September 17, 1979
Page 24810
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, how much time do I have?
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. BURDICK) . The Senator reserved 10 minutes of his time for himself.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, in some fashion, in 10 minutes I have to cover ground that has been plowed over for 50 minutes. I have no objection to that at all. I hope I can do it. But it was my desire to give the proponents of this amendment every conceivable moment they needed to make a case. And I have listened. I have sat here and listened for all the 50 minutes. And what have I learned?
I have learned, first of all, that the American Legion and the VFW are for the Cranston amendment. But that came as no great shock or surprise. For the implication was that for some of these reconciliation instructions, the people affected would be for the cuts.
I cannot think of a constituency impacted by the reconciliation instructions — and these include not only the Veterans' Committee, but the Agriculture Committee, the Finance Committee, the Appropriations Committee — who have come to any Senator and urged that the Senator support the cuts. But does that mean, Mr. President, that we have to wait, in this body and this Congress, until the impacted constituencies ask for their own programs to be cut? Mr. President, how long do you think it would take to get a balanced budget if we were to wait until the cuts met that test?
But that is the way we budgeted for most of the 21 years I have been here in Congress. The constituencies of the special programs brought pressures which resulted in increased spending. Surely that is no mystery to any of the rest of us.
So, Mr. President, if we are to hold down spending, if we are to balance the budget, surely our own history tells us it will be done only if, a sufficient group in this body, is willing to enforce budget discipline. Only if we do that will we ever achieve a balanced budget.
All the Veterans' Committee has said to us this afternoon is that their constituency is against the cuts. I did not need to come to the floor to know that. I have veterans in my State, and of course they are against the cut. It is the business of these veterans organizations to be against cuts in their programs. It is their business to represent the veterans, and I honor them for doing so. But it is our business to decide the total of resources for numerous constituencies which run across the whole budget. And it is our responsibility to ask if there is a limit, or is there not? And if there is a limit, who ought to be subject to it? Everybody, or nobody, somewhere in between?
Mr. President, let us look at this veterans' function. The first concurrent resolution recommended $21.2 billion in budget authority and $20.6 billion in outlays. There was no amendment on the Senate floor to change those numbers, and those numbers assume some of the savings that we have been talking about here this afternoon.
Then the first concurrent resolution, reestimated in July, contained the same numbers — $21.2 billion in budget authority and $20.6 billion in outlays. The second concurrent resolution, with the original reconciliation instruction to the Veterans' Committee, was $21.2 billion in budget authority and $20.5 billion in outlays. In other words, we tried to save something in the veterans' function, as well as in other functions, in order to hold spending down and move toward a balanced budget. So we cut outlays by $100 million, as we reported the budget resolution to the floor.
Mr. President, I have listened to at least one speaker tell me that we have been discriminating against veterans in this compromise. But let me make this clear: The pending Muskie amendment modifies the pending reconciliation resolution in two places by reducing the savings required.
One of those places was the Finance Committee, because of its concern with social security recipients. The other was the Veterans' Committee. We relieved the Veterans' Committee of some of the savings burden that we have been talking about all afternoon.
We relieved them, but that relief was not enough. This amendment that is pending before us, the Cranston amendment, asks not only that the remaining $100 million of cost savings be lifted from their shoulders, but that beyond that, they be allowed to spend $200 million more. It is not enough for them to be relieved of part of the savings responsibility. It is not enough for them to be relieved of all of the savings responsibility. They want to be able to spend $200 million more, so that their budget authority totals would not be the $21.2 billion in the first concurrent resolution, but $21.5 billion if the amendment passes. On the outlay side it would rise from $20.6 billion in the first concurrent resolution to $20.9 billion.
So what they are saying to us, Mr. President, is that not only should they not be required to share some of the responsibility for holding down the cost of the Government, not only should they not be required to make a contribution to a reduction of the deficit, but they ought to be allowed to spend more. And this is at the expense of the savings responsibilities assumed by others, like the school lunch program.
