[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 96 (Friday, July 17, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8458-S8459]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       LEGISLATIVE APPROPRIATIONS

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we are at some time going to take up the 
legislative branch appropriations bill formally. I wanted to make a 
couple of comments in response to the comments made by the chairman of 
the Appropriations Subcommittee on Legislative Branch.
  Senator Bennett spoke about this work of the subcommittee. I have 
said before and I will say again I think he is an awfully good 
legislator. I appreciate very much the opportunity to work with him. We 
have worked in a cooperative spirit, in a bipartisan way, and have 
brought to the floor of the Senate a bill that I think reflects the 
right priorities and the prudent expenditure of the taxpayers' money 
for the things that are important and necessary.
  I especially wish to commend Senator Bennett. For those who don't 
know about his work on what is called Y2K or the year 2000 problem, I 
must say, having sat through all of the hearings we held, in every 
instance with every agency and every department, Senator Bennett has 
been very determined to make certain that we are on the road to 
addressing the problems that confront us with the turn of the century 
and the programming and the computer software that exists around our 
country, and he has, of course, since been named chairman of a panel on 
this issue. A lot of people don't think too much about it because it is 
a year and a half away, but it is a very important issue. Senator 
Bennett has been a leader on that issue, and I think the Senate owes 
him a debt of gratitude.
  Let me just for a moment mention a couple of items in the 
appropriations bill itself. We have in this legislation provided for a 
Trade Deficit Review Commission. With the announcement once again today 
that the trade deficit hit another record high, and the trade deficit 
continues to swell and balloon on us, I think it is important for our 
country to do a comprehensive review of what is happening and what is 
causing it, and what are the range of things we might do to address it.
  On this issue, we have worked, in consultation with the Senate 
Finance Committee, to make some changes that would be satisfactory to 
them. These changes will be reflected in the managers' amendment, and I 
think this process of constructing this recommendation has been a very 
useful process. It has been a collaborative effort with the folks in 
Senate Finance and others.
  As to this Trade Deficit Review Commission, the chairman of the full 
committee, Senator Stevens, has been a very strong supporter and a 
cosponsor; the ranking member, Senator Byrd, from West Virginia, a 
cosponsor and a very strong supporter as well. I think, especially 
given the news once again today, it is timely and important, and I 
appreciate, again, the cooperation of the chairman of the subcommittee.
  I want to mention the General Accounting Office which is funded in 
this bill. The GAO, which most people know it by, normally shows up in 
stories around the country that are written about the investigations 
they do. The GAO does first-rate investigative work. It is the 
investigative arm of Congress. It is not partisan, has never been 
partisan. It is a group of dedicated professionals who, at the 
direction of Congress, review and study, investigate, and evaluate a 
myriad of things we ask them to do about how the money that Congress 
appropriates is being spent.
  The GAO is a very, very important organization. We have cut the GAO 
substantially over a number of years and now we have tried to stabilize 
it with the right kind of investments. It is a smaller organization 
than it was, but it is a strong and assertive organization that does 
wonderful work for Congress.
  I am pleased that the recommendation we have in this particular 
appropriations bill reaches the level, albeit a much lower level of 
staffing at the GAO than had been there previously, a level which I 
think will give it the strength to do the job we expect them to do and 
the American people expect them to do. Anyone who has read their 
reports, read the news reports of the studies they have done, knows the 
value of the GAO.
  I do want to make a point that I have made repeatedly as well. I am 
profoundly disappointed, with respect to the GAO, that 21 months have 
passed since the departure of the Comptroller General, who is the 
person who heads the GAO. Comptroller General Bowsher headed the GAO 
for many, many years, a respected professional in every quarter in this 
community and around the country.
  Twenty-one months ago Mr. Bowsher left the GAO. That was not a 
surprise because he had reached the end of his rather lengthy term and 
had announced he was leaving. So we have

[[Page S8459]]

had probably over 2 years' notice that position was going to be vacant. 
I am disappointed to tell my colleagues today that there is still not a 
permanent head of the GAO. We do not have a Comptroller General. We 
have someone who is acting. I have great respect for that person; he 
has done a very good job. But that is not the same as having a 
permanent head of an organization who is thinking in the intermediate 
and longer terms about what they hope to accomplish, how they want to 
run the organization.
  I say to my colleagues, both Republicans and Democrats, all friends 
of mine, I am sure, if you are one of those whose responsibility it is 
to help select from a list of premier candidates a new Comptroller 
General, and you have not yet done that in consultation, I might say, 
with the White House, please get about your business. Get it done. It 
is profoundly disappointing to me and many others, and I think the 
American people, to know that the Comptroller General's position has 
been unfilled for 21 months. That is not fair to the American people, 
in my judgment. Those responsible ought to get to work and get this 
done.
  One other item I might mention finally is the Congressional Budget 
Office. I was pleased that the committee report includes an exchange of 
letters that results from some items I have raised with the head of the 
Congressional Budget Office, Dr. June O'Neill.
  The Congressional Budget Office was putting out information on a 
monthly and quarterly basis that talked about the surplus in the 
Federal budget. The law requires them to put out all the information, 
not just some of the information. And all of the information by law 
requires them to tell us not just what the so-called unified budget 
portrays, but what the budget looks like if you do not include the 
Social Security trust funds, and that is a different number. There is 
no budget surplus unless you take the Social Security trust funds and 
bring them over into the operating budget, there is no surplus. It 
doesn't exist. And so all of these rosy surpluses put out by CBO and 
used by some of my friends here in Congress to whet their taste for 
more tax cuts, all these surpluses are just fiction.
  We finally have the CBO now putting out numbers that describe, all 
right, if you use the Social Security trust funds, here is the unified 
budget surplus. If you don't use the Social Security trust funds, here 
is the deficit. Every piece of information they put out, I might say, 
includes a notation that the Federal debt will continue to increase 
even as on the unified budget they claim there is a surplus. So that in 
itself will tell you that the American people need to have all of the 
information.
  I think we are making progress there. I know that those who take the 
unified budget portion of the CBO reports will hire a band that plays 
fast music and will dance so fast we can hardly see them in the next 
couple of months to try to satisfy this appetite to construct a $50-, 
$100-, $200 billion tax cut bill. First of all, there is no surplus 
with which to construct that tax cut. And second, my judgment is that 
one of the first acts with any bona fide and real surplus ought to be 
to make some payment on that debt, just begin to ratchet that debt 
down. I have no idea whether the Senator from Utah agrees with that, 
but I do recall his presentations on the floor of the Senate, with a 
very interesting chart in which he looked at this fiscal policy in a 
way that was different from the way anyone else had looked at it.

  I do think it would probably be a wonderful signal to the American 
people if we would take some part, of any future real surplus--not a 
fictional surplus but a real surplus--and say we intend, during good 
times, to try to reduce the actual indebtedness.
  I just mention that because a lot of what we do relates to what 
information we have, and when the Congressional Budget Office is 
putting out information only about the unified budget and ignoring the 
section of law that requires disclosure of what the budget situation is 
if you do not use the Social Security trust funds, it, in my judgment, 
is giving information to people that is making them far more excited 
than they should be about a surplus that honestly, at this point, does 
not exist.
  Let me mention, finally, we have some very dedicated people who serve 
this Congress--officers of the Senate and others who run the agencies 
and departments. I would like to say many of them have testified before 
our subcommittee. Many of them do outstanding work. They are not often 
heralded for that work. There is not a lot of information about the 
work they do. But I know, because we work late hours and spend a lot of 
time here, they put in a lot of hours. Their employees put in a lot of 
hours. We are well served by some people who are in public service here 
who provide staff assistance to the Congress. We should make mention of 
that.
  One of the other agencies I want to mention finally is the Library of 
Congress. I know Senator Bennett and I have had talks with Dr. 
Billington and others who run that wonderful institution. I think it is 
an institution that has somewhere around 14 million volumes of work. It 
is, I am told, the largest repository of human knowledge anywhere on 
Earth.
  Just as an aside, I read a speech by the president of IBM. He was 
talking about what they are doing on storage technology. He said they 
are, he thinks, on the edge of research breakthroughs sufficient so 
that, in the not too distant future, they would be able to put all of 
the works in the Library of Congress--in other words, all of the 
largest volume of work of recorded human knowledge anywhere on Earth, 
on a wafer the size of a penny. Pretty remarkable, isn't it?
  But the Library of Congress is a wonderful, important treasury of 
information for this country. We have had the pleasure of working with 
them on a wide range of issues. I want to especially compliment the 
work they are doing, digitizing a lot of their records, and the other 
things that are happening at the Library of Congress.
  So let me conclude where I began, to say it is truly a pleasure to 
work with Senator Bennett. He is, I think, an outstanding legislator. I 
hope at some point we can get the bill up. I hope when we get the bill 
up, we can get the bill passed and get on with this. But as I indicated 
in response to the Senator from Kansas, the issue he is talking about 
is not an insignificant issue, it is a real issue and an issue of some 
importance. As soon as we can find a way to resolve all these issues, 
perhaps we can get the legislative branch bill to the floor and get it 
resolved with some dispatch.
  Let me thank the Senator from Kansas for his cooperation.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas is recognized.

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