November 14, 1979
Page 32289
Mr. DURKIN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a short question?
Mr. MUSKIE. I have the floor.
Mr. DOLE. I hope that perhaps we will have an opportunity to work out a compromise. I am not trying to block a compromise. I am trying to stir up one, and if we can accomplish that we have made some progress.
Mr. MUSKIE. I think in order to move toward a compromise the Senator's amendment would have to be withdrawn.
Mr. DOLE. I may do that.
Mr. BENTSEN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a comment without his losing the floor?
Mr. MUSKIE. Yes.
Mr. BENTSEN. Let me point out again what the Senator from Maine has talked about and what the Senator from Kansas has talked about. There has been a compromise. The administration bill that was proposed to the Committee on Finance was more favorable to Texas, frankly, and we have had a long and tough fight with a very diverse committee, with a wide spectrum of philosophy.
You have seen the same thing happen in the Committee on Labor and Human Resources. So what you have brought before you is really the result of a great deal of compromise taken over a long period of time.
But the comment was made earlier about how can you arrive at a formula, how can you do justice to this and try to get some kind of correlation for it? We had such an approach, I think, in the Committee on Finance because we had the Community Services Administration study here in Washington in 1977 that said that half of the energy costs for a poor family goes to heat. I am sure that it probably exceeds that sum in Maine but, nevertheless, there was a ratio, and we arrived at that radio, and we gave half credit for degree days, and we adjusted that for the poor.
Then we tried to balance that off. There was a rationale to this approach. We tried to balance that off by the energy costs to the individual family.
We are talking about the problems of the poor across this Nation, and we have given additional consideration to the colder States of our Nation because, frankly, we thought they had the best part of the argument.
But when we talk about taking 75 percent, and then squaring that, I cannot see any rationale at all in something called squaring. I do not believe it is a square amendment when you try to bring in that kind of an approach.
Frankly, what we are talking about are the same things the Senator is talking about, which are the choices for the poor, whether it is for heating or lighting or cooking or keeping their food from spoiling. They are tough choices today, and the costs have gone up at a very substantial rate and to a very substantial degree.
If you use just degree days, you take a situation like the State of Washington, which has a substantial number of degree days above the national average. Yet, when it comes to the cost per family for energy they are dead last, they are the lowest. So you run into some major inequities, and that is what we have tried to finally balance out.
You feel just as strongly as you do, I say to the Senator, and I feel just as strongly on the other side. But I have been through that fight and I have been through that compromise, and that is what I thought we had brought before us and that is where I have to stand.
Mr. MUSKIE. The Senator has heard the old saying — and I forget what senatorial character first uttered it, but he was for every compromise of which he was a part.
I was not a part of one of the compromises that went into the committee, and I have rarely seen a controversial piece of legislation where compromise has been limited to the committee. The Senate is entitled to compromise, too. The number of Senators who are affected by the Boschwitz amendment are entitled to their day in court, and they have been denied it by the introduction of the Dole amendment and the motion to table which cuts off their legislative opportunity to make their case and to get a fair judgment on it.
So I understand, I acknowledge, after Senator NELSON had made his comments, sure, the two committees had addressed a lot of time to this, considered the issues and made the best judgment they could make. But that does not mean that their judgment is immune. There are a lot of us from cold weather States here who will not agree with the cold weather Senators who are part of their compromise, and clearly we do not agree. Nevertheless, we think we have a case.
I yield without losing my right to the floor to the Senator from Ohio.
Mr. METZENBAUM. Mr. President, I appreciate the Senator from Maine yielding to me.
It seems to me that we have a situation here where it is really a question of whose ox is being gored. I came to the floor at one point this afternoon and had been told that a compromise had been effected, and then I started to look at the figures, and I found that the compromise had been achieved by having some concern about certain States, but I also thought that a compromise would provide something between the original bill and the Boschwitz-Muskie amendment.
It was only when I started to look at the figures that I found a number of States had been compromised off the bed sheet, and my own happens to be one of them. Tennessee happens to be another. West Virginia, the State of our majority leader, was another; Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky were all in that group.
It seems to me — and there may be others, Mr. President — I say this to the floor leaders that we are going to be discussing this subject for a good many hours while the Senator from Maine makes his point effectively, and I believe that somewhere between Boschwitz-Muskie and the original bill there probably is a formulation that could be brought about that would not cause any State to wind up getting less than it does under either of those two formulations.
But I will say to the floor managers that they are not going to achieve that while they are standing on their feet on the floor. All they are really doing is playing with mathematical formulas, and I have the feeling that if you put this matter aside for a bit — and I do not make this a formal suggestion — I think that kind of a formula could be found, and then I think it would bring some States, all States, into a more equitable position.
I want to say to my friend from Maine that I am a member of the Human Resources Committee. In spite of that fact I voted with the Senator on the question of tabling the Dole amendment. But I think we have to find something in between these two proposals while, at the same time, not causing any State to go down below the figures which are assigned for one or the other.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I yield to my friend, the sponsor of the Boschwitz-Muskie amendment, without losing my right to the floor.