Mr. President, the Senate has just voted that the school lunch program had to bear $100 million of the savings responsibility. So if we vote for the Cranston amendment, we are going to be saying to the country, "We are for taking these savings out of the school lunch program in order that the veterans' programs can spend $300 million more." That would be the effect of those 'two votes taken in conjunction with each other. But I think in making that kind of a statement, I do not need to take the criticism that I am against veterans because we have presented to the Senate balanced savings proposals, which are spread not just among the Veterans' Committee but among seven committees of the Congress, including Appropriations, Defense, Finance, and Agriculture. If it is unreasonable to ask one of these committees to make any savings, then obviously, it is unreasonable to ask any of them to make any savings.
There is one thing I have noticed about a case that is made for this kind of amendment. That is that the debate is always launched in such a way as to put people in my position in the worst possible light. I have found myself accused, because of this $100 million additional savings that we are asking for, of jettisoning just about every veterans' program I have ever heard of. Let us just take one, the 11.1 percent cost-of-living increase for veterans' income programs.
Well, Mr. President, we reduced the savings responsibility of the Veterans' Affairs Committee by $100 million in order to provide the full 11.1 percent cost-of-living increase for disabled veterans. And we stated that explicitly to a meeting considering this reconciliation compromise, attended by at least one Senator on the floor this afternoon. But I have heard four Senators make the statement that, by retaining $100 million of the $200 million savings, we would be making impossible a full cost-of-living increase, 11.1 percent, for the veterans disability compensation program.
Mr. President, the $100 million in savings that we gave up was designed to provide for that 11.1-percent cost-of-living increase for the veterans' disability compensation program. But to now find myself accused, having made that positive gesture in the direction of the veterans' programs, of not providing for the disabled veteran, truly discourages me.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time on the amendment has expired. There is still time on the resolution.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I give myself 2 minutes on the bill, just to round out my argument.
Mr. President, from fiscal year 1970 to 1975, veterans' programs increased by 91 percent; from 1975 to 1980, by 24 percent; from 1970 to 1980 by 134 percent. But, apparently, Mr. President, there is no way one can disabuse those who are interested in such programs of the notion that restraint represents hostility. And this political fact of life has resulted in uncontrollable spending in many aspect; of the Federal budget — senior citizens, farmers, veterans, schoolchildren. You name it, we all know the constituencies. If you deny even the last penny, somebody is going to accuse you of being against schoolchildren, against veterans, against farmers, against senior citizens. So we all panic as politicians when those issues arise, to give every penny and then double it. We have seen that happen, over and over again, in my 21 years in the Senate.
Mr. President, we are never going to have budgetary discipline, we are never going to get the budget balanced we are never going to get rid of inflation until the majority is willing to say there comes a time when restraint has to be the measure of public policy. Inflation is robbing veterans, inflation is robbing schoolchildren, inflation is robbing senior citizens, inflation is robbing farmers, inflation is robbing the defense, inflation is robbing the housewife, inflation is robbing Members of Congress, who worry about the adequacy of their pay and privileges. Inflation is robbing everybody, Mr. President. And whenever a group with political clout seeks to insulate itself from inflation at the cost of others without as much clout, all that happens is that the inflation of rising expectations begins to overwhelm all of us. So we have to put more money in for everybody in order to avoid the political consequences of appearing to be hostile to somebody.
I have no bias against veterans. My best case for that is that the $100 million savings which we asked the Veterans' Committee to find is only 2.5 percent of the total savings the Budget Committee is requesting of Senate committees. It is less than one-half of 1 percent of total veterans' spending. But it is argued to me that these figures indicate hostility on the part of ED MUSKIE to veterans. And if I have to bear the consequences of that unfair argument, I shall bear it. But it does not rest on fact.
I do not think we have asked anything unreasonable of the Veterans' Committee. We have discriminated in their favor in this compromise. But that is not good enough. Well, it is their right to complain. But it is my right to point out that not only are they asking to be relieved of the savings responsibility we have asked them to assume, but they want to go $200 million beyond — $300 million beyond the first concurrent resolution, to which they offered no amendment in the spring — to increase spending.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. MATSUNAGA. Will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. MUSKIE. I yield 1 minute on the bill for the purpose of a question.
