September 17, 1979
Page 24799
Mr. MUSKIE. I would like to ask the Senator from South Dakota if he would object if at this time we put his amendment aside briefly to engage in a colloquy with the distinguished Senator from Iowa (Mr. JEPSEN)?
Mr. McGOVERN. I have no objection.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we set aside the McGovern amendment briefly — I do not think it will be more than a few minutes — so that I can engage in a colloquy with Senator JEPSEN which is of some importance to him, and I yield myself such time on the bill as may be necessary to conclude the colloquy.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. JEPSEN. A few months ago the Senate voted on a sense of the Senate resolution which prohibited HEW from denying AFDC and medicaid entitlements from the poor and the elderly, as a result of HEW's failure to comply with the spirit of the "Michel amendment."
As you may remember the "Michel amendment" required HEW to cut waste, fraud, and abuse by $1 billion in AFDC and medicaid payments in fiscal year 1979. I sponsored that resolution to protect the States from an arrogant, bloated, insensitive bureaucracy which ignored the will of the Congress, and who, in final desperation, sought to protect its own interests by denying entitlements to legal recipients.
Will the reconciliation instruction to the Appropriations Committee affect the legal entitlements for AFDC and medicaid recipients, particularly in reference to the Senate resolution I sponsored? What will be the ramifications for the fiscal year 1980 AFDC and medicaid appropriation?
Mr. MUSKIE. The Budget Committee's recommendations assume legislative savings of $300 million in budget authority, and $1.7 billion in outlays by the Finance Committee. As examples — and only as examples — of areas where savings could be made, the committee's suggestions included the medicaid and AFDC programs.
The medicaid assumption would not affect the benefits of legally entitled persons. The recommended savings assume enactment of hospital cost containment legislation which simply induces hospitals to reduce future increases in costs by adopting more efficient and economic methods of operation.
No individual's eligibility for hospital care would be affected. In fact, the second resolution provides for increases in medicaid funding by providing $0.2 billion for benefit improvements for certain low income children and pregnant women.
With regard to AFDC, Mr. President, I can assure Senator JEPSEN that the Budget Committee did not envision that the savings would be achieved by denying AFDC benefits to people legally entitled to them. Rather, the committee assumes that modest changes would be made in the AFDC program to eliminate low priority payments to people who are not truly needy. For example, savings could be achieved by making the work expense deduction provisions the same for all AFDC recipients. This provision was already passed by the Senate in the 95th Congress.
Mr. JEPSEN. I thank the Senator.
I also received a number of inquiries from Iowans representing the interests of children, those inquiries being from people who are concerned about the school lunch and special milk program.
In regard to the school program, the Agriculture Committee did not recommend any change in the school lunch program until a study of the program is made by the Agriculture Department.
In fairness to the Agriculture Committee and to the Department of Agriculture's forthcoming study, would it not be wise for the Senate to take a wait-and-see attitude on school lunch?
Mr. MUSKIE. I will undoubtedly address this question further in connection with the debate on the McGovern amendment.
May I say at this point that the Budget Committee recommendations assume legislative savings of $0.1 billion in budget authority and outlays from programs within the jurisdiction of the Agriculture Committee, all programs.
As examples of possible areas in which these savings could be achieved, the committee suggested cutting the subsidy for school lunches by 5 cents for non-needy students. This change was proposed by the President. This modest change would have no effect on very poor children receiving free and reduced price lunches. The effect of the proposal would be to reduce by 5 cents the Federal lunch subsidy for children in families whose income is above 195 percent of the poverty level. In the case of a family of four, the proposal would affect only children in families with income above $13,940. Nationwide, the cost of a lunch for these non-poor children would be increased from roughly 60 cents to 65 cents.
Let me emphasize, however, that the $0.1 billion in savings does not have to be achieved in the school lunch program. The Budget Committee's assumptions as to what legislative changes could be made are not binding. The Agriculture Committee can recommend changes to achieve the savings in other programs under its jurisdiction.
I know that finding the $0.1 billion in savings will not be easy for the Agriculture Committee. However, these are the same savings that were assumed by the Senate in the first resolution and they must be achieved if the Senate is to meet its commitment of reducing the deficit for fiscal year 1980.
