[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 177 (Thursday, November 9, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S16932-S16933]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         THE ADVISORY COMMISSION ON INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS

 Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise to lament the fact that 
House Joint Resolution 115 contains a provision to provide for the 
``orderly termination'' of the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental 
Relations [ACIR]. This is most regrettable, and ought not to go 
unnoticed.
  The ACIR was created by Congress in 1959--during the Eisenhower 
administration--``to monitor the operation of the American federal 
system and to recommend improvements.'' The commission is independent 
and bipartisan. Over 30 years ago, under Dr. Alice Rivlin, it commenced 
ground-breaking research on alternative measures of fiscal capacity. It 
measures tax effort and representative expenditures and a host of other 
topics that may appear arcane, but are of enormous importance when it 
comes to governance. Few people are even aware of the ACIR because it 
goes about its business quietly, professionally, and dispassionately.
  Earlier this year, Mr. President, Congress passed the unfunded 
mandates bill--Public Law 104-4. That bill generated considerable 
discussion about our Federal system and the proper roles of and 
relationships between the various levels of government. At that time, 
the Commission's unique expertise on such questions was recognized, and 
Congress delegated much work regarding unfunded mandates to it. The 
Commission estimated it would need about $1 million over and above its 
fiscal year 1995 appropriation of $1 million to perform the unfunded 
mandates work and continue equally valuable ongoing research and 
projects.
  Earlier this year, the House Treasury-Postal appropriations bill 
(H.R. 2020) zeroed out funding for the Commission. The Senate bill 
provided $334,000 for the Commission, but stipulated that no further 
Federal funds would be made available.
  This seems to me a good example of an unfunded mandate. But no 
matter. The ACIR is prepared to continue its operations without Federal 
funding. I do not know how, but I leave it to them. When conferees met 
on the Treasury-Postal bill, however, language was inserted that would 
give ACIR a small appropriation to terminate its operations by April of 
1996. Senate Joint Resolution 115 also provides a minimum amount of 
funding ``necessary to accomplish orderly termination'' of the 
Commission. Both the Commission and the Office of Management and Budget 
[OMB] are concerned that termination is something altogether different 
from simply not providing Federal funding.
  I deeply regret the action of the Treasury-Postal conferees, and I 
deeply regret that it has carried over to the continuing resolution. Is 
it necessary to terminate an organization that has indicated it can 
survive, somehow, without Federal funds?
  Mr. President, the first principle of public affairs is that you 
never do anything about a problem until you learn to measure it. I 
would add a corollary: if your purpose is not to address problems 
through government, you will put an end to attempts to measure them. I 
wonder if that is what is at work here. Surely, we are not going to 
balance the budget by eliminating the ACIR. What is this all about?
  I remember back in December 1981, Edwin Harper, then deputy director 
of the OMB, issued a memorandum which stated:

       As a result of recent evaluations of certain reporting 
     requirements, it has been decided to discontinue the 
     compilation and publication of the ``Geographic Distribution 
     of Federal Funds,'' effective immediately. Data should not be 
     submitted for fiscal year 1981.

  The purpose of that directive was to make it more difficult to 
quantify the balance of payments between the States and the Federal 
Government.
  Beginning in 1968, the Community Services Administration began to 
publish annual reports, known as the Geographic Distribution of Federal 
Funds series, in which expenditures of various Federal programs were 
broken down by State, and thereafter by counties and towns. It is worth 
noting that the Community Services Administration was the successor to 
the Office of Economic Opportunity, the organization established in 
1965 to carry out President Johnson's ``War on Poverty.'' As a member 
of the President's task force that drew up that legislation, I had been 
much concerned with the question of regional balance in Federal 
expenditures and, in 1965, made what I believe 

[[Page S 16933]]
was the first formal statement calling attention to the loss of 
industrial jobs in New York. The idea of measuring these matters was an 
aspect of the poverty program, and it was pleasing to find that our 
intentions had not been lost on those who followed.
  Unfortunately, the task was not done with sufficient vigor. Various 
Government agencies were simply asked where their money went, and the 
matter was left at that. Because New York is the banking center of the 
world, huge amounts of Federal moneys are deposited there, although 
they are actually in transit elsewhere. No matter: vast sums of foreign 
aid, payments by the Commodity Credit Corporation, and similar 
transfers were being recorded as Federal outlays in New York.
  As you may know, Mr. President, each year that I have been in the 
Senate I have issued a report I call the ``Fisc'' which measures the 
balance of payments between New York and the Federal Government. You 
can imagine my surprise--back when the finances not only of New York 
City, but of the State, as well, were shaky--that the data, such as 
they were, suggested that New York ran a balance of payments surplus.
  Well, we discovered a phantom $14 billion in Federal outlays 
nominally attributed to New York. When these sums were subtracted from 
the total, we discovered a large and unmistakably serious deficit in 
New York's balance of payments. A deficit that persists to this day.
  We got to the point where we had tidied up the data. It took some 
doing. Looking back, if a general judgment may be offered of the 
period, the Community Services Administration was interested and 
helpful. The Treasury Department, on the other hand, was aloof and 
impervious--equally to reason or change. In the end, we turned to the 
Tax Foundation, a private organization, as our source for data on tax 
payments, inasmuch as the Treasury Department refused to tell us then--
and still will not tell us--where it gets its money.
  And then the new administration came and decided to discontinue the 
Geographic Distribution of Federal Funds series. It was stopped in 
order to conceal trends and mute argument.
  We protested, and we enacted Public Law 97-326, the Consolidated 
Federal Funds Report Act of 1982, which directed the Census Bureau to 
track allocable Federal expenditures. The Census Bureau does a 
marvelous job. Its Consolidated Federal Funds Report and Federal 
Expenditures by State report are available on CD-ROM now, containing 10 
years' worth of data. It's marvelous.
  Mr. President, the ACIR does important, if largely unheralded, work. 
And we stand on the brink of terminating it. This is a mistake which we 
will regret. I realize the provision is identical to the conferees' 
agreement on the Treasury-Postal appropriations bill. But that bill is 
an unresolved matter. Neither the House nor the Senate has approved the 
conference report, and even if we were to do that, there is no 
guarantee the administration would sign it. There is a chance, albeit 
slim, to correct the mistake.
  Mr. President, getting back to my first principle of public affairs, 
Lord Kelvin stated it best:

       When you can measure what you are speaking about, and 
     express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when 
     you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, 
     your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind: it may 
     be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your 
     thoughts, advanced to the stage of science.

  Mr. President, without the ACIR, our knowledge of important matters 
will never be anything more than meager. The action we are about to 
take will harm our capacity to govern effectively.

                          ____________________