Mr. MATSUNAGA. The effort, of course, being made here is to balance the budget. The Joint Committee on Taxation, appearing before the Committee on Finance, presented figures which show that, in 1980, out of new taxes on oil, Federal royalties, and windfall profits tax, there be an additional $7.6 billion. Of course, it goes anywhere from $4.7 billion to $4.8 billion to $7.6 billion. In each case where assumptions are made, the additional tax anticipated because of decontrol on oil will mean an amount in excess of what the Budget Committee is trying to save.
Was this figure taken into consideration by the Budget Committee in figuring out the revenues expected?
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I am going to have to have more than the minute. I yield myself 2 more minutes.
No. 1, we went into this question of potential revenues from a windfall profits tax at length in the Budget Committee, in the caucus which we held last week on the reconciliation resolution, and in the meeting of chairmen of committees. The possibility of squeezing out more from revenues was raised and we were advised by members of the Committee on Finance, who are more knowledgeable in this than I am, that we have probably assumed more than is realistic already. But we assumed $2 billion in windfall profits tax revenues, not tied to conservation or production incentives or other energy-oriented objectives. We were told that that $2 billion has to stretch to possibilities beyond what we have assumed.
So the $2 billion, I gather, is pretty much at the top of what we can expect, that if a windfall profits tax is enacted. The Senator knows that is controversial, but if it is enacted there will be demands made against the revenues, the conservation, the production incentives, and for relief of low income citizens who will be unacceptably burdened by the higher cost of energy, and we were told, the Finance Committee told us, before we assume the$2 billion that we ought not assume a penny in extra revenues from the General Treasury.
Mr. MAGNUSON. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. MUSKIE. I am happy to yield to my good friend.
Mr. MAGNUSON. At least, we were told that is the most we could expect for the first year.
Mr. MUSKIE. That is right.
Mr. MAGNUSON. It may be more afterwards, but for the 1980 budget, this is all we could use.
Mr. MUSKIE. That is what we were told.
Mr. MATSUNAGA. I have the figures, as a matter of fact, presented in writing by the—
Mr. MUSKIE. I know what the gross figures are, and I have bigger gross figures than the Senator described.
Mr. MATSUNAGA. Even without the windfall profits tax, the figure here, income tax, for all additional oil produced as a consequence of deregulation, is $3.4 billion in 1980.
In 1981, that goes up to $8.6 billion, and so on.
Mr. MUSKIE. Is the Senator saying that independent of the passage of the windfall profits tax, the general revenues can increase by that much more; in other words, that our general revenue estimate should be increased by this amount?
Mr. MATSUNAGA. That is the figure given us by the Joint Committee on Taxation.
Mr. MUSKIE. Did they have before it our revenue assumptions, which are $514.7 billion?
That includes $2 billion from a windfall profits tax. Is the Senator telling me that the remaining $512.7 billion is unrealistically low?
Mr. MATSUNAGA. Yes, I am — well, I have put the question whether the Senator and his Budget Committee had taken into consideration this estimate made by the Joint Committee on Taxation for additional taxes expected out of decontrol, and, as I see it—
Mr. MUSKIE. Well, the Senator is estimating $512.7 billion, may I say, from all sources of revenue.
I do not know that I can, from the top of my head, isolate the particular contribution to our total revenues made by the source the Senator refers to.
Mr. MATSUNAGA. According to table1 of the summary, the committee print, anticipated revenues show as $514.7 billion.
Mr. MUSKIE. That is what I just said.
Mr. MATSUNAGA. I thought the Senator said $512 billion.
Mr. MUSKIE. I said $512.7 billion, deducting the $2 billion we assumed for the windfall profits tax.
Mr. MATSUNAGA. I see.
I still feel we have not included this anticipated increase in GNP in taxes as a consequence of decontrol.
So I would think perhaps the small amount, such as the Veterans' Committee is asking for, would easily be over-balanced by an increase in revenues from decontrol, even without the windfall profits tax.
Mr. MUSKIE. I can only say to the Senator that we took into account in the new revenue estimates, and he will see they are higher than the first concurrent resolution, that the new revenue estimates include the impact of inflation, including the higher cost of oil.
