April 25, 1979
Page 8805
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, the amendment I have sent to the desk is a revision of my amendment No. 157.
This is an amendment to the Function 920 of the budget, the allowances function. This amendment is designed to accommodate the following reductions: a $200 million reduction in the Federal payroll to encourage agencies to restrict their use of overtime pay; a reduction of $200 million for Federal agencies to reduce their film making activities; a reduction of $200 million for reduction in the size of the Federal work force, to be accomplished through a 1-percent attrition in the Federal work force; and a $500 million reduction in Federal travel expenses.
Mr. President, this budget resolution recommends real tax increases for the American people of $19 billion in fiscal year 1980. For many taxpayers, this will mean a reduction in their real after tax incomes. Many taxpayers have been experiencing this decline in their real after tax disposable income for several years as inflation has pushed them into higher tax brackets. This budget resolution once again proposed no relief for our overburdened taxpayers in fiscal year 1980. However, this budget resolution in no way restricts the extravagant expenditures of the Federal Government and Federal employees. I propose to reduce funding in this budget resolution to encourage Federal Government agencies to reduce their expenditures on items considered extravagant by the American taxpayers.
For instance, in fiscal year 1978 the Federal Government spent $5.9 billion to transport persons and things. In fiscal year 1980, the President's budget proposed spending $7.0 billion on transportation of persons and things. This amounts to a 19 percent increase in Federal Government transportation costs period.
In a study issued on July 21, 1978, the GAO reported that Federal employees frequently have not obtained available discount airline fares because the General Services Administration and other Federal agencies have inadequate financial controls and oversight of agency travel. As a result, millions of dollars have been spent unnecessarily on commercial air travel.
In another study issued on February 28, 1978, the GAO reported that General Services could save millions of dollars by purchasing vehicles and furnishing them to agencies instead of leasing them.
And in this time of fiscal austerity, the Government could certainly be more restrictive about the use of Federal funds for travel purposes. I, therefore, propose reducing the amount of money in the fiscal year 1980 budget used for travel purposes by $200 million. This would still allow for a 3 percent increase in travel expenditures above the fiscal year 1979 level. That is hardly a recognition of the problems facing our taxpayers in America, but at least some recognition that perhaps we will try to restrain it at this time. The American taxpayers should certainly be able to expect their Government to live with this increase for travel expenditures in fiscal year 1980.
The GAO has also been critical of the use of overtime pay by Federal Government agencies. In a report of December 21, 1978, the GAO commented:
Certain deficiencies in agency control systems which permit overtime abuse to occur appear to be widespread. These include: improper or missing authorizations for overtime; lack of adequate batch controls, record counts, and control totals, which permit unauthorized changes in information affecting employees' pay; and failure to provide feedback to supervisors on overtime paid to employees, which allows improper overtime payments to remain undetected.
For instance, the GAO found that at the Department of Justice, about 500 employees were paid over $5 million in 1977 for over 1,000 overtime hours each. An additional 13,000 employees were paid for between 200 and 500 overtime hours each, which totaled over $43 million. Also, about 9,000 Department of HEW employees who were paid a total of over $27 million for between 200 and 500 overtime hours each.
Mr. President, the American taxpayer should not have to fund large overtime payments to Federal employees when better management of personnel at these agencies would result in large reductions in overtime needs. I, therefore, propose cutting $200 million of the $1.5 billion the Federal Government spends on overtime pay.
Mr. President, it has been estimated that the Federal Government spends $600 million a year to make films. I fail to see why the American taxpayer should fund the Federal bureaucracy's competition with Hollywood. I, therefore, propose reducing funding for Federal film making by $200 million in fiscal year 1980.
In 1978, President Carter issued an Executive order proposing a 1.5 percent reduction in the Federal work force through attrition. However, no provision is made in this budget resolution for a reduction in the size of the Federal work force. The American taxpayers think the Federal Government is too large. And they believe that the Federal work force has been expanding at an alarming rate over recent years; $200 million could be saved in fiscal year 1980by a 1 percent reduction in the Federal work force through attrition. That is .5 percent, a half percent less than President Carter suggested. I, therefore, propose saving this money for the American taxpayers.
