can have more money, period.
If we just disabuse ourselves of the theory that a tax cut means Uncle Sam is digging more money out of the people's pockets when it means just the opposite, it seems to me we can face the issue on a more reasonable basis.
We will be bringing a big tax cut bill to the Senate, and we will consider all the needs of the American citizens while we are voting on it. There will be further tax cut bills in the future.
The public would like us to reduce the spending that the Government does. I am not proposing that we have any reduction in spending for education. Some people want to contend that if we let people keep some of their own money to spend to educate their children, we are somehow going to reduce the amount of money available to the public school system. This Senator has no such intention, and I am sure the Senator from New York has no such intention.
Those little children do not get the quality education we would like them to get in the public schools, for the most part, the way it is now, especially in the congested areas. We expect to help with that, but we do not want to neglect any education, whether it is education in the private schools, the public schools, or the parochial schools. You will find a passage in the Bible where the Master said:
Do ye these things, but leave not the other undone.
By all means, let us provide for public education; but for those who, for whatever reason, want their children to have some education in religion, to go along with their education in other things, so much the better.
Let them pay for it, but let us help them if we can, because they are having a difficult time doing it.
For those who think their children are not getting an adequate education because there is overcrowding in the classrooms and who want to pay their own money to put their children in a private school, why not? It is a matter of not ignoring anybody. If one wants to put his children in a private school because his conscience as a parent dictates that, why discriminate against him?
We are going to provide for public education and Federal aid to public education, if the money is available, to try to provide the best we can for children in the public schools.
When you try to help everyone look after his children, you have discriminated against none.
I salute the Senator for the fine fight he has made.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. I think that is fine.
Mr. President, I take this occasion to emphasize what the Senator from Louisiana, the chairman of the Finance Committee, has said. This is a tax cut bill — a tax bill that reduces taxes.
There is something about the concept of tax expenditure that bothers me. There is something about it that makes me think of it as a totalitarian idea. There is a notion implicit in it that your income somehow belongs to the Government and the Government has given you the share which you are allowed to keep. It is not so.
I do not want to suggest any disapproval of Prof. Stanley Surrey, who is a good friend and a fine man, but one's income does not belong to the Government. Taxes are a form of forced labor exacted by Government. It is labor that is, in a sense, taken from you.
I refer those who think otherwise to the recent works of Professor Mosteller. Income belongs to the individual who garners it. We give taxes to the Government. The Government does not give income to us.
Mr. LONG. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. MOYNIHAN. I yield.
Mr. LONG. Implicit in all this is the theory on behalf of some of us — I know the Senator from New York feels this way — that the Government works for us, rather than the other way around. At least, that is the way it is supposed to be.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. That is the theory. That is why the Constitution is filled with limitations on what government may do.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. MOYNIHAN. The Senator from Idaho was on his feet first.
Mr. MCCLURE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. HOLLINGS. I would like to be heard on the amendment.
Mr. McCLURE. Mr. President, I commend the Senator from New York on the statement he just made about so-called tax expenditures, because it troubles me in the same way it troubles the Senator from New York: That it is implicit that somehow the Government owns the income and what is left in our hands is a grant from Government.
I believe, in spite of that feeling on my part, that the concept of tax expenditure does allow us at least to take a look at what we have done in terms of priority setting with respect to the use of the economic muscle of this country, but only in that limited concept. I share the instinctive reaction against the idea.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. I appreciate what the Senator has said. No one has suggested that this is not a useful subject to keep an eye on, to index, perhaps, but it should not be subtly transformed into an argument on behalf of Government ownership of income.
Mr. McCLURE. I agree totally.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. The presumption is that Government owns none of your income; a law must be adopted solemnly, in a bicameral legislature, and must then be approved by the executive, before the Government can take a penny of your income.
Does the Senator from Maine have a question?
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I have the faintest of suspicions that the distinguished chairman of the Finance Committee rose to put his question to the floor manager of the bill because his question followed a speech by the Senator from Maine and perhaps the speech the Senator from Maine delivered yesterday.
I did not use the words "tax expenditure" yesterday or today, at any time. I talked about the cost of these programs.
I could conclude, if I were simplistic in my thinking, and I am not, that these bills can be passed without cost to anybody because they are simply a cut in taxes, so they do not cost anybody anything. Those who are tempted to believe that to be the case are referred to my speech of yesterday, on page 25853 of the RECORD.