Mr. JEPSEN. In regard to the special milk program, the Agriculture Committee as of July 27, 1979, recommended that no special milk savings be assumed for the second concurrent resolution, on the grounds that the Senate had already rejected cuts in the program.
That being the case — why is the Budget Committee recommending that the Agriculture Committee assume more savings in the special milk program?
(Mr. BAUCUS assumed the chair.)
Mr. MUSKIE. Let me say here what I said in response to the Senator's earlier question. These recommendations to which the Senator refers are simply a reminder to the Senate of savings that were assumed in the first budget resolution. If committees desire to make the savings in other areas — that, of course, is their prerogative, and the Budget Committee cannot remove that prerogative.
With respect to this particular program, the reconciliation instruction goes to the Appropriations Committee rather than to the Agriculture Committee, and it requires savings of $2.9 billion in budget authority and $2.5 billion in outlays.
Among the examples suggested by the Budget Committee as areas in which $0.1 billion of the savings could be achieved was the elimination of the special milk program in schools that have school lunch and breakfast programs. A little history may be useful. When the special milk program began, the school lunch program was in its infancy and many schools were not equipped to offer federally subsidized meals. The special milk program was a way to insure that children in such schools could at least receive milk. Now, roughly 90 percent of all schools have federally subsidized meal programs (which include milk) , but there has been no reduction in the special milk program to take this into consideration.
However, let me emphasize that the $0.1 billion in savings does not have to be achieved in the special milk program. The Budget Committee's assumptions as to what legislative changes could be made are not binding.
Let me emphasize even more strongly that the Senate agreed to these same assumed savings in the first resolution. If it is decided not to make changes in the special milk program then comparable savings must be achieved in other programs. The Budget Committee cannot and should not dictate how the savings will be achieved — it can only make suggestions.
However, I must point out again that the assumed savings must be achieved in one way or another if we are to accomplish the objectives of reducing the deficit and moving toward a balanced budget.
Mr. JEPSEN. I thank the Senator. You have answered my questions, and I would like to commend again your distinguished work on what may set the stage for many years to come in the next couple of days in this budget resolution being here in the Senate.
Mr. MUSKIE. I thank my good friend from Iowa.
Mr. President, do we now return to the McGovern amendment?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct. Who yields time?
Mr. MUSKIE. How much time is left on this amendment?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine has 30 minutes remaining. The Senator from South Dakota has 3 minutes remaining.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I do not expect to use the full 30 minutes, although I often surprise myself by the amount of time I consume in a vigorous debate.
I have been interested to listen to my good friend from South Dakota (Mr. McGOVERN) and the distinguished chairman of the Agriculture Committee (Mr. TALMADGE) with respect to the
budget resolution and the instruction that is directed to the Agriculture Committee.
First, it is implied that one must vote for the McGovern amendment if one is for the school lunch program. Mr. President, I have been for the school lunch program through all of my public life, or that part of it which has seen the school lunch program come into being and grow, and perform the very useful and high priority public function that Senator McGOVERN describes. I am for the school lunch program, whatever has been implied to the contrary in this debate.
Second, if one is to accept the thesis which is implicit in the argument that has been made, then one must not ever reduce any program, whatever the implications to the national debt or the national budget or the national economy, unless one wishes to be labeled an opponent of whatever program is reduced, whether it is defense, school lunches, education, health, or whatever.
In other words, the Budget Committee, by its very existence, logically opposes every program in which it suggests restraint or reduction, however meritorious.
I doubt that any Senator would wish to serve on the Budget Committee if that is the assumption that is to be made with respect to his service. We are not talking about eliminating the school lunch program. We are not even talking about significantly reducing it and, indeed, we are not even talking about establishing a precedent for future destruction of the school lunch program.
To accept that logic is to say that if the Senate were to vote for the reconciliation instruction, what the Senate is voting for is an eventual elimination of all Federal spending, and nobody advances that ridiculous thesis in connection with the budget resolution. We are talking about the modest goal of holding Government spending as a percentage of gross national product to 22 percent.
To argue that by holding it to 22 percent we are presuming to eliminate in the future all Federal spending is, I think, reductio ad absurdum taken to an extreme. The McGovern amendment, on its face, says this:
Purpose: To strike the reconciliation requirement that the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry recommend a reduction of $100,000,000 in the nutrition programs.
Mr. President, let me read the proposed instruction. There is no mention in the instruction of nutrition programs, but rather it reads as follows:
Pursuant to section 310 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, the Committees on Agriculture shall reduce spending for fiscal year 1980 in reported or enacted laws, bills, and resolutions by $100,000,000 in budget authority and $100,000,000 in outlays and are instructed to report promptly their recommendations for changes in new budget authority for fiscal year 1980.
There is no mention in that proposed legislative language of nutrition programs. Rather, the instruction imposes upon the Committee on Agriculture the responsibility, which I submit rests upon every committee of the Senate, to do its part in holding down Federal spending. And what is its part? All programs in the Agriculture Committee's legislative jurisdiction total $13.2 billion in outlays. Now we are told it is unreasonable of us to ask the Agriculture Committee that, out of that $13.2 billion, it should find $100 million in savings. That $100 million is eight-tenths of 1 percent of $13.2 billion; that request is being interpreted here on the floor of the Senate as an attempt ultimately to destroy the school lunch program.
It is a long time, Mr. President, since I took courses in argumentation, debate, and logic, but that kind of a thesis would have been ridiculed in the first year class. What we are asking for is a minuscule amount of restraint from the Agriculture Committee, as well as from the other committees of the Senate.
If we cannot do that, if it is unreasonable for us to ask that of the Agriculture Committee, then how could anyone stand here and successfully argue that what we are asking other committees is reasonable? If it is unreasonable to ask the Agriculture Committee to find $100 million in savings, how is it reasonable of us to ask the Appropriations Committee to find $2.5 billion, or how is it reasonable for us to ask of the Veterans' Committee to find $100 million, or to ask of other committees — and they are mentioned in the instruction — to find the savings which they are asked to find?
There is not a reasonable proposition in the reconciliation instruction if this one to the Committee on Agriculture is unreasonable. And if the Senate should endorse the McGovern amendment, I can think of no good argument as to why the Senate should not disregard the reconciliation instruction.
The argument is — and I heard this from the distinguished chairman of the Agriculture Committee — that we will be shortcutting the legislative process — I do not know that "shortcutting" is the word he used — if we were to agree to this amendment.
Well, heavens to Betsy, Mr. President, is not the Budget Act part of the legislative process?
Is he not really arguing that it is better to shortcut the budget process and destroy it than to make a modest request of the Agriculture Committee that it find eighth-tenths of 1 percent savings in its overall total of $13.2 billion?
So, Mr. President, I have undertaken at the outset to put in perspective the real significance of the reconciliation instruction, which has been misinterpreted as a mandate to cut $100 million from the school lunch program, and only the school lunch program, with no other option available.
That is not the reconciliation instruction. But let us look at the school lunch program and see whether it was unreasonable of the Senate, in May, to assume the very savings to which Senator McGOVERN addressed his attention.
In the first budget resolution, the Senate assumed legislative savings of $100 million in budget authority and outlays for fiscal year 1980. The Budget Committee had assumed these savings would be achieved through savings in the school lunch program, and that assumption was consistent not only with the vote of the Senate, but with the President's recommendations for savings in the school lunch program.
But now, as we remind the Senate of what it did in the spring, the Budget Committee is being asked to carry the onus of trying to destroy the school lunch program. The Agriculture Committee, I repeat, is not bound to achieve the savings by changing the school lunch program. It could achieve the savings from other programs under its jurisdiction, but it does not seem to be interested in even making the effort.
With regard to savings in the school lunch program, the Federal school lunch subsidy for non-needy children would be cut by 5 cents. I submit that change is a modest one. It would not affect needy children who receive free and reduced-price lunches. It would affect only those children whose families have income above 195 percent of the poverty line. That translates to an income of $13,940 for a family of four. It would not affect any children in families of four with incomes under that figure.
The proposal would increase the average nationwide price of paid lunches from roughly 60 cents to 65 cents. There would still be a Federal subsidy for paid lunches, but the subsidy would be reduced from roughly 32 cents to 27 cents.
In listening to the argument against that proposition and whether or not it is reasonable, one must put it in the context of this question: Are there no limits to the largesse of the Federal Government, no limits at all, no reasonable limits whatsoever? The argument against this change is not that that change would gut the program, but that it would lead to future changes that would gut the program.
