April 28, 1979
Page 8228
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, may I have 5 minutes yielded to me?
Mr. MUSKIE. Yes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I wish to respond.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. MOYNIHAN. The Senator from Maine yields me 5 minutes.
Mr. President, I wish to respond to the characteristically gracious and thoughtful remarks of the ranking minority member of the committee by saying several things of which first is I do not think one needs to say that the question is whether or not Congress is guilty of a regional imbalance in expenditure.
If anyone had asked me 18 years ago when I came to Washington, with the administration of President Kennedy, did the Federal budget redistribute wealth as between regions, I would have said and I think members of our administration would have said, "Yes, it does, but not sufficiently." There was a conscious effort to redistribute wealth from the Northeast to other regions of the country.
President Carter when he came to office said he hoped that his administration might do for the Northeast what the New Deal had done for his Southern region.
I take this kind of redistribution to be a wholly legitimate function of government among regions, sectors of the economy, and groups in the society.
But I ask that there be some consideration for the fact that the transfer from the North to the South and West is no longer appropriate.
Second, I ask that those regions which are the great beneficiaries of this transfer acknowledge the transfer.
That is why I introduced that equal sacrifice amendment. Though the Library of Congress says there is no disparity, there certainly was a singular regional pattern to the voting as between those States that would have welcomed equal expenditures and those who would not. Furthermore, those that would not welcome it were exactly the ones demanding a reduction in Federal expenditures.
Anyone who can contrive to have things as much their way as that must be congratulated, but they cannot object to our taking note of it.
This now seems to me to warrant some revision in the light of the plainly depleted resources of those regions which in the past have provided most of the income to those being redistributed.
I wish simply to close by thanking the chairman and the ranking minority member for being so good as to say the Budget Committee will inquire into this matter and regionalism will be in the future an aspect of our report to the Senate. We have no fear of inquiry. If it turns out that the positions we take are not really valid and cannot be sustained, fine, but at least we will remove from our political debate an area which I would caution is more heated in my part of the country than others may realize.
In any event, I thank the Senator from Oklahoma and the Senator from Maine, and I say this inquiry makes sense; there are areas where knowledge produces agreement and consensus more readily than others. I think this may be one.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. MOYNIHAN. I am happy to yield.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, speaking not as chairman of the Budget Committee, but as a Senator from the region of the Northeast for which the Senator speaks, I can only echo what he says.
The most recent evidence of this trend is reflected in the base closings just announced by the Department of Defense.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Yes.
Mr. MUSKIE. The Midwest-Northeast portion of the country, while containing 45 percent of the population, suffered 65 percent of the base closings.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Yes.
Mr. MUSKIE. And if you examine the payrolls which were lost, the disproportion is very close to that, if not worse.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Sixty-five percent of the closings on a base that was much less than 45 percent to begin with.
Mr. MUSKIE. Exactly.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. I am surprised that one can find 65 percent in what is there now.
Mr. MUSKIE. One of the noticeable things about it was the rationale used in many instances. For instance, the Loring Air Force Base, a SAC base, whose value the Air Force continues to assert, would be reduced 80 to 90 percent, and one of the three reasons cited by the Air Force for reducing the base is that interesting word "climatology." Apparently there is the feeling in the Air Force that future wars are going to be fought at Miami Beach or that fliers with a tan are somehow more efficient than fliers not so blessed.
But the Loring Air Force Base is the closest SAC base in the United States for our major defense contingency associated with a NATO conflict. It was built there for that reason. There was nothing there in northeastern Maine before Loring was built. And the infrastructure of community services, businesses, and so on, was built up around this base where there was nothing before. Now, because of climate, the Air Force wants to retain the base as a forward operating base but remove 90 percent of its economic value to the region and ask the region to bear the cost. The Air Force is moving South.
The second reason they give for reducing Loring is that they need support for fighter training missions from the tankers that would be based at Loring, and most of those fighter training bases are where? The South.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Yes.
Mr. MUSKIE. I suppose it was climatology that prompted the decision to put those fighter bases in the South. With that kind of rationale, that kind of trend, I foresee the day when all active bases are south of the Mason-Dixon line and every area north of it would be undefended and unremunerated economically by the vast Defense Establishment.
So I think there is a trend. I do not pretend that that is necessarily a comprehensive measurement of the total trend which has occupied the attention of my good friend from New York, but I think he does our region a great service in raising this issue and persisting in it and in probing for ways to deal with it. He will find me by his side as he does so.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. I thank my chairman.