Hon. Harry F. Byrd, United States Senator from Virginia__. Frederick J. Lawton, Civil Service Commissioner (former Director, Rowland R. Hughes, Assistant Director, Bureau of the Budget; William F. McCandless, Assistant Director for Budget Review, Bureau of the Budget; and Arthur B. Focke, Legal Adviser, Bureau Elbert P. Tuttle, General Counsel, Treasury Department; and John Article "Hash by the Billion! Wanted: A Tax-Saving Diet," by A. H. Study "Observations on the Item Veto" prepared by the Legislative CONSOLIDATED GENERAL APPROPRIATION ACT WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1953 UNITED STATES SENATE, COMMITTEE ON RULES AND ADMINISTRATION, The committee met pursuant to call at 10 a. m. in room 104-B, Senate Office Building, Senator William E. Jenner (chairman) presiding. Present: Senators Jenner (chairman), Carlson, Potter, Barrett, Hayden, Green, and Gillette. Also present: Senator Harry F. Byrd and W. F. Bookwalter, chief clerk. The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. We have with us today Senator Harry F. Byrd, of Virginia, who is here in connection with the resolution (S. Con. Res. 8) introduced by himself and 46 other Senators, providing for a consolidated general appropriation act. The resolution is as follows: [S. Con. Res. 8, 83d Cong., 1st sess.] CONCURRENT RESOLUTION Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), That effective on the first day of the second regular session of the Eighty-third Congress, the joint rule of the Senate and of the House of Representatives contained in section 138 of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 is amended by adding at the end thereof the following new subsections: "(c) (1) All appropriations for each fiscal year shall be consolidated in one general appropriation bill to be known as the 'Consolidated General Appropriation Act of (the blank to be filled in with the appropriate fiscal year). The consolidated general appropriation bill may be divided into separate titles, each title corresponding so far as practicable to the respective regular general appropriation bills heretofore enacted. As used in this paragraph, the term 'appropriations' shall not include deficiency or supplemental appropriations, appropriations under private Acts of Congress, or rescissions of appropriations. (2) The consolidated general appropriation bill for each fiscal year, and each deficiency and supplemental general appropriation bill containing appropriations available for obligation during such fiscal year, shall contain provisions limiting the net amount to be obligated during such fiscal year in the case of each appropriation made therein which is available for obligation beyond the close of such fiscal year. Such consolidated general appropriation bill shall also contain provisions limiting the net amounts to be obligated during such fiscal year from all other prior appropriations which are available for obligation beyond the close of such fiscal year. Each such general appropriation bill shall also contain a provision that the limitations required by this paragraph shall not be construed to prohibit the incurring of an obligation in the form of a contract within the respective amounts appropriated or otherwise authorized by law, if such contract does not provide for the delivery of property or the rendition of services during such fiscal year in excess of the applicable limitations on obligations. The foregoing provisions of this paragraph shall not be applicable to appropriations made specifically for the payment of claims certified by the Comptroller General of the United States and of judgments, to amounts appropriated under private Acts of Congress, to appropriations for the payment of interest on the public debt, or to revolving funds or appropriations thereto. "(3) The committee reports accompanying each consolidated general appropriation bill, and any conference report thereon, shall show in tabular form, for information purposes, by items and totals— "(A) the amount of each appropriation, including estimates of amounts becoming available in the fiscal year under permanent appropriations; "(B) estimates of the amounts to be transferred between such appropriations; "(C) estimates of the net amount to be expended in such fiscal year from each appropriation referred to in clause (A); "(D) estimates of the net amount to be expended in such fiscal year from the balances of prior appropriations; "(E) the totals of the amounts referred to in clauses (C) and (D); and "(F) estimates of the total amount which will be available for expenditure subsequent to the close of such fiscal year from the appropriations referred to in clause (A). The committee reports accompanying each deficiency and supplemental appropriation bill containing appropriations available for obligation or expenditure during such fiscal year, and each appropriation rescission bill, and any conference report on any such bill, shall include appropriate cumulative revisions of such tabulations. "(4) The committee reports accompanying each consolidated general appropriation bill, and any conference report thereon, shall show in tabular form, for information purposes, for each wholly owned Government corporation or other agency of the Government which is authorized to receive and expend receipts without covering such receipts into the Treasury of the United States and