In summation, Mr. President, I am proposing a $1.1 billion reduction in the allowanced function of the budget to accommodate these reductions in funding for Federal overtime pay, Federal film making, Federal travel, and for a reduction in the Federal work force. These are reductions which I believe the American taxpayers want us to make. I hope Congress will respond to the will of the American taxpayers and adopt this amendment.
More importantly, I hope we do not send total discouragement through the halls of the General Accounting Office, because almost everything they have recommended this year for this fiscal budget in 1980 has been almost totally ignored by the Budget Committee or at least appears to be almost totally ignored by the Budget Committee and these, in particular, I think are reasonable requests which could not help but satisfy many taxpayers in America, although a number of these are above last year's expenditures.
I yield to the distinguished Senator from Colorado.
Mr. ARMSTRONG. Mr. President, I appreciate the Senator yielding.
I compliment him on presenting this amendment. I think he has accurately appraised the mood of the American public in expressing on their behalf the sense of concern about the excesses of Federal spending.
In many cases I am sure that the public's concern is perhaps exaggerated and in some cases the public's understanding of the Federal budget processes is really not well understood in many cases, but I think the public is correct in its belief that in a lot of the day-to-day overhead items which contribute so much to the total cost of Government we have not been as careful as we should be.
I am one of those who think we should have a trustee relationship with the taxpayers. When we undertake to spend the public's money on travel, film making, overtime, and the other things that the Senator's amendment addresses itself to, we should be not just as careful as if it were our own money, but even more careful.
I think the Senator's amendment, based as it is on the reports of the General Accounting Office, is approaching the problem with a degree of precision and almost surgical skill rather than a meat ax approach. I think that is what the Senate wants to do, and I think it is a proper approach on a budgetary item of this kind.
So I rise not only in support of the amendment, Mr. President, but to compliment my colleague for his perspicacity in offering it.
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I thank my distinguished colleague and friend from Colorado.
I shall just make this short continuation of my remarks:
Over the last 2 years, as we have raisedgenerally across-the-board budget cuts of certain percentages we have been criticized for not pointing out to the Budget Committee and to the Senate places where we should cut.
I am honest to say I have at least 200 amendments that can point out where we should cut. I do not intend to bring them up on this resolution. But the problem is that now that we are pointing them out I do not see a propensity on the part of our colleagues here in the Senate to save the taxpayers' money.
I am going to be very interested in the way this particular amendment fares, because if I were to pick out four perfect places to cut the Federal budget; it would be these four. There are many others that may be a lot better than these, but these four are certainly worthy of being cut. I am hardly asking for anything, but what the President has asked us to de. And I think these areas are areas that have irritated every taxpayer at one time or another.
I am hoping that my colleagues will consider voting for this amendment. I am also hopeful that they will consider voting for all good amendments that are not wholesale cutting but trying to get some restraint on the part of the Federal Government as far as areas where really we have a good reason to cut and I think areas where taxpayers of America will be very pleased if we did cut.
Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on my amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There is a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I suspect there may well be and probably is abuse in the use of travel allowances and in the use of overtime, and there may be positions in the work force that could well be eliminated by attrition.
Whether or not those abuses, to the extent that they exist, are accurately reflected by the numbers in this amendment I do not have the faintest idea. The Budget Committee is not an oversight committee over the activities of the Federal agency. It is not our responsibility to get into the line item details of these budgets.
The Senator from Utah says that, because he has decided, without ever presenting figures to us before, that these are good sound figures, therefore, his amendment is a good amendment and his unilateral judgment is sufficient. The Senator is a member of the Budget Committee. If he had made such a study of these items that he had come up with these conclusions why, may I ask, did he not offer them in the Budget Committee?
All he would have had to do is to say, "I propose reducing function so and so by so many dollars, because I have found on examination that there is abuse of travel of so much." There is no such evidence presented to us. He has never offered this amendment to us and never discussed it with us.
I wonder what initiatives he has taken in the committees in which he is a member. Every committee has oversight responsibilities. I would be interested in knowing what the facts are.
There is abuse in travel, and I discussed this a few moments ago with the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee once I learned what this amendment was all about, and I only learned about it a few moments ago.