Whether or not they specifically relate, or in what way, specifically relate to the estimates the Senator has given us, I cannot say from the top of my head.
But there is $3 billion to $4 billion additional revenues in this resolution attributable to inflation and the higher cost of energy.
Mr. MATSUNAGA. If I may—
Mr. MUSKIE. One can always quarrel with revenue estimates. I found as a Governor that State legislatures love to increase revenue estimates so they can spend deficits in that constructive way.
If we spend increased revenues, we are not spending deficits, even though the revenues are never realized.
Mr. MATSUNAGA. If the anticipated increase in revenues is based on sound projection, I think we ought to make that in order to meet important programs, such as that proposed by the Veterans' Committee.
What I am trying to say is that it is a sound projection, on the basis that there will be an increase in GNP because of decontrol.
Mr. MUSKIE. I am not specifically familiar with the particular figures the Senator is advocating, but I assure him, in my judgment, our overall revenue projections are sound. They ought not be inflated any more than they are.
For one thing, if unemployment rises more significantly than it has, we will begin to get a shrinkage of revenue because the unemployed produce no revenue.
So just arbitrarily raising them to fund programs is pretty risky business.
Mr. MATSUNAGA. I am not asking the Senator to raise projected revenues arbitrarily, but based on what the Joint Committee on Taxation has provided the Finance Committee as being sound estimates.
Mr. MUSKIE. I can only assure the Senator, the Budget Committee operates on the basis of the inputs it gets from the appropriate committees of the Congress and the Senate, from the Office of Management and Budget, the Treasury Department, anybody who can give us enlightenment on this important question of revenues.
We do not like deficits. If we could, by raising revenues in a way that is responsible, reduce deficits, nobody would like that better than the Budget Committee, I assure the Senator.
But, on the other hand, we are not going to just arbitrarily increase revenues in order to reduce the deficit.
Mr. MATSUNAGA. The figures presented to us were presented to the Finance Committee on September 5. I do not know whether these were taken into consideration, but the chairman is not really definite as to whether they were or not, and that is the response — except for the $2 billion?
Mr. MUSKIE. The Senator can ask how much increase Chrysler will contribute to the Treasury next year, and I would not have the answer to that.
We are a macroeconomic committee. We try to get the best revenue estimates we can.
I am under the impression the chairman of the Finance Committee watches our estimates pretty closely. If we set a number that is unreasonably high or unreasonably low, he is inclined to be the first to come to us to say so, because he does not like to be under the pressure of the Budget Committee telling him what he ought to do or ought not to do.
I assume that if our revenue estimates are numbers he agrees with, that they are probably pretty good, and if he does not agree with them, he will tell me so, and why. He has access, as the Senator just told us, to the information available to the Joint Committee on Taxation — as he should.
I mean, they are first boss for the chairman of the Finance Committee.
Mr. MATSUNAGA. I thank the chairman for his remarks.
Mr. CRANSTON addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California has 3 minutes remaining on the amendment.
Mr. CRANSTON. Mr. President, I would like to say to the distinguished chairman of the committee that I have not charged, hinted, or suggested that he or his committee is hostile to veterans. If that charge has been made, I disassociate myself from it. I know it is not true.
Mr. President, I would like to point out, in response to the distinguished floor manager, that in the 50 minutes, more or less, that I and others devoted to support of our amendment, I believe less than 30 seconds was spent in indicating the veterans' organizations support my amendment.
It is, therefore, I think, a rather clear indication of the weakness of the floor manager's position that he devoted so much attention at the outset of his rebuttal to that one point, rather than coming to grips with the merits of this issue.
Mr. MUSKIE. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. CRANSTON. Certainly.
Mr. MUSKIE. Would it be appropriate for me to answer in rebuttal, that the little time he spent on it on the floor suggests how unimportant it may be, in his judgment.
Mr. CRANSTON. In that connection, I point out that in June, over the opposition of the veterans' organizations, I and the Veterans' Affairs Committee amended H.R. 3892, a House-passed veterans' health bill, to lead to a savings of $35 million if enacted.