I talked about what this bill will cost to those who think they would benefit from it; to children who think they would benefit from it; to those whose children never will go to private elementary or secondary schools; to those whose children will never go to college. Anybody who tries to argue with me that this bill will cost them nothing is going to have a steep argument.
But if those who support the bill choose to believe that the issue really is somebody's definition of "tax expenditure," they are fooling the public.
What we are concerned about is the cost. The cost of this bill — both halves of it, in my judgment — would be unacceptable to the majority of the American people today if they understood what was in it. I think it is intolerable from the point of view of the Federal budget and its potential impact on inflation in the months or year or two immediately ahead. That was my thesis.
We can argue about what "tax expenditure" means or "tax loophole" or "tax privilege" or "tax avoidance" or whatever bland phrase those who dislike the words "tax expenditure" would like to use. These bills have costs associated with them, and that is the only point I tried to make yesterday and today.
I say this to the Senator from South Carolina, because I understand that he is disturbed that I will not support his amendment. I tried to make that clear in the speech he did not hear because he was understandably engaged in a conference with the leadership and the other side, in an attempt to reach a time agreement.
I have struggled long with this question. I applaud his effort to reduce the cost of the bill. But I find difficulty in confronting this question: Is this half of the bill less palatable, from a budget point of view, than the college part of the bill? To me, it is not. They are equally unpalatable.
Second, just from a tactical point of view, I believe there is a better chance of defeating this bill if we vote on it in its entirety than if we vote on it with a successful Hollings amendment having divided it in half.
Those are the two reasons I voted as I did. But I wanted the Senator from South Carolina to know that to the extent that his opposition to this bill stems from his concern about the budget — which, for my part, is legendary, and I greatly value his contribution to the budget process — I applaud that part of it; and I wanted to explain to him, while he is in the Chamber, the two reasons why I find it difficult to go along.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. The Senator from South Carolina wishes the floor, and I will yield in a moment.
I assure the Senator from Maine that I understand his position precisely. This is a tax cut proposed, and it will reduce Federal revenue; it was the extent of the reduction and its desirability — or lack thereof — to which he addressed himself.
I took the opportunity during a moment when we are trying to get a time agreement and most of the advocates of this measure are not on the floor, to discourse freely — and I hope not too irrelevantly — on this matter. I had been seeking some pause in the Senate's proceedings to touch briefly upon it.
Mr. MUSKIE. I suggest to the Senator that it is well if, from time to time, we discuss things that are of less than global interest.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. I thank the Senator, and I yield the floor.
Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, let me just make one comment or two to bring this into perspective because the Senator from Maine did shock the Senator from South Carolina with his comment, and I say this respectfully. The Senator knows I know how to solicit and try with charm and courage to persuade, and what I am about to say of course will not help persuade him, or to get his vote back, because this is just the most illogic reason I ever heard.
There are certain difficulties that we had in this measure. One of the big difficulties started with the President of the United States when he let it out that he was going to veto the measure. That put everyone in a position of a freebee. So they can tell the bishop, "Surely I will vote for your parochial aid to education, I am with you." And the Senator from Louisiana calls it minority politics. Those are the people who will remember you. The majority that you stand for never remember you on election day, but you take a single concerted organized group, such as the church, and say, "Surely, I will be for you," and then you know the President is going to veto it. If it is vetoed, it is not going to hurt public education, so you go to the polls having helped someone. That is one of the big difficulties we have, because when the President intimated this, then, of course, the Senator from New York picked up some 51 cosponsors.
So we started with a majority already against us, and not frankly having even considered elementary and secondary education. The history will also show that the Senate has passed tuition credits for higher education six times in the last 10 years. So we did not have to worry whether we got enough help to defeat higher education. On the contrary, what we are trying to do is to take this elementary, secondary, parochial, private school crowd and take an already proved six times successful higher education measure and piggyback the private school system without due consideration for the substance of the measure.
I am confident they did not have a real debate on the House side because I have looked at the RECORD, talked to Members of the House of Representatives, and witnesses, all of these in the coalition who were interested, and they said they were all looking at that higher education part. They had been in the campaigns. They talked about tuition tax credits. It has been in campaigns for over10 years. Wilbur Mills had it. We had it. I voted for it at least four times myself.