That was no time, surely, to investigate the facts. And the chairman said:
Yes, there is abuse in some agencies.
In some agencies, they found them underfunded. For example, there is the Mediation Board, which finds it now has to travel all over the country to a greater extent than ever before and needs an increase in travel allowances. Here we have this proposal without any discrimination.
Let me give Senators a couple of statistics here. This amount, this $1.1 billion, if distributed equitably across the board would apply 60 percent of the cut to the Department of Defense. And we have had I do not know how many votes here in the last 2 days against any cuts in the Department of Defense. I did not hear the Senator from Utah voting for those cuts in the Department of Defense, some of which approximated what will come out of the Department of Defense if his amendment passes. I think he votedagainst every cut in the Department of Defense.
As to travel allowances and transportation of persons, 59 percent is expended by the military for obvious reasons. As to transportation of things, 81.9 percent of the allowance is expended by the military for obvious reasons. So if this cut were equitably distributed, the Department of Defense should absorb something like 60 percent of the $1.1 billion, or $660 million. We just had an amendment to reduce the Department of Defense appropriations by about that amount. If it had been supported, it could have been used to squeeze out travel.
But has the Senator examined the Department's request for travel this year? The only growth in travel allowance this year is $500 million for the Department of Defense. Has the Senator examined that? Is it justified? Is it abused? Are not these legitimate questions that somebody should ask somewhere so that we know whether or not those questions have been answered or do we think that nobody in Government should travel?
Well, if we think somebody should, is it 10 percent of what they now do? Twenty percent? Thirty percent? Forty percent? Fifty percent? Sixty percent? Should you not have some facts?
If agencies differ in their propensity to abuse these prerogatives, should not the examination be made on a case-by-case basis or do we condemn everybody no matter how careful they may be in using these allowances?
I do not know. Maybe the Senator fromUtah has asked these questions of these agencies. Maybe he has gone through them one by one, I do not know. But without more information I am not about to just act blindly, without any preparation but a few minutes, and all I have been able to do is ask questions about it and to get the impact on the Department of Defense, and I can give it to you for other agencies as well, if the Senate were interested. As a matter of fact, it might be a good idea to put this computer printout in the RECORD. This is what is in the President's budget, so it is rather voluminous, and if it proves necessary I can put it in the RECORD. In anycase it is available.
But that is my reaction to it. The Senator is proposing something to me I did not hear about before. He did not propose it in the Budget Committee of which he is a member. He never asked us to consider it. Never gave us any case for it, never any facts, whether it is an abuse or whether abuses exist or any agency on which it would impact, and without any evidence, Mr. President, it is not the Budget Committee's job to examine the Government's spending in this detail, and we did not do it in this detail, so I am not prepared to support the amendment on the little evidence that the Senator from Utah has presented.
I reserve the remainder of my time.
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I would just like to point out to my colleague that these are not my findings. These are the GAO's findings that we have this problem. I am not asking for any unprecedented cuts here.
Federal film making, they have $600 million in this budget, and I am suggesting that they cut $200 million, because I do not think the Federal Government needs to be that much in the film making business, and I am not sure there is going to be much disagreement from the taxpayers. In fact, I have heard lots of complaints about this.
So far as Federal overtime pay, we are asking for less than the President of the United States, with all of his staff and resources, has asked for. He has asked for 1.5 percent. I have asked for 1 percent. I do not know what you have to do around here to support the President of the United States, but I think that is a reasonable figure.
Mr. MUSKIE. I can answer that question. Do it the way we tried to do it. Examine his proposals, ask for the justification, measure your judgment against his,and if you agree, support it. If you do not, disagree and do not support it.
Mr. HATCH. That is what I have done.
Mr. MUSKIE. You have not done it for us. I do not have any facts. I have not read your GAO report. Why did you not present this in the Budget Committee?
Mr. HATCH. Well, because I presented a number of amendments, and I had many others, and it was very apparent it was going to go nowhere in the Budget Committee, so I am taking it to the floor of the Senate, which I have a right to do,as a U.S. Senator.
Mr. MUSKIE. Of course, you have theright to do that. I have the right to say that you did not offer it in committee where you had the responsibility
Mr. HATCH. I am going to do it. The committee continually said that we should not go into these items because we are not a line item committee.
