[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 170 (Tuesday, October 31, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Page S16433]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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              VA, HUD, INDEPENDENT AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS

 Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I would like to take this time to 
explain some of the votes I cast during consideration of the VA, HUD, 
independent agencies appropriations bill on September 27, 1995.
  Senator Bumpers offered an amendment to reduce the appropriation for 
implementing the space station program with the intent of terminating 
the program. The Bumpers amendment raised the question as to what the 
United States fundamental goals and needs are in exploring space. While 
it is clear that the space station has spurred technological and 
scientific development unrelated to space, I am not convinced that 
these developments justify the enormous taxpayer expense of the space 
station. Therefore, at this time, I supported Senator Bumpers' 
amendment. Since the amendment failed, however, we will most likely 
continue to fund the space station for fiscal year 1996, and as we 
spend more on this program we will come closer to a point at which it 
would no longer be wise to discontinue funding. I believe we are near 
that point and will review this budget request again next year to 
determine whether eliminating funding for the space station would 
benefit taxpayers.
  Senator Rockefeller offered two amendments regarding benefits for 
veterans. One involved compensation for mentally incompetent service-
related disabled veterans and the other would have increased funding 
for the general veterans medical account. My opposition to these 
amendments was not based on their content, but rather on the fact that 
the funding mechanism for both of these amendments involved waiving the 
Budget Act. More than any veteran-specific funding we can provide, 
balancing the budget will benefit veterans and their children. Any 
amendment which increases spending and puts our country further from 
achieving a balanced budget ought to be rejected. And while I do not 
doubt that Senator Rockefeller's amendments have merit, his inability 
to find other spending offsets made them impossible for me to support.
  Senator Lautenberg also proposed to waive provisions of the Budget 
Act in order to provide more funding for the Superfund Program. While I 
share Mr. Lautenberg's concern for the environment, very few Americans 
familiar with the Superfund Program would disagree that it is in need 
of reform. We have spent billions of dollars on the Superfund Program 
already, and the results have been minimal. Superfund has resulted in 
more lawsuits, more paperwork, extreme cleanup mandates, and few 
cleanups. This is a classic attempt to throw good tax dollars after 
bad. Without meaningful reform of the program, I am not convinced that 
Superfund dollars are being well-spent, making it impossible for me to 
support this amendment.
  Senator Mikulski offered an amendment which would have restored $425 
million in funding for the Corporation for National and Community 
Service. While I applaud her efforts to encourage Americans to provide 
more service to their communities, this program costs $26,000 per 
participant per year--a level which cannot be sustained in the current 
budget environment.
  Furthermore, I could not support funding for this program upon 
learning that $14 million out of last year's AmeriCorps funds were used 
to fund Federal agencies. While the administration claims it is cutting 
staff, they are actually playing a shell game with taxpayers' dollars 
by using AmeriCorps workers in the Federal Government. I am confident 
that the original supporters of this program did not intend for these 
volunteers to choose Federal employment as their community service.
  Forty percent of the dollars currently spent on AmeriCorps is used 
for administrative purposes by the Federal Government. These funds 
would be more efficiently and effectively spent on a local rather than 
a national level.
  Another amendment which touched on an important social issue was the 
Sarbanes amendment to transfer $360 million from section 8 contract 
renewals to homeless assistance grants to increase funding for Federal 
homeless programs. Most Americans share a common concern regarding the 
plight of the homeless and agree that the Government should play a role 
in the solution. Nevertheless, I voted against this amendment for two 
reasons.
  First, the underlying bill provides $760 million for homeless grants, 
with an additional $297 million in homeless grants funding available 
from the earlier rescission bill, which deferred this funding from 
fiscal year 1995 to fiscal year 1996. In total, homeless programs will 
have $1.057 billion to spend in fiscal year 1996. The Sarbanes 
amendment would not increase this funding by one penny. All the funds 
he proposes to transfer would not be available until fiscal year 1997. 
In other words, this amendment would not have helped one homeless 
person next year.
  Second, I was concerned that an unintended consequence of this 
amendment would be to increase homelessness. The bill provides $4.35 
billion in funding for section 8 contract renewal. Section 8 subsidizes 
the construction and operation of apartment buildings, provided the 
owner agrees to rent a certain percentage of those apartments to low-
income people. Currently, 1.5 million units are subsidized in this 
fashion, and many of these contracts are due to expire. If they are not 
renewed, many of the tenants will lose their homes.
  In order to pay for the increase in homeless funding, Senator 
Sarbanes would have reduced funding for renewing section 8 contracts. 
By taking away from this account, this amendment threatens to put 
people currently housed under the section 8 program on the street. The 
Federal Government has a role to play in helping the homeless, and in 
this case the underlying bill fills this role by addressing the needs 
of people already living on the streets as well as ensuring we don't 
encourage additional families to join them.
  Overall I believe we have produced a solid appropriations bill, one 
which stays within the budget limitations necessary to balance the 
budget by the year 2002, delegates much of the funding to States in the 
form of block grants so that spending is more effective, and revises or 
eliminates programs that simply have not been working. I was proud to 
support final passage of this legislation.

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