But they say we never could single out elementary and secondary education and get the attention of the Senate, anyone in Congress, on the radical departure with respect to Federal financing of education in this country that the Moynihan-Packwood elementary and secondary part started.
Let us look at the costs. Let us look at the problem. Certainly it is that, and I am using the CBO figures, that we use in the Budget Committee. On higher education in 1978 it is $21 million; in 1979 it is $491 million; in 1980 it is $704 mil-lion; in 1981 it is $1.41 billion; in 1982 it is $1.409 billion; and in 1983 it is $1.523billion.
So the higher education cost part is $5,289,000,000.
And we look at the elementary and secondary. That was drawn so that you could not see it, and it was only the members of the Budget Committee who finally caught it. I am persuaded if they can reduce the limits, if they can reduce the income levels, if they can reduce the amount, if they can get the principal fixed for $1 for a parent, they would be tickled and call it a victory. They arranged it so this year there is no impact, and next year no impact. They tried to get by the budget process, but the budget process caught it. In 1980 then it starts with $100 million; in 1981 it is $754 million; in 1982 it is $1.237 billion; and in 1983 it is $1.238 billion; for a total of $3.329 billion.
The task of the Senator from South Carolina, was to try to bring the attention of this Senate to what we were really doing with respect to a matter of budget-busting proportions, not to mention the constitutional and educational policy ramifications. Here is an opportunity at least budgetwise to save $3.329 billion rather than for the total of almost $10 billion because when you add the three and the five it is $8.5 billion — $8.5 billion rather than $10 billion, and you had a chance to save $3.3 billion.
And the Senator from Maine now comes and says, 'No, let us not save that at all. I really think I can kill off the $8.8 billion if I have yours."
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield.
Mr. HOLLINGS. I yield.
Mr. MUSKIE. I am not saying that at all, may I say to my good friend. There were three votes on college tuition tax credits in the last 2 years, two of them stimulated by motions made by the Senator from Maine. If I remember correctly, the Senator from South Carolina voted for those tuition tax credits.
Mr. HOLLINGS. I just stated that.
Mr. MUSKIE. All right. So the Senator voted for them.
Mr. HOLLINGS. That is right.
Mr. MUSKIE. Now, my objection is to the total cost. I know that I do not have the Senator's support, if the Hollings amendment is defeated. If the Hollings amendment is—
Mr. HOLLINGS. Enacted.
Mr. MUSKIE (continuing) . Is enacted. So that is one vote less that I know I do not have against the total bill.
The Senator says, "You are going to lose it anyway, so why fight it."
If I had taken that position, may I say to my good friend, a lot of the memorable fights on this floor that have helped establish the budget process would never have been waged.
I know the tendency of this body. It is to spend unless someone tries to block it. I am not going to avoid a fight simply because I thank the odds are against me.
I fought college tuition tax credits three times in the last 2 years. I know what the odds are. I can remember the votes. But now there are other factors that I hope will cause a majority of the Senate to take another look at it.
No. 1, inflation is a much more serious problem than it was any of the last 3 years.
No. 2, there is an alternative in the President's program to the college tuition part of the bill which may take some votes away from the college part of the bill.
No. 3, the total cost of the two packages, college tuition and elementary and secondary tuition, is so staggering potentially that in combination that should turn some votes around.
So I think what may appear to be a hopeless fight will not be a hopeless fight. At least I see my duty as making the fight, and I think I am going to get more votes if this whole bill stands together on final passage than I got in either of the last 2 years.
No, my argument is not as simple as the Senator from South Carolina puts it, and I think he understands that. If there were a way after final passage on the total package to consider part of it, I would be with the Senator.
Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I stated just as simply as the Senator from Maine stated it. I heard him and I listened clearly. He said that with the Hollings amendment defeated they would have a better chance to defeat the entire bill. That is exactly what he said. I am saying that is not the problem because we know he is trying to get in other things about the President's program, but I am saying we come to this particular problem with a different history and a different record, and I know it and I know what the odds are when you start up with a bill having passed the House overwhelmingly, then coming over to the Senate. No one on the Human Resources Education Committee was particularly interested. You cannot get them to speak. In fact, they go back and they propose another half billion dollars.
The precedent set here of general financial aid for parochial and private schools for the first time in history does not disturb them. I am not on that committee, and so you have graduation speeches and Harper's articles and Outlook articles and appearances on national TV and all the rest — and 51 votes.