The Veterans' Affairs Committee, I stress, is working for $478 million in savings over the next 5 fiscal years. So we are doing what we can to contribute to the effort by many of us, with the committee taking a strong lead, to move toward a balanced budget and to cut costs where we can, in an effective, equitable, and appropriate way.
It has been asserted by the floor manager that the proposed budget resolution would include funding for an 11.1-percent cost-of-living increase in service-connected disability compensation benefits. That assertion ignores the fact that the proposed budget levels for function 700 in section 3 of the substitute resolution and the proposed instruction to the Veterans' Affairs Committees in section 1, to reduce spending by $100 million in budget authority and outlays, do not — I repeat, do not — allow for this realistic cost-of-living increase in compensation programs unless further reductions are made in veterans' entitlement programs beyond those the Veterans' Affairs Committee has already recommended in its painstaking, exhaustive efforts to achieve savings.
Thus, under the approach now recommended by the able chairman of the Budget Committee, the compensation cost-of-living increase would not be provided for in a direct, straightforward manner; rather, part of the necessary funding would have to come from funds derived from reductions in other veterans' entitlement programs. As proposed by the floor manager, that would mean total elimination of GI bill benefits for flight and correspondence training courses, the preclusion of any cost-of-living increase in GI bill benefits — and it has been 3 years since the last such increase — and elimination of the targeted delimiting date extension that the Veterans' Affairs Committee is proposing in S. 870 to assist educationally disadvantaged and unemployed Vietnam-era veterans.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
Mr. CRANSTON. May I have 2 additional minutes on the bill?
Mr. MUSKIE. I yield.
Mr. CRANSTON. I believe that Mr. President, this is an unrealistic and unfair approach and is tantamount to the Budget Committee dictating to the Veterans' Affairs Committee its legislative program for veterans' programs. The most dangerous feature of this "musical assumptions" game, of course, is that Senators may actually be misled into thinking that, if they support the floor manager's position, they are making adequate provision for a realistic cost-of-living increase in compensation benefits.
That just is not so, Mr. President.
In addition, Mr. President, I wish to stress again that the Budget Committee, as I have previously indicated, is recommending a $200-million reduction in VA health care appropriations for fiscal year 1980. Acceptance of this recommendation would require a reduction of nearly 10,000 VA health care personnel below the level which the Senate approved in H.R. 4394, the HUD-Independent Agencies Appropriations Act for fiscal year 1980 and to which the conferees on that legislation have also agreed. Adoption of the Budget Committee's recommendation would be a truly devastating blow to the VA's ability to provide needed health care services. In fact, I am convinced that the Budget Committee's proposal if adopted, would directly impair the VA's ability to provide quality medical care to veterans at facilities across the Nation.
Finally, Mr. President, I again urge that the cuts that are assumed in the Budget Committee GI bill and burial benefits recommendations actually be offered as amendments when the appropriate legislation, S. 870, comes before the Senate. Then we can directly find out the will of the Senate on these proposals in concrete legislative form, rather than sweeping them into a budget resolution where the Senate will not have an opportunity to vote up or down on each of these separate proposals for cuts.
I doubt that the full Senate would make such cuts if Members were aware of the exact situation involved in a proposal upon which they could vote directly in the Senate. That is the way for the Senate to work its will on such matters.
Mr. MUSKIE. I yield myself 2 minutes.
Mr. President, unless I did not hear what I thought I was hearing, I have been confronted with two arguments that seem in conflict with each other. First, if the Budget Committee suggests particular places to make cuts, it is dictating. But if it does not suggest places to cut, then it is being unrealistic, because there are no ways to make the cuts.
Any committee can make that argument. It is a constant argument the Budget Committee faces.
Mr. President, we are not a line item committee, but we feel some responsibility to take into account some program specifics — How are programs to be funded? Which ones are proposed to be funded and at what rates? What is the validity of proposals that come from one source or another for reductions in spending?
If I understand Senator CRANSTON correctly, we should not listen to anybody else's suggestions for cuts in veterans' programs unless he endorses them; that we should make no proposals for specific areas of savings unless he endorses them; and that if he has no such specific proposals for us to recommend, we should make no proposals for overall cuts because we do not know what we are talking about. That seems to be the sum and substance of the argument.