Mr. MUSKIE. The committee did not, no, no.
Mr. HATCH. Last year—
Mr. MUSKIE. The Senator attended the Budget Committee long enough to know better than that. We have to, in considering the ceilings, the overall targets of functions, consider what makes them up not on a line item basis—
Mr. HATCH. That is right.
Mr. MUSKIE (continuing). But to justify changes in the numbers we are considering.
That does not mean that we mandate our idea of what the line items ought to be for the Senate as a whole. It is simply that we offer reductions—
Mr. HATCH. I agree.
Mr. MUSKIE (continuing). To justify what we propose.
Now, you never offered this.
Mr. HATCH. Is the Senator suggesting that I am not acting within my rights to bring this to the floor of the Senate rather than before the Budget Committee?
Mr. MUSKIE. I never suggested that. Since you played a very active role in the Budget Committee, and the Senator will agree to that, you never offered this amendment, and you never offered the evidence to substantiate it. Is that not a statement of fact?
Mr. HATCH. That is a statement of fact on this particular amendment.
Mr. MUSKIE. That is all I said.
Mr. HATCH. But the Senator will haveto admit that I played a very active role in the committee.
Mr. MUSKIE. I have not disputed that.
Mr. HATCH. I was there most of the time when the committee was going to midnight. Realizing that this amendment was not going to pass, in my judgment, I decided to defer and wait until I came to the floor. That is my right.
Mr. MUSKIE. I am not disputing your right to do it, and I said at the outset of my remarks that you had attended the committee sufficiently to know how to operate and what we try to do. We considered a lot of amendments from a lot of members. We stayed there a long time, and we did not cut anybody off. If you—
Mr. HATCH. That is correct.
Mr. MUSKIE. If you cut yourself off that is your prerogative.
Mr. HATCH. That is right.
Mr. MUSKIE., But we did not cut you off.
Mr. HATCH. No; you did not. I would say that I was treated with total respect by the chairman and by all the other members of the committee,. and I have no gripes about that. But I still have the right, I think, to make the decision, as you aptly pointed out, to bring this to the floor rather than to bring it to the committee if I believed the committee was not going to consider it in the proper context anyway.
Mr. MUSKIE. That is a great vote of confidence in the committee.
Mr. HATCH. That expresses my confidence.
Mr. MUSKIE. The committee devoted itself to the detail of this budget sufficiently to justify a different evaluation of its sense of responsibility. I think this committee worked harder than any Budget Committee I have known.
Mr. HATCH. I agree with that.
Mr. MUSKIE. And what in their behavior justified your conclusion in your own mind that we could not, would not, consider a worthy case I do not understand. I think the committee was willing to consider any worthy case for reducing the budget. We had to reduce the budget and we accepted many amendments to reduce the budget and to cut it, and we gave them careful consideration from whatever source, from the Republican side of the committee, from the Democratic side of the committee.
We never gave any committee member any justification for believing that he would not have an opportunity to present his amendments. If he had any doubts about it, it either had to be because he did not have confidence in the amendment or for some other reason. I do not understand, but I think it is a statement of fact to the Senate that you never offered this amendment, never gave us the justification.
Now you ask us in a few minutes to take something that impacts on agencies in this detail across the board to condemn them all, to cut the defense budget by $660 million, if the cuts are distributed equitably, and to do that on the spur of the moment.
This is just as late in the Senate's consideration of this bill as any day in the committee's consideration of it.
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, may I ask who has the floor?
Mr. MUSKIE. And the Senate as a whole is not in as good a position to consider the details of your case as the committee was. So why do you think you can get a better hearing here than you could in the Budget Committee?
Mr. HATCH. I know I will get a better hearing here.
Mr. MUSKIE. All right.
Mr. HATCH. I do not have any doubt about it.
Mr. MUSKIE. That is your judgment of the Budget Committee.
Mr. HATCH. Whether it passes or not is beyond me, but all I can say is that I believe 100 Senators are going to give this full consideration, and they will pass it up or down, vote for it up or down, and that will be fine with me, and I can accept it. I think it is a right that I have.
