Mr. MURPHY. We are really talking, in essence, about 25 percent of the total budget where the contesting of priorities will come in. Mr. WHITTEN. That is about right.

Mr. SCHNEEBELI. At the outset. As you go along, they may increase. Mr. ULLMAN. In the first year that would be true. But as you got into long-range budgeting, you would gradually widen the scope of that part of the budget that you could control.

Mr. SCHNEEBELI. For instance, the general revenue sharing program runs 5 years. At the expiration of that program, the authorizing committee would not appropriate further. It would revert to the Appropriations Committee for future action.

An increasing proportion would probably go back to this process. Mr. WHITTEN. Being on the Appropriations Committee, everybody may not agree with me, but the biggest factor you have there is full fundings, and we violated this some years ago in defense. Annual review is needed on any governmental program.

Under our present setup, one committee that has that job is the Appropriations Committee. I would hope we would lead to an annual review. I don't care if the contract lasts for 5 years; we ought to review it every year.

Mr. MURPHY. In contemplation of your staffing, I heard you mention, Jamie, that you would want to go slow at first.

Mr. WHITTEN. That is an individual view.

Mr. MURPHY. I am just wondering in my own mind, with an undertaking such as this seems to be, since you really are in competition with the Bureau of the Budget and OMB-you would have to staff up pretty fast.

Mr. WHITTEN. I would think so, too. We all go back to our own experience. But the Appropriations Committee does conduct many individual investigations through its special staff using individuals on detail.

We have a staff member who formerly was an FBI agent and now is full time with the Appropriations Committee. He calls on these departments for the type of person he wants, selects them himself, and he can get a staff together in 2 weeks to meet this problem that I tell you here.

What I am trying to say is that that would not be what you had in mind in the long run. For the short haul, there are experienced people available we could help us get started on a temporary basis. It has worked very effectively with the appropriations.

I am not recommending that as a permanent solution here, but it would let them move fast.

Mr. MURPHY. Do you contemplate bringing people from the OMB and the Bureau of the Budget become part of this staff?

Mr. ULLMAN. I think the answer would have to be you pick the best people in the country. There obviously would be some people you would want to recruit from OMB. There would be people you might want to recruit from GAO in view of the importance of that agency's role.

Mr. WHITTEN. You want experts wherever you may find them. Mr. ULLMAN. But I think the purpose of this committee should be to select the highest level, most competent staff available in the country, because this is the country's No. 1 job.

I don't think that we are in a position to say how many staff members. But if you got the top caliber staff director in the country and sat down and analyzed the problem, I think you would consider the California experience and the OMB experience and all of the others, and I think you would then arrive at some basic conclusions as to where you start.

I personally think that it probably would be a little larger than what Jamie would think. However, I am not in a position to name any numbers and neither is Jamie.

Mr. WHITTEN. I don't attempt to.

Mr. MURPHY. I want to congratulate you gentlemen and the rest of the members of your study group and the staff upon what I think is a much-needed program as echoed by other members of this committee. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Congressman Long?

Mr. LONG. You indicated the possibility that as things develop it might very well make a procedure such as impoundment moot and not really needed. Might not the opposite effect be the result? May not a sharp conflict arise from the fact that you would really only have control of about 25 percent of the budget? Let's assume, for the purposes of illustration, that a President was very defense oriented, and a Congress was oriented toward a social program in the country. Then you would end up with a socially oriented budget enacted by the committee and approved by the Congress, under your procedure of moving in one strong direction reflecting the view of the Congress.

On the other hand, the President would see fit to spend those items in the military budget, but would in turn not spend those moneys that are in the programs that were enacted by the Congress. Then the competition would really get very severe with respect to this money and the impoundment of it.

Consequently, wouldn't that make more necessary a procedure relating to action the Congress takes in the event that the President does see fit to impound funds?

Mr. ULLMAN. No; I don't agree. I think this procedure can, in fact, make impoundment moot. No. 1, remember that under the budgeting procedure we would allocate every dime of expenditures, the pipeline money, the backdoor money, the automatic money, everything would be under the tent. If it were $268 billion, that would be it.

