This is as it should be since the measure that we plan to report as a result of these hearings could well be among the most important, if not the most important, legislation reported by a committee in this Congress.

We also have a very real responsibility to consider this legislation in an expeditious manner in order to give assurance that there will be adequate opportunity for Congress to act this year.

Our first two witnesses this morning are the cochairmen of the Joint Study Committee on Budget Control. I think it is particularly significant that these cochairmen, who have served as such a great team in the formulation of these recommendations, are drawn from the two chief fiscal committees that we have in the House: the Committee on Ways and Means and the Committee on Appropriations.

I am, of course, referring to Al Ullman, the ranking member on the Ways and Means Committee and Jamie Whitten, the ranking member on the Appropriations Committee. We will hear at this time first from cochairman Ullman and then from cochairman Whitten, followed by co-vice chairman Herman T. Schneebeli of Pennsylvania.

Mr. YOUNG. Mr. Chairman, I want to compliment and commend the chairman on a very fine statement. I think, recognizing the real problem that is facing the Congress, I would like to associate myself with the remarks that have been made by the chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Congressman Young.
I think next we want to hear from Congressman Dave Martin.

STATEMENT OF HON. DAVE MARTIN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEBRASKA

Mr. MARTIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a very brief statement. Mine will almost be within the 1 minute.

The need for Congress to improve its controls over Federal spending is becoming increasingly clear. For example, in the 43 years since 1931, there have been only 6 years in which there were surpluses.

Moreover, apart from the World War II years, the largest deficits have occurred in recent years. The constant continuation of deficits plus their increasing size illustrates the need for Congress to obtain better control over the budget.

The present congressional budget machinery in many cases appears to make it impossible to decide among competing priorities. No single committee has the responsibility to decide whether or not total outlays are appropriate in view of the current situation.

As a result, each spending bill tends to be considered by Congress as a separate entity, and there is very little assessment of relative priorities among different spending programs.

The situation is somewhat analogous to a family in which each member of the family has a checkbook, and draws checks out of the family checking account, without any one person watching to see that the account is not overdrawn.

Likewise, the congressional budgetary process, which operates without any one center for establishing priorities, tends to produce consistent deficits.

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The Rules Committee cannot afford to delay in holding hearings and acting on the proposals of this Joint Study Committee on Budget Control.

In order to be used for fiscal year 1975, the budget machinery proposed in H.R. 7130 will have to be in place by January 1, 1974. This means that the Rules Committee will have to get down to business with no foot dragging.

There are presently some 30 witnesses who have asked to appear before the Rules Committee on this subject. I hope that the Rules Committee will act expeditiously, in order that this budget machinery will be ready to start operating by January 1974.

The CHAIRMAN. Congressman Anderson.

Mr. ANDERSON. Mr. Chairman, three times in the statement you delivered you mentioned the fact that that was an occasion of historical significance or that the legislation which we are about to consider is of historical significance and I felt so seized of a similar sense of history that I have prepared a brief statement which I will not read to the committee, but which I would ask unanimous consent to have placed in the record of these hearings at this point and simply indicate my agreement with the remarks of the chairman and my distinguished ranking Member and especially the portion of their remarks where they have called for expeditious action on this measure and have declared their intention to proceed so that we could act during this session of Congress on what I think could prove to be the most important single piece of legislation coming out of the 93d Congress.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The statement referred to follows:]

STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN B. ANDERSON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS

The opening of hearings today in the Rules Committee on congressional budget reform marks the beginning of the real test of whether Congress is serious about recapturing the power of the purse. The time has come to overhaul the outmoded and fragmented budget process under which we operate in the Congress, and I think it is imperative that we proceed expeditiously on budget reform so that a bill can be enacted this session, in time for our fiscal 1975 spending activities which begin next January. I would therefore hope that our committee will hold twice-a-week hearings and aim for a reporting deadline of October 1.

As the author of an omnibus budget reform and impoundment control bill (H.R. 8876), I think it would make sound fiscal sense to combine these two important issues in a single bill. We would not be acting responsibly if we limited the ability of the President to hold down spending if we did not simultaneously limit our own propensity in the Congress to push up spending. I am convinced that the enactment of budget reform legislation would obviate the need for the impoundment of funds by the President. We therefore have an opportunity, in the legislation which we are beginning to consider today, to reassert our constitutional control of the purse strings and eliminate the problem of impoundments. As such, this bill must be viewed as perhaps the most farreaching and historically important legislation in the 93rd Congress.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Congressman Anderson.

We have arrangements made to have a photograph taken of the committee for this session. What is the pleasure of the committee?

Mr. MATSUNAGA. We still have two members missing. They are on their way over.

The CHAIRMAN. I might say for the benefit of the press, if they wish to interrogate Congressman Ullman and Congressman Whitten, and Congressman Schneebeli, they are at liberty to do so, pending the taking of the photograph.

We will proceed then with Congressman Ullman and the committee will come to order. We will proceed with the hearings on the budget bill.

Congressman Ullman, you may proceed.

STATEMENT OF HON. AL ULLMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OREGON

Mr. ULLMAN. Mr. Chairman, first let me congratulate you on an excellent opening statement and congratulate the committee on holding these hearings. I firmly agree with you that these are historic hearings.

This could very well be the most important and significant congressional reform achieved in this century.

Mr. Chairman, I want to acknowledge here the fact that I am a cochairman with Congressman Jamie Whitten. Jamie, if you could join me, it would be helpful. He will testify following my remarks.

With us, also, is Herman Schneebeli, who is the ranking minority member from Ways and Means, and John Rhodes, a ranking minority member of the Appropriations Committee.

All of these gentlemen have dedicated themselves almost full time to the project of getting before you a proposal for a congressional budget.