Let me just add this: I had many amendments, and I will add that the distinguished chairman of the committee, who happens to be my friend, and I am his, has never indicated any desire to stop any Senator from bringing up whatever amendments he wanted to before the Budget Committee.
On the other hand, we were constantly aware, all of us, that we only had so much time to get our work done before the recess. We were constantly aware and made aware that the committee was not a line item committee, although it seemed to me some treated it that way, including myself from time to time.
I think we were made constantly aware that if we did not bring it up there we had the right to bring it up on the floor, and I believe I am exercising that right within the framework of the U.S. Senate.
Last but not least, regardless of all of these arguments which, I think, are off the point, I have asked for a $200 million reduction from a $600 million Federal budgetary amount for film making.
I fail to see why any Senator is going to have any difficult time making a decision, even at 8 o'clock in the evening, with regard to spending $600 million in film making. He may not agree with my figures, and he has a right to vote me down on it. I can accept that, and I will.
With regard to Federal overtime pay I do not know of any Senator who would disagree with GAO that there is an abuse of that.
I do not know of any who would say there is not an abuse of film making by the Federal Government. With regard to the Federal work force, the 1-percent attrition is 1/2 percent less than President Carter requested. He asked for 1.5 percent. He said he would attrition the Federal work force by that amount. I am asking for a 1-percent attrition, which is less than he asked for. I have to presume that he did a lot of work on that before asking for the 1.5 percent, with his awesome resources.
With regard to the fourth item, the chairman of our committee said he agrees there is an abuse of Federal travel. Last year we spent, in the Federal Government, $6.6 billion for Federal travel. This year the Budget Committee does not hold the line. It does not reduce it. It comes up with $7 billion, or $400 million more, when they admit the program is fraught with fraud. Nobody else seems to be making any effort to solve that problem, so I am trying, to the best of my ability.
All I ask is that we hold the line and reduce it by $100 million under last year.There is nothing minuscule about these figures, nothing that takes any super-abundance of ability, brains, or staff work. This is something I think any Senator can make the decision on, up or down. This is all I am asking.
Regardless of whether the Budget Committee is a line item committee, regardless of whether I should bring all 250 amendments up in committee or wait until my time on the floor, where I think some of the 100 Senators might be persuaded, the Budget Committee's responsibility, in my judgment, is to safeguard the taxpayers of America, and in my opinion we ought to be able to, as members or not as members of the Budget Committee, bring up items on the floor which we think safeguard and help the taxpayers of America.
Last but not least, all I am asking is that we consider the fact that these are areas that are intensely complained of by the American taxpayers, with much justification, where the GAO itself has come out and complained, and even the President of the United States, in a number of these areas, has complained. It is time we saw some effort on the part of ourselves as Senators to change that particular approach. I think we ought to do it.
I think the amendment is a good amendment. I think it is within the framework of what the President would want, and I think it is within the framework of what the GAO would want. I think we ought to listen to them, and I think our society would be better off if we do. That is all I am asking.
I respect the distinguished Senator from Maine, but, on the other hand, last year I stood right here on the floor, Senator ROTH had an across-the-board budget cut, and the year before it was the same thing, and got it flung in my face, "Show us where to cut."
Well, here are four little instances that are showing you where to cut, that are not overwhelmingly significant, but are within the GAO recommendations and within the President's recommendations, and you would think the world had fallen apart.
I hope my colleagues will give consideration to this proposal in spite of the problems that apparently arise; and I will also add that I am going to bring up any amendment on the floor of the Senate that I feel is beneficial for my taxpayers in Utah and for the rest of the taxpayers in America, regardless of whether the Budget Committee likes it or not. That is the way it is going to be. I am going to try to do it respectfully and make arguments that are reasonable, in my opinion. And I am prepared to do that any way I can.
I am prepared to yield back the remainder of my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. SARBANES) . The time of the Senator from Utah has expired.
Mr. MUSKIE. How much time do I have remaining, Mr. President?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 24 minutes remaining.
Mr. MUSKIE. I yield back the remainder of my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All remaining time having been yielded back, the question is on agreeing to the amendment of the Senator from Utah. The yeas and nays have been ordered, and the clerk will call the roll.