Remember, we would have decided the level of revenue and the right relationship between revenue and spending and maybe in any given economic situation that would call for a $6-billion deficit. The economy is going pretty good, it needs a little pickup, so you target a $6-billion deficit.

Then you allocate every dollar to him. You say he can have $60 billion for defense and that is all and he can have $50 billion for social security and something else for another item.

Then he doesn't have very much leeway. If, in fact, that difference between spending and revenue is the right amount for the economy, then the only way he can spend that $260 billion is according to the allocations that we have given him. He has lost all of his leeway. Let's relate that now to the present situation.

Mr. LONG. Has he really? Let's assume we had the wheat program and the President says, "I am not going to spend that money for the wheat program. You all put it, the budget committee has done it, the Appropriations Committee has passed it, the Congress has passed it, the money is there. I am not going to spend it."

Mr. ULLMAN. He could still do that. But remember, when he does it, he is spending less than the economy requires if we are right. I think that is the crucial thing. He could do a little of that.

Mr. SCHNEEBELI. We give him the opportunity to impound now because we are so far out of balance.

Mr. ULLMAN. Now there is so much more available to spend than the right amount that should be spent.

Mr. LONG. I don't argue with you. It is like pregnancy. It is a matter of degree.

Mr. RHODES. The difference is that now we don't ever really say to the President, "You have got to spend that money," because he knows perfectly well that we operate just like Jim Delaney said we did.

If an amendment comes up, and it looks good, it may cost $20 million, but we vote for it. We don't know what it is going to do to the total overall spending.

Now, we never make that decision. But if we had a budget that has had all of the work done on it that this legislation provides, with every item considered as it should be considered, and if the Congress has voted that this is the way we want to spend our money, it is going to take a very brave President to risk the type of punishment he would probably take in the event he started a program of impoundment.

Mr. SCHNEEBELI. Under the present system the President is the hero, because the Congress hasn't given him a proper budget as far as expenditures are concerned.

But if we give him a tight budget, with income and expenditures about even, we don't give him the opportunity to impound.

Mr. CLAWSON. You make them even, under this, one way or another? Mr. SCHNEEBELI. It might be over a whole cycle. But it is a lot closer to being even.

Mr. WHITTEN. I agree with Congressman Long. If we succeed in this we would not change the law. We wouldn't change the Constitution, where the executive, the legislative, and judiciary are three equal and important branches.

So the President could freeze any amount to the same degree that he can now. But if we were to do something like this, we would take away all of the reasons that he has heretofore given for doing that. He would be without the reasons.

Mr. ULLMAN. That is the right answer.

Mr. PEPPER. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. LONG. Yes.

Mr. PEPPER. It seems to me that what has evolved out of this informative discussion, that if the Congress-not as we do now without any overall planning-if we should have careful consideration of the matter, including the priorities, should finally fix a budget and priorities. why shouldn't we require the President to pay out that? Mr. RHODES. We should.

Mr. ULLMAN. Absolutely.

Mr. LONG. Certainly there is no question but what we in turn would be in a much stronger position to insist upon it than we find ourselves today.

I do think, though, that it does not remove the necessity for it. I think that the answer that Mr. Whitten gave to it is perhaps the best example of the relationships that would exist at that time.

Mr. WHITTEN. We remember the homely illustration that the things you can't make somebody do, but most of the time you make him wish he had.

Mr. ULLMAN. That is a good thing. Right. It would narrow the limits. But it wouldn't prohibit it; no.

Mr. LONG. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Congressman Long.

Let me say this. It has been our practice here after the statements to have the questions for the various witnesses limited to a 5-minute period so that all members of the committee can get an opportunity to cross-examine or ask questions.

I do think that we can go around again if any members have more questions to ask, but before we do that, I am going to say this to the four Congressmen that were here and contributed so much to the knowledge of the committee on this legislation.