Now, Mr. President, with respect to additional cuts in entitlement programs, I happen to believe there is a place where this can be done. But the Veterans' Committee, apparently, is not interested in trying.
Let us take the flight training and correspondence school proposal. What are the facts here? Well, in flight training only 16 percent of the graduates are employed in an aeronautical profession. In 1978, only 4,000 commercial flight jobs were open but there were more than 20,000 veterans in training. Further, a GAO study demonstrates that 57 percent of veterans are in flight training for recreational purposes. And the average cost of this recreational flight training is more than $3,200 per year. For correspondence courses, the completion rate is only 34 percent and only 11 percent of the students enter a training-related profession.
Mr. President, if making a sound judgment is to be based on priorities, what do those facts suggest to anybody? And there is $79 million to be saved in this program alone.
The Senator talks about cuts in health care that we are mandating. But they are not involved in this reconciliation proposal. That is an appropriations matter for the Appropriations Committee to consider. The Senate's vote on this Cranston amendment will provide for an increase in appropriations. It has nothing to do with entitlements.
So Senator CRANSTON puts it in here in order to get the political clout or the emotional clout of veterans' health care benefits added to his amendment. It should not be here at all. If Senators vote for his amendment, Senator MAGNUSON's Appropriations Committee then will be pressured to acknowledge the $200 million increase in health care for veterans in the appropriations instruction.
Mr. President, I have listened to the bulk of the debate on this by the other side. I have given up my own time in order to give them all the time they might require, and all I have succeeded in doing is giving them an opportunity to obfuscate the real issue that is involved here. The real issue is whether this committee, the Veterans' Committee, beyond all others, should be exempted from any and all responsibility to find some savings to hold down the cost of Government. That is what they are asking for. They are asking for preferential treatment, not only to eliminate the savings responsibility, but also to add $300 million overall to the spending which they previously had been authorized by the first concurrent budget resolution to support.
Mr. President, I am going to move to table the Cranston amendment
Mr. CRANSTON. Mr. President, may I have 1 minute before the Senator does that?
Mr. MUSKIE. I yield the Senator 1 minute.
Mr. CRANSTON. Mr. President, with regard to veterans health care, there is a cut proposed by the Budget Committee in function 700, mission 3, from $6.3 billion to $6.1 billion. The $6.3 billion figure was already approved by the Senate and the conference committee on the appropriations bill. So there is a cut there, and our amendment to the function 700 totals clearly had to deal with it from the point of view of what I believe and what others on the legislative committee believe is necessary to assure adequate health care for service-connected disabled and other veterans who need medical help.
The Senator suggests that the committee is not trying to save on flight training. Just before this debate began, I was in the Veterans' Committee meeting with some people who are involved in correspondence training, listening to their complaints about my efforts and the committee's efforts to make some cuts in the correspondence training program.
Regarding flight training, I stress that S. 870, which was reported by the committee, would save $27.7 million on flight training in fiscal 1980 and $140 million over 5 years. So the Committee on Veterans' Affairs is trying to make responsible cuts, and is seeking no exemptions from the process.
Indeed, we have recommended cuts in the exact program cited by the Senator from Maine. I am seeking — the committee is seeking — to be fiscally responsible, but we cannot stand by idly and see cuts made to balance the budget on the backs of veterans.
Mr. MUSKIE. This reconciliation instruction will not balance this year's budget, next year's budget, or the following one.
I say to the Senator it is a phony argument. What he is saying is that he will make no effort in combination with other committees here to reduce spending to a level previously approved by the Senate. The whole argument here is that the Senate and Congress have approved spending in excess of the first concurrent resolution. What we are trying to do is return to that level and he does not want to. That is his argument pure and simple.
Mr. President, I move to table the amendment.
Mr. CRANSTON. Mr. President, may I have 15 seconds?
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I have been yielding the bulk of the time all afternoon. Every time I do I get another argument that requires an answer. But the arguments do not hold up any better the second time they are offered than the first time.
So, Mr. President, I move to lay the amendment on the table and ask for the yeas and nays on the motion.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There is a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered