Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutR-76-0500RPC/f1 5/2/76 RESOLUTION NO6 76-500, A RESOLUTION URGING SENATORS CHILES AND STONE TO FIGHT FOR ENACTMENT OF THE PUBLIC WORKS EMPLOYMENT ACT OF 1976 CONTAINING THE COUNTERCYCLICAL FISCAL ASSISTANCE AMENDMENT BY SENATOR MUSKIE,,AND ALSO URGING ALL MEMBERS OF THE FLORIDA DELEGATION TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TO INCORPORATE A COUNTERCYCLICAL FISCAL PROVISION IN THE LOCAL PUBLIC WORKS CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT AND INVESTMENT ACT OF 1976 AND THEREAFTER FIGHT FOR ITS ENACTMENT. WHEREAS, Federal legislation in the area of public works should provide financial assistance for those local governments hit hardest by the recession; and WHEREAS, an effective measure providing such assistance is found in the concept of countercyclical fiscal assistance provisions; NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE COMMISSION OF THE CITY OF MIAMI, FLORIDA: Section 1. Senator Chiles and Senator Stone are hereby urged to fight for enactment of the Senate Public Works Bill containing the countercyclical fiscal assistance amendment by Senator Muskie. Section 2. All members of the Florida delegation to the House of Representatives are strongly urged to incorporate a countercyclical fiscal provision in the Local Public Works Capital Development and Investment Act of 1976 and to fight for its enactment. "DOCUMENT,/INDEX IIE�Mnn N Section 3. The City Clerk is directed tdTUHd P. reof to the Honorable Senator Lawton M. Chiles and the Honorable Senator Richard B. Stone, as well as each member of the Florida delegation to the House of Representatives in the United States Congress. PASSED AND ADOPTED this 13th day of May 1976. CITY COMMISSION MEETING OF MAY 1 .3 1976 PREPARED AND APPROVED BY: ter4f.„( eitdc Robert F. Clark Assistant City Attorney APPROVED AS TO FORM AND CORRECTNESS: J iin S. Lloyd ty Attorney (/1 MAURICE A. FERRE MAYOR -A MC:r44 tit*? committioNgipmee to! Paul W. Andrewsp City Man ger bate: /6/76 Ptetet Maurice A. Pettep Mayor thee it being referred to you herewith ti tibh dated Arvt-11 i_ct'M • • PrOM! United States conference of r4yors Please enter the item of Countercyclical Assistance/Public Works on the up -coming City Commission agenda of May 13 for resolution. MAP/cs cc: City Commissioners City Attorney John S. Lloyd Please have this maYter investigated and advise this office of the tesuit. Please prepare reply for MAYOR'S OR COMMISSIONER'S SIGNATURE. Please reply and would appreciate being sent a copy of some. For appropriate action and would appreciate being advised of same. PreridtAr: MOON 1ANbRlft) Marf of New Orleins Vine PretidM,. RENNETH A. Gr soN Mayor of Newark PAO► Presiders r. RICHARD' blare Mayor oCChiago HENRY W. MAIER Maya of Milwaukee JACK b.AIALTESTER Mayor of San Leandro Traneu: JOHN J. BUCKLEY Mayor of Lawrence. Mass. RICHARD G. HATCHER Mayor of Gary WILLIAM H. MCNICHOLS Mayor of Denver RALPH J. PERK Mayor of ClevelanJ CARLOS ROMERO BARCELO Mayor of San Juan GEORGE M. SULLIvAN Mayor of Anchorage WESLEY C. UHLMAN Mayor of Seattle Weir H. WHITE Mayor of &xron Alti,ory Boa.J: LEE ALEXANDER, Chairman Mayor of Syracuse ABRAHAM BLAME Dtayor of New York RICHARD CARVER Mayor of Neu:u DORIS A. DAVIS Mayor of Compton PETER F. FLAHERTY Mayor of Pittsburgh WILLIAM S. HART, SR. Mayor of East Orange MAYNARD JACKSON Mayor of Atlanta HARRY KINNEY Mayor of Albuquerque PATIENCE LATTING Mayor of Oklahoma City BEN H. LFO'is May« of Riverside. Calif. LEWIS C. MURPHY Mayor of Tucson JOHN 1I. POELKER Mayor of 5t. Louis JOHN H. READING Mayor of Oal:lanJ JOHN P. F.nusAJ:ls )d,uls J. Tut t.1G Marur of Erie TLu C. \X'H.Ls Mayan of Iresnu PETE WILSON Mayor of San Diego t rc, aide D,rer,4.. JOHN J. GUNTHER ELtPliONt: 293•73 LAPMPli Coot fu_' 1 wrap STATES ColirERtNcti or MAYORS 1620 EvE S9't ETq NoRtfwEST WASHINGTON, b. C. 20006 April 22, 1976 TO: The Mayor FROM: John J. Gunther Executive Dire RE: Countercyclical Assistance/Public Works Enclosed for your review is an April 13 reprint from the Congressional Record which contains Senator Edmund Muskie's Senate floor speech introducing his amendment of countercyclical fiscal assistance for those local governments hit hardest by the recession as well as the votes on the amendment and on final passage of the Senate Public Works bill containing the amendment. As you can see, the amendment passed by a vote of 48-32 and the Public Works Employment Act of 1976 passed 54-28. (See Federal -City Reporter, April 14 for details of the legislation.) The House of Representatives will schedule floor action soon after the Easter recess on passage of the Local Public Works Capital Development and Investment Act of 1976 adopted on April 13 by the House Public Works and Transportation Committee. Since this bill is a "straight" public works bill without the counter - cyclical assistance provision, a conference between the House and Senate will be necessary to iron out differences. lit ecord tlotted State§ aft A th bj Attioldi PitotttbiNts ANIJ littAttg OPrnnyff CoNG/LEssi stcoNto StSStON Vol, 122 WASHIN6T014, 'Mtn" AP/t/L mustag. Mt. President, thee agate 1 rise to utgetes. tolleriguee VI sups Port the Waage of entatoreheneire leg= Islative package to respond tO today's edotabistie rsituatibh. 