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“THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY AND THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Energy was published in the Senate section on pages S2797-S2799 on March 25, 1996.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY AND THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET
Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, they are going to be handing out the Oscars tonight in Hollywood, honoring the film industry's best efforts at creating fantasy and make-believe. Well, we create a lot of that in Washington, too, and if it were a movie, the latest Clinton budget would be taking home the award for ``Best Special Effects.''
After all, it is a document that makes the impossible appear possible. It disguises reality with the smoke and mirrors that are staples of any good special effects team.
It is such a creative effort, in fact, that you have to wonder whether Steven Spielberg and George Lucas somehow had a hand in it.
Yes, the President's budget would be right at home amongst the glitzy phoniness of Tinseltown. And at a cost to the taxpayers of more than
$1.6 billion this year, it is a big-budget production that makes the
$175 million lavished on ``Waterworld'' look like a drop in a water bucket.
But like any movie, the more often you see it, the more you start noticing the special effects and the more time you spend trying to figure out how they did. And suddenly it is not all so magical anymore.
Unfortunately for President Clinton, the American taxpayers have had almost a week to study his proposed budget for fiscal year 1997, and I think they have begun to figure it out.
After eight earlier tries by the President over the last 13 months, the taxpayers were hoping this budget would reflect the changes they called for in 1994: They want a workable balanced budget, real tax relief for middle-class Americans, an end to welfare as we know it, and the reforms needed to save entitlement programs from bankruptcy.
But after carefully reviewing the President's recommendations, I have to report that this budget does not deliver. In fact, as hard as it is to believe, President Clinton's budget takes the status quo and makes it even worse.
He requests over $61 billion more in nonentitlement spending than he proposed in his own minibudget last month. He pays for that increased spending by raising taxes and fees by more than $60 billion. Furthermore, he delays nearly 60 percent of his promised spending reductions until the last 2 years of his plan, making this a paper budget only, with no hope of ever being implemented.
By perpetuating bigger government, more spending, and higher taxes, this document is an affront to the American taxpayers.
One area of this budget I find particularly frustrating is the funding for the Cabinet-level Department of Energy. If we have indeed entered a time in which ``the era of Big Government is over,'' as President Clinton proclaimed in his State of the Union Address, there should be no place in the budget for this $16 billion relic.
At a time when taxpayers are demanding that Congress be accountable for each and every dollar we spend, Secretary O'Leary and the President have submitted a budget plan that ensures the continuation of DOE's bloated bureaucracy at the expense of responsible, accountable Government.
Perhaps they believe that spending enormous amounts of tax dollars on DOE will mask the fact that the Energy Department no longer has an energy mission of its own. Since the oil crisis that led to its creation in the 1970's evaporated, DOE has expended its resources in a perpetual attempt to expand its reach and justify its existence. Today, in fact, 85 percent of DOE's annual budget is spent on activities entirely unrelated to national energy policy.
That trend would continue under the President's budget, beginning with the administration's proposal to increase DOE's overhead costs by more than 38 percent next year. At the same time, DOE is boasting of personnel decreases of nearly 20 percent. But if you examine the budget carefully, looking beyond the summary pages delivered to Congress which list nearly 19,000 full-time personnel, the actual decrease is only about 6 percent from this year.
Of course, those 19,000 individuals represent just full-time workers. DOE employs another 150,000 contract employees at its labs and cleanup sites across the country.
If you are looking for a more in-depth breakdown of Energy Department personnel, you will not find it within the pages of the President's budget. The agency does not even rate an individual listing in the historical tables for the executive branch--instead, it's lumped into the ``other'' category. One can only assume that the White House doesn't want the taxpayers to realize just how large the DOE bureaucracy really is.
There are numerous other examples of how this latest budget symbolizes the wasteful spending that has plagued DOE throughout its search to re-invent itself.
DOE's research, which includes the development of alternative sources of energy such as solar power, has cost the taxpayers more than $70 billion since the agency's creation in 1977.
But during testimony before Congress last year, Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute said:
Virtually all economists who have looked at those programs agree that federal energy R&D investments have proven to be a spectacular failure.
The taxpayers have financed a great deal of pork with their $70 billion investment, but few meaningful scientific breakthroughs. That reckless spending on renewable energy sources is slated to continue. For example, by DOE's own accounts, the fiscal year 1997 request includes an increase of 157 percent in subsidies to the solar building technology industry. Contrary to what this administration would have us believe, however, the solar industry is already competitive, and as a former solar-home builder myself, I can tell you that such an overwhelming increase in a single year is not necessary.
The Department of Energy has proven to be more of a hindrance than a help in making technologies self-sustaining and independent of taxpayer assistance. It is time for the Federal Government to get out of the business of directing market forces in the renewable area.
Rather than spending billions of taxpayer dollars to promote particular industries within the private sector, DOE should be funding basic research which actually breaks our growing dependence upon foreign oil. Minnesotans recognize that conservation and renewables alone will not heat a home in the winter--it is time this administration owns up to that fact as well.
The President is also requesting $651 million--a 9-percent increase over 1996--to fund DOE's nondefense environmental management programs. It is all part of the agency's environmental and nuclear waste cleanup efforts. Yet the budget increase comes on the heels of a report issued just last month by the National Research Council which criticized DOE's waste disposal program as being too bureaucratic with too many layers.
Beyond the bloated bureaucracy and questionable spending, the President's budget plan reflects policies which are inconsistent with current law, pending legislation, or at times, even common sense.
For example, the President proposes to delay until 2002 the sale of the Naval Petroleum Reserve oil located at Elk Hills. This is in direct contradiction to legislation enacted last year as part of the President's fiscal year 1996 budget which called for the sale to take place this year. In an effort to continue to milk the NPR for money to pay for additional DOE spending, this administration is rejecting current law, ignoring the fact that there is gross mismanagement at the facility.
And what about the back-loaded savings from the sale of the United States Enrichment Corporation? Under the President's budget, a portion of the proceeds were shifted to 2002. Obviously, he was not watching floor consideration of the most recent omnibus spending bill when this body used those same proceeds to pay for the additional education funding President Clinton demanded. Again, they are trying to spend the same dollars once, twice, three, four, five times.
Then there are the policies which defy common sense. We have all heard about the environmental hazards resulting from leaking oil at the Weeks Island facility. The Energy Department is currently removing over 70 million barrels from there and transferring them to other strategic petroleum reserve facilities --only to be sold in 2002. But again, a portion of the proceeds from the sale have already been spent, targeted to offset the additional spending requested by the President in the omnibus appropriations bill. Again, trying to spend the same dolalrs more than once, it is smoke and mirrors, trying to balance the budget at the taxpayer's expense.
Furthermore, why does DOE not prioritize the Weeks Island reserve for immediate sale, rather than moving it to another facility, storing it, and then selling it? If the Secretary of Energy believes we will not need this oil in 2002, I am certain we don't need it now.
Mr. President, under this budget, the potential for even further abuses would continue, because it does nothing to rein in DOE's ever-present search for something to do, someplace to spend the taxpayers' hard-earned dollars. There would be nothing to stop the extravagant, taxpayer-
funded foreign excursions, or the use of tax dollars to investigate reporters and their stories, or the other wasteful spending that has become all too common at the Energy Department.
The Department would be left to operate mostly as it has in the past--free to pursue its own supposed manifest destiny through expansion, reinvention, and constantly redefining its missions. That kind of freedom has allowed DOE's budget to grow 235 percent since 1977, even in the absence of another energy crisis like the one that led to its creation.
At a time when the people are demanding a balanced budget and justification for every dollar spent by the Federal Government, can any of us in good conscience claim that business as usual at the Department of Energy is how the taxpayers ought to be served?
Mr. President, in presenting its budget to Congress, DOE's chief financial officer testified last week that the document demonstrates a new commitment to streamlining its operations. ``More than ever,'' he said, ``American citizens are holding us accountable for superior results with increasingly limited resources. The Department of Energy is meeting these expectations. We are improving our process efficiency and effectiveness.''
Mr. President, whether or not DOE is meeting these expectations is a question clearly open to debate. I believe they are falling short, way short. And I am afraid that improving process efficiency and effectiveness will not ensure accountability or solve the fundamental problems that rack the Department of Energy.
President Clinton's budget feeds DOE's problems through more spending. But when will the big spenders here realize that the time-
honored Washington tradition of throwing money at a problem does not make the problem go away--that it only perpetuates the status quo and aggravates the damage?
Mr. President, I believe the solution lies in less spending and ultimately, elimination of the Department of Energy. Without a specific and defined mission to guide it, the agency will remain a taxpayers boondoggle for years to come, a burden the taxpayers are no longer willing to bear.
Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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