Billion-Dollar Loophole

...However, it seems that this is ultimately unenforceable...

...It is here, in secret meetings, often not even announced, that a few men can sit down and undo in one hour the most painstaking work of months of effort by several standing committees and the full membership of both houses...

...Opponents of an unlimited defense budget might have felt secure at this point, because according to the rules the conferees are supposed to agree upon a figure somewhere within high and low limits voted by the two houses—in this case between $20.4 billion and $20.9 billion...

...The Senate, despite a good deal of sentiment to cut various weapons programs, finally tacked on another half billion for the F-14 airplane, for a total of $20.9 billion—disappointing, but still a reduction...

...In fact, the basic rule governing conferees of the House of Representatives explicitly limits them "to the range between the highest figure proposed by one house and the lowest figure proposed by the other...

...Certainly the total amount is never any secret, for it is discussed on the floor and cited in newspaper articles...

...The why of this problem, however, is easier to follow than the how...

...On the House floor, a coalition of defense liberals and fiscal conservatives succeeded in pushing through a ceiling amendment that reduced the House authorization to $20.4 billion...

...To paraphrase Winston Churchill, who found himself in a similar situation once: We wanted $20.4 billion, the other side wanted $20.9 billion, so we compromised on $21.3 billion...

...The answer sounds more like a joke than a description of deliberations by the Congress of the United States...

...If neither house bothers to declare a total ,the results are obvious...

...In an article written in 1971, at the close of a long career in the Senate, Albert Gore said: "Congress has never come to grips with the archaic ways and the often dictatorial-like powers of conference committees...

...In fact, however, they are almost always the most senior members of the committee whose bill is under consideration, and they represent only the bipartisan interests of the most senior committee members...

...Somehow, though, no one has directed any attention to the loophole through which conferees, gluttonous for contracts at home and favors on the campaign, have been slipping for years...

...In brief, this is what happened: The Administration sent a budget request of $22 billion to Congress...

...However, a Representative who opposed a majority of the House on a given amendment (such as the ceiling amendment to the defense authorization bill this year or the SST amendment to the transportation appropriation in 1970) might well have voted with the majority of the House on other amendments...

...This was surely not the first time a group of conferees behaved like a clutch of compulsive overeaters at a Pillsbury Bake-Off...

...As the rules are currently interpreted, if a total dollar amount is not stated at the end of a bill, it is not considered to exist...

...The-Whole-Is-The-Sum-Of-Its-Parts bill: I'd like to see anyone vote against that...

...Gore suggested two basic changes in conference procedure that might help: allowing the full membership of the House to choose its conferees and requiring a public record of all conference proceedings...

...The way to do it is to recognize formally that the whole is the sum of its parts, not just in real life but in legislative matters as well...

...And although the Senate finally added $500 million for an airplane that wouldn't be a bargain at half the price, there was no suggestion that any appreciable part of that body wanted an authorization bill higher than the one it approved...

...Most reform proposals to date have been aimed at compelling conferees to represent faithfully the divisions and points of view of their own house, not of their committee or of some even more parochial group...

...In the end, on a bill the size of the defense authorization bill, it is nothing for the conference to add an extra half-billion dollars or so, and this is essentially what happened...

...Something at least would be accomplished if we would tighten up the basic rules that require conference committees to stay within the limits set by both houses...

...To pursue this metaphor, it must be obvious that the third player in these backroom games, the one who always gets stuck with the losing hand, is the taxpayer...

...This is certainly true, and now that Congress is getting serious about controlling the budget, it is perhaps more urgent than ever that we do something to remedy the situation...

...The conferees then proceed to play a legislative version of a rigged poker game, the House caving in ("receding") on those items in which the Senate figure is higher, and the Senate receding to the House when the House is higher...

...For reasons ranging from constituent pressure to economic self-interest to personal pride, these senior members—Republicans and Democrats alike—are invariably head-over-heels in favor of the programs with which they are involved...

...Unless we do plug this loophole, any overall ceilings are impossible and unrealistic...

...The only real standard by which the real views of a potential conferee may be measured is how he voted on the various amendments and the final bill...

...It is always perfectly obvious what the amount is, because it is, of course, no more and no less than the sum of its parts...

...It is surely more than can be justified under any rational defense policy, and according to a number of recent polls, it is more than the majority of the American people wants...

...Nevertheless, under the prevailing interpretation it is considered not to exist...

...The conferees can hardly be limited by something that doesn't exist, can they...

...According to the rules of both houses, conferees are to be chosen to represent the positions of their chamber as a whole...

...What happens is that in the absence of totals the rule about staying within the limits of the House and Senate bills has been interpreted to apply only to the "line items," or the various, specific programs within the bill...

...Since, in effect, conference committees have the final say on all legislation (conference reports cannot be amended and are almost never defeated), this goes a long way toward explaining why Congress has not been successful in controlling Government spending, military or otherwise...

...That is the part of our $80 billion-plus defense budget that goes for procurement and research and development...

...In fact, several amendments that would have made substantial cuts in the bill were defeated only by the barest margins...

...The House Armed Services Committee approved a bill of $21.3 billion, the Senate Committee, $20.4 billion...

...What made this "compromise" version of $21.3 billion so outrageous was that both houses had made their opposition to a higher bill quite clear...

...Les Aspin, Wisconsin Democrat, is in his second term in the House of Representatives, where he is a member of the Armed Services Committee...

...Certainly, at a time when Congress is beginning to consider overall ceilings for the budget, it makes sense to ensure that conferees don't circumvent the whole system...

...In each instance the conferees put in more money than was in either the House or Senate version of the bill...

...Perhaps most significantly, it is more than Congress itself wanted...

...From the earliest days of Congress it has generally been recognized that conferees should not have unlimited discretion...

...It is here, after the tumult and shouting and public debate has faded from the House and Senate enough for the headlines to have shifted to a new subject, that appropriations measures, tax bills, and other substantive legislation can suffer remarkable mutation...

...Certainly it is easy to see how this kind of wheeling and dealing can drive up the pot...

...Then how, one might ask, can conferees come back with a dollar figure higher than that authorized by either house...

...If that is what we assumed, however, we failed to give the conferees credit for a great deal of ingenuity, not to mention parliamentary slipperiness...

...The House ceiling amendment (which called for last year's appropriation plus 4.5 per cent for inflation) had passed overwhelmingly, 242 to 163...

...Formerly professor of economics at Marquette University, Representative Aspin has worked on the staffs of the Council of Economic Advisers and Senator William Proxmire* That left only the all-important conference committee...

...So who is to say which are the most important parts of a bill...

...The reason is to be found in the peculiar make-up of conference committees...

...At $21.3 billion, it is the largest defense authorization since the height of the Vietnam war...

...The Treasury, Postal Service, and General Government appropriation this fiscal year, the foreign aid bill last year, and the military construction bill, the defense authorization bill, and the Treasury bill in 1972, all suffered from this same sort of gluttony...

...Under a system as old as Congress, when House and Senate versions of a bill differ—which is nearly always—conferees from the two houses meet to "iron out their differences...

...Nobody can remember the last time a conference report came in lower than that passed by either house...