We have a list here-I will read them off carefully-that have requested to testify. I am going to read their names so if any of you four Congressmen run into them in the meantime, you might sit down and talk to them about a lot of these things and maybe they will be satisfied and we can come to a decision one way or another quicker. Don't you get the idea?

Congressmen: Bell, Broyhill of North Carolina, Reuss, Burke of California, Hillis, Anderson of Illinois, Mahon, Burke of Massachusetts, Rooney of New York, Griffiths, Sikes, Rostenkowski, Cederberg, Collier, Rhodes, Broyhill of Virginia, Davis of Wisconsin, Fraser, Rees, Rousselot, and Senator Brock.

If you run into any of those Members, it might save us some time. Others requesting to testify are the Comptroller General, the National Association of Manufacturers, the executive director of the Council of State Chambers of Commerce, and the chief economist of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

There will probably be more to be added to this list. So, anyway, if you can help us on that, we would be grateful.

I think the committee would appreciate having your suggestions on the method, if this bill is reported out, of handling the time, for instance, on the floor of the House for debate, and so on. What are your suggestions?

Mr. ULLMAN. I think it should be an extended debate certainly. This is a very important point.

The CHAIRMAN. How many hours?

Mr. ULLMAN. From 6 to 10.

The CHAIRMAN. Congressman Martin?

Mr. MARTIN. We have a vote on. We had better come back.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you want to come back today?

Let's come back after we vote.

[Brief recess.]

22-871-73-7

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will be in order.
Congressman Martin, do you want to proceed?
Mr. MARTIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The gentleman from Hawaii had a colloquy with you gentlemen in regard to appropriating funds providing they had been authorized in the previous fiscal year which is included in your bill, I believe. We have had several witnesses again in our select committee-I don't mean to refer to them so often, but we are working pretty much on the same general subjects as you are in this legislation-that have suggested not only the calendar year that you brought up, but also considering appropriation only for what is authorized in the previous calendar year, not fiscal year. You have fiscal year provisions in here, which makes for a little bit more of a timelag than you would have in the calendar year because that would go back to June 30 of the previous calendar year, whereas, if you went back after you authorized in previous calendar year, in the fiscal year you would go back to whenever the previous session of the Congress adjourned.

That has been suggested by several of our witnesses. Do you have any comments you might make? Of course, leading up to trying to get tion of the Government. It would only apply to authorizations.

Mr. ULLMAN. I have no problems with that at all.

Mr. WHITTEN. I agree if it would be feasible. As you know we have the agricultural authorization bill on the floor now. The present agricultural laws expire the first of January. The House has passed the appropriation for the Department of Agriculture already. The Senate has passed their appropriation for agriculture. But the law itself beginning the 1st of January is in the process of passage.

I talked to Senator McGee, who is our counterpart on the Senate side, this morning and we agreed we couldn't very well bring in any conference report until we see what the law is going to be. So there is an illustration that it might be worthwhile that we limit ourselves to the authorization passed in the preceding calendar year.

Mr. MARTIN. This suggestion would not change the fiscal year operation of the Government. It would only apply to authorizations. Mr. WHITTEN. I really waded far afield. I was telling you why we didn't deal with that. In this particular instance it might make it

easier.

Mr. ULLMAN. I think it is a good idea. It is less of a change than we have recommended.

Mr. MARTIN. I notice in the legislation that you set up 30 hours of debate for the Budget Committee's recommendations that has to be completed by the 1st of May including all amendments thereto. Could you clarify that a little bit as to what you had in mind? Is this debate going to be carried on in the House or the Committee of the Whole? Is the 30 hours going to be divided so many hours for general debate, so many hours for amendments? Of course, you would have a cutoff time on when amendments could be offered if you ran into your limit of 30 hours.

Mr. ULLMAN. Speaking as one member, this is one area where we would welcome the expertise of the Rules Committee. It would seem to me that at least half of that time should be reserved for amendment-possibly even 20 hours for amendments. I would think maybe