Do not tell me about odds. I am fighting uphill now, and I know it, and I know there is a better way to fight to get your vote, but I told you in the beginning that I heard you clearly. I know I will not, but I can tell you now
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. HOLLINGS. No.
I am talking about the art of the possible. We are talking about how we measure things in that Budget Committee, Senator from New Mexico. We know how we measure it. It is a frustration for all of us sitting there. If we could have it our way we would cut it all down. Many times we actually put in things to head off budget cuts.
One of the best examples I know of is solar energy. Heavens above. No one around here much knows anything about the energy crisis, but there is one way to demonstrate our commitment. This is a political body, so you demonstrate knowledge that there is a crisis. Whenever you hear the word "solar" you raise your hand and say "aye." We go in there and we mark up a budget, the President recommends $60 million, and we say we will give him $80 million. We come out and they put in $50 million more.
We go in with $110 million the next time and we add another $50 million to $60 million and say that will forestall cutting it, and they put in $50 million more. We are up to more than $404 million, and the scientists and all say, "We don't know where to spend it."
I think in every budget that comes through the State Department they say they want a solar demonstration project on every embassy in the world to show our concern about the energy crisis. Absolute nonsense and waste.
So I have finally determined, Senator, where you want whole hog, and we have heard about whole hog earlier from the Senator from Oregon, I want what we can get budgetarily, what we can save. I would solicit your assistance to help us knock out at least $3.3 billion. If we cannot get up to $8.5 billion, at least knock out $3.3 billion that is dangerous.
This is not a minor one. This is the dangerous one:
The Senator from Maine also said when I came back into the room, I could hear just part of it, that the real major one was the tuition tax credit for higher education, that that was the big one. If he could head it off with the little one by voting against the little one then maybe he could make them both sink, that is his logic.
On the contrary, the big one is aid for elementary and secondary private schools, because if this carries and we go back home we are going to hear from the constituents saying, "What in heaven's name happened to you? We sent you to Washington charged with looking out, among other things, for the public's interest and the public's concern. We sure did not tell you to take over the church schools down the street. The priests and the bishop of the parish have control of them. We did not send you down there to take care of private schools. You have gone and doubled the amount of aid — general assistance for the first time and for private schools only — to the private and the parochial schools as compared to what you have given to the poor public schools students."
We would do this for 4.5 million youngsters at the expense of the other 44.5 million. Down the road, Congress might decide to include them, too. Take that $250, multiply it out, and see if we would not end up with at least $10 billion more.
The biggie in this one is the foot in the door. The Senator from New York said, in talking of pluralism and diversity, he hoped they did not avoid Greek. The only thing Greek I understood was when the Senator from Maine was talking yesterday about that Trojan horse. I could hear him clearly. How pretty and bright and gentle and sweet and innocent-looking was the Trojan Horse in the daylight. But when the fiscal darkness of night fell, the animal opened up and there came the conquering enemy. I wish you could go back to that staff and yesterday's talk and make it over again. I could hear you clearly then. I cannot hear you now.
Mr. MUSKIE. You cannot hear it now either.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. DURKIN.) The Senator from New York.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, we have been debating this matter for a full 3 days now, and we have now reached a point where our national motto "E Pluribus Unum," a brief but emphatic hymn to pluralism, has been described as Greek. I think it is time we voted.
But I would be happy to yield to the Senator from Maine for a question.
Mr. MUSKIE. I really would have preferred it if my good friend from South Carolina had yielded.
I really do not have any trouble knowing that you hear what I say, Senator, but you do not always repeat it in a way that makes it come out the way that my position is.
Just a few moments ago you praised me for yesterday's speech privately. Now you are frustrated that I do not apply the budget-restraining values that prompted that speech in a way that pleases you. Well, it did not please me when you voted for college tax credits against my motions in the past, and I know you are going to vote for it again. If your amendment succeeds and only the higher education tuition tax credit provision remains, you are going to vote for it again.
Just how you presume to judge me because I am against the total bill and you are for half of it I do not understand. You want me to be against the part that you oppose most vigorously but not against the part that you support most vigorously. That, unfortunately, is the kind of standard that motivates us too often on the floor of the Senate.
But I am against the whole bill, and I said it yesterday, and before this debate is finished, before a vote on passage of the bill, I will fully vote to implement yesterday's speech, but you will not.