I won't review the history except to refresh your memory that our committee was established by law in a bill that was heard by the Rules Committee, the Debt Ceiling bill of last November.

The committee was made up of 16 Members from the House and 16 from the Senate, primarily from Appropriations and Ways and Means, but also with membership at large. The committee worked diligently, beginning the first of the year, with Mr. Whitten and myself as cochairman, with Senator McClellan, Senator Long and Senator Hruska as vice chairmen, and from the House, Congressman Schneebeli as vice chairmen.

We put together a competent staff drawing on the services of Gene Wilhelm of the Appropriations Committee, Larry Woodworth of the Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation, John King, and numerous others who were extremely diligent in their efforts.

The committee met on many occasions, both at the executive committee and the full committee levels, and we subsequently reported the bill which is before you, unanimously approved by all 16 Members of the House and the 16 Senate Members-introduced in the House with the signatures of all of our Members and in the Senate by Senator McClellan with all of the Senators.

The CHAIRMAN. Was this bill unanimously approval by all members of your committee?

Mr. ULLMAN. All 32 members of the committee or unanimous approval. That is right.

I want to just indicate the significance of this because when we launched our project there was, I think all of you remember. a great deal of reservation on the part of a lot of people who said that the Congress has tried to do this before and indeed it has, and it has never worked, so why should it work now? Or others who said for 100 years the Congress has been doing it another way, what makes you think we can change our procedure?

I had a firm conviction—and I think most, or a majority, of the Members of Congress have had a firm conviction-that in fact the country was in trouble fiscally, in fact that the country could no longer tolerate the kind of inefficient and inadequate budgetary processes that we have been operating under these many years.

Just this morning the Brokings Institute issued another report on the state of the budget, which we all should read, indicating that we have another disaster on our hands. We pick up the paper and it talks about the dollar in trouble throughout the world, about rampant inflation, about phase 1, 2, 3, 4, and all of the problems of the economy (and indeed they are not all related to this budgetary problem, but many of them are) and the place for Congress to start solving some of these problems has to be for the Congress to get its own fiscal house in order.

That really is the burden of what we are trying to do. Many people fail to realize, Mr. Chairman, because the budgetary process in the Congress is so complicated, that when we consider for instance a $20 billion appropriation measure, this has little relationship to annual expenditures.

All we are doing is giving spending authority to the President for programs that last from 1 to 10 years or more and, as a result, we have built up a pipeline of some $300 billion in the executive, which we previously authorized for expenditure and over which we now have virtually no control.

Somehow the Congress has got to take a look at annual expenditures, just as any other entity from the family, to a business or a nation must do if it is to stay solvent. Somehow for the first time we must have a meaningful debate on what the levels of expenditure considered in light of the level of revenue should be.

We also should have a mechanism for deciding basic economic policy. When have we had that kind of a debate? When have we had the opportunity to vote under that kind of a procedure?

Having once established a revenue and expenditure goal or limitation, then the next step of course is to divide it up among the priorities. The Congress has completely lost control of priorities. We have no mechanism for rationally dividing up expenditures except merely to receive from the Office of Management and Budget downtown their proposal for priorities, hear them out and then add or subtract a little bit and bring to the floor their recommendations modified to a certain degree.

This is not in any way to cast aspersions on the Appropriations Committee or the Ways and Means Committee. The Ways and Means Committee, in determining revenues at the present time is of necessity operating in pretty much of a vacuum with no sense of direction from the Congress. The Appropriations Committee is bound by the limita

tions of the procedures that we follow and within those limitations they do an admirable job, but procedurally the Congress as a whole has no opportunity to work its will.

I read the Constitution over again yesterday, just to refresh my memory-something all of us should do from time to time. When you read it, you have to be impressed by the fact that the clear intent of the Constitution is that the Congress does have the power of the purse, that Congress does levy the tax and determine the expenditures. In addition, the Constitution even lays out specifically in area after area precise responsibility for particular expenditures.

Yet, under the procedures we follow today we have virtually handed all of this over to the Office of Management and Budget-something not intended by the Constitution.

The issue of impoundment has been raised, and I agree the President has exceeded his authority on impoundment and we should be passing this type of impoundment bill; but beyond that the Congress must, because it has both the authority and the constitutional mandate, the Congress must reestablish within its own procedures a budgetary process whereby we can determine the priorities of the Nation.

This, in my judgment, would resolve once and for all the problem of impoundment.

Mr. Chairman, let me present a brief and general explanation and I hope you will include my complete written statement in the record. Let me just briefly cover some of the provisions of H.R. 7130, unanimously reported by our committee.

In analyzing procedures it was the unanimous decision of the committee that rather than a joint committee procedure the only really effective way of handling this process is to have a separate budget committee in the Senate and a separate budget committee in the House. But while I see no way of a joint committee could ever resolve this budgetary problem given its very nature, we thought it highly important that there be a joint staff, a high-level professional staff which would be a congressional Office of Management and Budget which would assimilate, not duplicate, assimilate what was being done by the executive agencies, computerize it, and make it available in a meaningful form to the House; a joint professional staff, departmentalized to the extent necessary for it to come to grips with the various priorities.

As to the size of the staff, I think it probably better to leave that indefinite at the moment; the answer is whatever size staff it requires to establish a sound budgeting procedure and make the information available on a meaningful basis to the membership of the House, both the committees and the individual members.

I think that kind of staffing is what we have to provide in this procedure-a joint staff available both to the House and the Senate with a high-level budget staff director beyond politics, so that if the Congress changed politically that the staff would remain. In other words, this would bring back to Congress a firm grip on the budgeting process in a meaningful, long-range, stable manner which could go on, irrespective of political power in the Congress.

Then you have the question of what procedures do you follow to bring this matter before the House? There have been some criticisms.