which uses a checking account maintained with the Treasurer of the United States for that purpose (A) the estimated expenditures (other than retirement of borrowing) to be made out of such checking account for the fiscal year, (B) the estimated receipts (other than borrowing) to be deposited in such checking account for such fiscal year, and (C) the difference between (A) and (B). "(5) The provisions of paragraphs (2), (3), and (4) shall not be applicable to appropriations of trust funds or to transactions involving public-debt retirement. "(6) No general appropriation bill shall be received or considered in either House unless the bill and the report accompanying it conform with this rule. "(7) The Appropriations Committees of the two Houses may hold hearings simultaneously on each general appropriation bill or may hold joint hearings thereon. "(d) The consolidated general appropriation bill for each fiscal year, and each deficiency and supplemental general appropriation bill containing appropriations available for obligation during such fiscal year, shall at the time the bill is reported to the House of Representatives and to the Senate contain in the body of the bill or in a preamble thereto, as the respective committees may deem appropriate, a current estimate of the Secretary of the Treasury of the overall Federal receipts for such fiscal year." Before hearing Senator Byrd it will be necessary for this committee to discharge its Subcommittee on Rules from further consideration of this measure and put it on the committee calendar so that we may consider it today. Without objection, this will be done. Senator Byrd, will you please proceed? STATEMENT OF SENATOR HARRY FLOOD BYRD, UNITED STATES SENATOR, STATE OF VIRGINIA Senator BYRD. Mr. Chairman, Senate Concurrent Resolution 8, before this committee today, most frequently is referred to as the "single appropriation bill" or the "single package bill." But this reference does not accurately describe its provisions. Actually the bill is in three principal parts: The first part does provide for a single bill in which all general appropriations shall be considered by Congress. And this is as far as the so-called single appropriation bill of 1950 went. The second part provides that Congress shall write into appropriation bills limitations on annual obligations against all available appropriations, both currently before Congress and those previously enacted; and to my mind this provision, which has been in the bill since it was first introduced in 1947, is most important. The third part provides that as the bill passes through the various stages of the legislative process, it shall set forth revised estimates of the revenue. Frankly, Congress virtually has lost annual control over expenditures from the Federal Treasury, and the purpose of this bill is to recover legislative control, at least in part. There are numerous practices which have grown up to contribute to this loss of control. They include permanent appropriations; adoption of statutory programs requiring Federal payments to meet formulas fixed in the law; authorization to spend from the public debt, and so forth. For all practical purposes these expenditures are beyond annual review by the appropriations committees and annual control by Congress. But by far the most important of these practices which deprive Congress of annual control over expenditures, is the practice of "funding" entirely or appropriating the full amount in advance for multiyear programs and projects requiring multimillion or multibillion dollar appropriations. As the result of this practice, we have now piled up more than $102 billion of balances in authorizations to spend out of the Treasury. These balances are in appropriations already passed in prior years. They include more than $80 billion in regular and special funds, and more than $20 billion in revolving and capital funds. And it should be emphasized that all appropriations enacted by the present session of Congress will be in addition to this $100 billion to be available for expenditure next July 1. As the members of this committee know, under current appropriation legislation procedure Congress acts only on new appropriations. Under ordinary procedure neither the Appropriations Committees nor the Congress as a whole would act this year to review or control expenditures to be made from these huge balances. Yet these balances are just as available for expenditure in the coming year as will be the funds provided in the appropriation bills now before us. And expenditures from these balances will result in just as much deficit as expenditures from new appropriations. Actually, under the Truman budget submitted to Congress January 9, $38 billion of next year's estimated expenditures would be out of balances in appropriations enacted in prior years, over which this Congress would have no control-it would not even review them in any substantial degree. By the same token $32 billion of new appropriations requested in the Truman budget would be for expenditure-not in the coming year but in some future year. From these figures it can be seen that an appropriation enacted in a year when revenue is high may actually be expended in a year when revenue is low. This is not responsible practice when the Federal debt is already more than a quarter of a trillion dollars, when we are coming nearer to |