waivers, often two or three in a single rule, that the vast majority are technical waivers. I think there is very little effect, real effect in terms of the size of the deficit. I am not saying we should have these waivers, but I'll bet you any amount of money if you go carefully through the record that only 30 or 40 out of the hundreds were significant or substantial in any way, and I bet you find that those aren't too great, either. And I wouldn't argue that, that is fine, but we should Took at everything. All I am saying is I want to try to concentrate our colleagues' attention on the big thing that has got to be done without letting them think that they can do all these little process changes around the edges, and say we have reformed the budget process. It may or may not help a little bit, but it is not going to help a lot. Mr. Goss. The gentleman needs to be assured Mr. BEILENSON. Including, incidentally, line-item veto, which you know, I am on the losing side of. But like a lot of you, I dealt with line-item veto in the State legislature with a most conservative Governor, Mr. Reagan, before he became the most conservative President, and I tell you that you will not see a difference in deficits that is discernible. Not that you won't save a few million, I am sure, and it is important, but as you suggested originally, its biggest effect is that it will allow a substitution of the Executive's point of view for our point of view. But spending will be at just about the same level. I am not saying you shouldn't have a line-item veto, but it is not going to begin to solve the deficit problem. Mr. Goss. Will the gentleman yield or are you through? Mr. BEILENSON. I am all through. Mr. Goss. I think the gentleman's comments suggest that maybe we aren't going to get to the meat of the matter. Believe me, it is my intention to do that. I am not just interested in tinkering with the edges of this thing. I think it is extremely important. I think the gentleman is right, having sat on the Kerrey Commission, there is no question, the big bear in the woods is Medicare. You can't ignore it. It is there. Mr. BEILENSON. He has come out of the woods. He is in our suburban neighborhoods. Mr. Goss. The trouble is there are some poisonous snakes out there as well as the big bear. I think we ought to do it all. The reason you have to do the poisonous snakes as well as the big bear is to get credibility. To get a hunting license to go after the big bear, you have to show you can deal with the poisonous snakes. You have got to build the constituency. That is the problem we keep running into. Mr. BEILENSON. Maybe I am not being helpful. But you can argue all you want, Porter. You can go home and tell people as much as you want that we have, in fact, been really responsible compared to earlier Congresses. In the last 4 or 5 years since the BEA of 1990, the congressional cap on spending has frozen it to death over the next few years. People are going to be screaming back home when they see we are not spending on discretionary programs. We will never ever get credit for it. You will never establish that until you start bringing the deficit down and you will never bring it down in a discernible way until we get to entitlements. Mr. Goss. I would like to say that the Governor of Florida, Governor Lawton Chiles, a very good Governor, when he first took over the office as Governor, he said, we need to do some things, but before I have the credibility to do them, I am going to stomp on all waste in Tallahassee, and there will be no waste dollars spent in the government, and then we will get down to the hard questions of cuts and raising taxes, either/or. The Governor after one year announced that all waste had been excised from Florida and then went about his business. It was a brilliant, brilliant exercise in what I will call conditioning people for what is coming, and it worked very well, and I congratulate him for it. Now obviously there is still a dollar or two of waste there but you have to, I think, show a sensitivity to that waste problem before you can get people to say, okay, I will tighten my belt, and that is all I am trying to say, Tony. I am not disagreeing with you. Mr. BEILENSON. I understand. You are a sweet guy. If we had only you to deal with, we would solve these problems. I would say only one other thing, that some of the folks on your side of the aisle for several years have been taking potshots at what I believe were responsible, and really fairly successful efforts to bring the deficit under control, including the deficit reduction bill which only Democrats voted for, no Republicans, a couple years ago. Frankly, that bill is making your problem a little bit easier to solve now because we reduced deficits by one-half of a trillion dollars over a 5-, 6-year period, even though we got absolutely no credit for it at all. So when some of your folks shoot at government, take potshots at government, reduce our credibility even when we did the responsible thing over the past few years, it makes it harder for all of us together to continue to do the right thing. I was impressed, if I may say so, as a very partisan jibe, and I don't mean to put it this way, but the most thoughtful suggestions with respect to reducing the deficit further and for process reform-today, again, I was reminded of it-have come from Democratic Members who over the past few years have been laboring mightily without as much success as we would have liked to do the right thing. Mr. Goss. I think we are going to have to have bipartisan cooperation to resolve this, and I hope your wife is in good health today. Please give her my regards. I will announce to the World and Mr. Stenholm that we will have another general hearing for the Members and the staff in this area when it is appropriate. Then we will try to break these down by category and deal with the hearings item by item because I think it is going to have to go in that direction. Having said all that, I thank you, Mr. Stenholm, very much. I really do truly value your input and all of the wisdom that you have given over the years to me as a Member of this body as well as this subcommittee. Having said that Mr. STENHOLM. We sincerely look forward to working with you. Appreciate you holding these hearings, and we really look forward to working with you to accomplish some things, if we can. Mr. Goss. We mean for these to go somewhere. Thank you. We stand adjourned. [Whereupon, at 12:50 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET PROCESS Wednesday, September 13, 1995 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON LEGISLATIVE AND BUDGET PROCESS, The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:31 a.m. in room H313, the Capitol, Hon. Porter J. Goss (chairman of the Subcommittee on Legislative and Budget Process) presiding. Present: Representatives Goss, Dreier, Solomon, and Beilenson. Mr. Goss. Professor, would you join us? OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. PORTER J. GOSS, CHAIRMAN OF THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON LEGISLATIVE AND BUDGET PROCESS Mr. Goss. The meeting will come to order. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is a joint meeting of the Subcommittee on Legislative and Budget Process and Rules and Organization of the House, which David Dreier Chairs, and we are today continuing the process that we started previously of reviewing our budget processes, possible suggestions, ways of making improvements. We have had two subcommittee hearings already. I don't know if you have had a chance to review any of that material. Certainly we are going to have more as we go along, and we want to talk to a number of experts, which is why you are here today, Professor, as well as some other good witnesses we have in the budget field; and we have sort of started from the question of the 1974 Budget Act. Is it really still relevant? Is it still useful? Is it the machinery we should be using? I think that it is pretty obvious that we are going to have extra attention on budget matters, if not budget process, in the immediate days ahead. I think the term du jour is train wreck, and I think that we can certainly do better than that. Of course, that certainly goes well beyond the budget process, but I think there is a very clear commitment from the White House and on the Hill to try to balance the budget, and that is a big chore. And making sure that we have the machinery to get to that kind of a task, I think, is extremely important. I am not sure that the process that we have is as good as some people think and I am not sure it is as bad as some people charge. And that is why we are investing the time and energy and soliciting the views, experience, and expertise of people such as yourself, |