It is as though the Senate does not have the capability or the compassion to distinguish between a 5-cent reduction in the cost of school lunches for non-needy children — that is, children whose parents have incomes of more than $14,000. In other words, the assumption is that this Senate or future Senates do not have the compassion or the sensitivity to distinguish between this cut and the future destruction of the school lunch program.
I submit, Mr. President, that the Senate does not have to vote on this issue on the basis of any such assumptions about its future. I do not think there is anything in the Senate's record to suggest that there is any basis for such an assumption about what the Senate may do in the future.
The Agriculture Committee has informed the Budget Committee that it opposes making the changes in the school lunch program which the President has recommended and the Senate assumed in the spring until a study of that program has been undertaken. I recognize that it is up to the Agriculture Committee to decide what changes and authorizations it wishes to propose. I have emphasized that. But, Mr. President, I cannot emphasize strongly enough that the Agriculture Committee's decision not to recommend school lunch program changes does not relieve that committee of the obligation to achieve the savings that were agreed to by the Senate in the first resolution. So if the Agriculture Committee insists on this amendment, it is making two decisions: One, it opposes the making of savings in this program; and, two, it refuses to make the effort to find the savings in any of the rest of its $13.2 billion for program authorizations. That is the conclusion I reach. And I have listened to all these words paying obeisance to the budget process.
Mr. President, we have come to a time when words are no longer sufficient. Action is necessary. If it is legitimate for the sponsor of this amendment to conclude that, because I am for trying to get these savings out, I am against the school lunch program, it is just as legitimate to conclude that, because he is against making these savings, he is against a balanced budget. I do not make any such claim.
Mr. President, when we are discussing matters as serious as a balanced budget, inflation, and the health of the economy, the resolution of the questions which divide us is not served unless we focus on the specifics of what is being proposed and the options that are available. All I am urging, all that the Senator from Oklahoma is urging, and all the Budget Committee is urging, is that we make the kind of effort that is implicit in this reconciliation instruction — that the country's vital economic interests require — and we try to meet the objective of saving enough in outlays to hold the deficit down below the 1979 figure. If any Senator thinks there is some easy place where that $3.5 to $4 billion can be saved, easier than the places where the Senate is being asked to make the effort, let him suggest it. Let him offer an amendment to that effect.
The McGovern amendment does three things: It strikes out the instruction to the Committee on Agriculture in order to relieve the Committee on Agriculture from making any effort whatsoever to achieve savings.
Second, it proposes an increase in outlays in this resolution by $100 million in order to provide that relief.
Third, it proposes an increase in the deficit of $100 million in order to provide that relief.
So, if this amendment is adopted, the Senate Committee on Agriculture is, in effect, saying to the country — we cannot find any way to relieve the taxpayers of $100 million of Government spending; we have not the ingenuity or the will. We do not want to cut the school lunch program, but we are not interested in looking beyond that to other programs under our jurisdiction in order to hold the deficit down, to hold spending down.
I am not making this argument just for the benefit of the Committee on Agriculture, because the kind of discipline I am talking about bears on each of us, on every committee subject to reconciliation instructions, and on every Senator who has an interest in any of the priorities served by any Senate committee. Mr.President, there is no single place to find discipline. There is no discipline unless it exists everywhere. There is no discipline unless every committee and every Senator adopts some responsibility for it. There is no discipline just because the Budget Committee exists.
If the Senate does not want discipline, get rid of the Budget Committee, get rid of the budget process. Then we can spend what we like, the way we used to.
Mr. President, this will be the first vote. It is a key vote. If this amendment is successful, I would not dare predict what the deficit will be by the time we continue deliberation on this budget resolution. I am willing to stand by the results. I am not interested, as Senator D0MENICI put it earlier, to be just a counter, counting up the bills as other committees send them to us. Either the budget process represents discipline or it does not. There is no way of saying yes to everyone, even for such worthwhile programs as this one.
I do not think that, if the Agriculture Committee decided to achieve these savings in the school lunch program, we will have done a disservice to the country's interest. But that is not mandated. It is a suggestion, a suggestion with healthy precedents in this budget process.
Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time.