1ern PartlehlirlY' tenter/at& Of tottrae, with the adoption Of the tounteteyelical asststanee ir� gram which / itin offering a ati amend., Ment to S. 3201. The amendment 1 have sent to the desk also Includes funds to implement the ao-ealled Talmadge -Nunn Waste treatment proposal, Which Congress al - nut reneelPd into law .earlier this year. I am concerned. Mr. President, With the Damage of the entire package, be- CaUSe I believe it Presents the best op- portunity we may have to try to ease the pain of this recession. I remind the Senate that in the first concurrent resolution of last year, Con- gress as ta Whole. including the Senate, approved $4.5 billion for antirecession programs of this kind. We have not en- acted ftny of those tarograrns into law. That objective was reaffirmed by Con- gress last December in the second con- current resolution—reatlirmed by over- whelming votes in both Houses. It was vetoed by the President In February: and 75 percent of the Members of Congress voted to override that veto. Unfortu- nately. three less than two-thirds of the Senate joined that 75 percent, but in terrns of the total numbers in Congress, 75 percent voted to override the Presi- dent's veto on a measure very like what this one would be if my amendment is adopted. The distinguished Senator from Ten- nessee refers to this as a "Christmas tree" sunendment. I choose to refer to it as a reaffirmation of our conunitments made on those several occasions —the first concurrent resolution last year; the second concurrent resolution last De- cember, the overwhelming vote in both Houses to support the bW, and the over- whelming vote to .override the veto, which failed by three votes in the Senate. That is not a "Christmas tree." That was a program that was put together after long, herd work extending over a year, and well denned, when it finally came out of conference between the Sen. ate and the House of Representatives, as a clearly stated congressional policy objective; and when X say congressional, I mean btpsrtiman. the concurrent resolutions of Which this program as atart, the futt one last Year and the Second One last year, Were supported by Senators on both .11des of the aisle. So this it lt eongres- idoeutl polity. it it not ft muside PoueY: It is not a Democratic nolicYi it is hot a "Christrnas trees policy. It Is a Well-delined, Well -stated, sett., tral-tirnes-reaftinned policy of the Coh- grms ot the 'United States. So references to it as a "Christmas tree" are simply fl diversion from the main point. What / am asking the Senate to do here today Ls to reaffirm its support for congres- sional policy. Why do I do that? There may be some who will argue that it is no longer needed. I would think that group ought not to in- clude the Senators who have just spoken this afternoon, because 1 gather they atrue for this public works bill, on the basis that the state of the economy re - Mitres it. Indeed, 1 heard the Seater from Tennessee say that It is needed to revive a construction industry that is in the doldrums. I respectfully suggest to the Senator from Tennessee that it is not only the construction industry that is Impacted by this recession. And let me make that point at greater length, if I may: unemployment in March of 1970, Mr. President —last month —was 7 1/4 per- cent, representing 6 million to 7 million Americans who are out of work. • Now, this is a better percentage than• It was a year ago. But let us look a little closer. In January of this year, when na-• tional unemployment was 7.8 percent, 32. States had unempolyment rates of 8 per-. cent or more. That is not just high, Mr.. President, it Is very high. In the same. month, 40 States had unernpolyrnent of. 7 percent or more. And 30 States, Mr.: President, bad higher unemployment int January of this year than they had dur-: ing the first *quarter of last year. So over. half the States are worse off now than they were a year ago. And yet people aro saying the recession is over. In my State, unemployment went down over this period, and it is still at 11 per- cent. Never before in my career in the Sen- ate can I recall a time when we in this body considered such levels of unemploy- ment not high enough to do something about it. We cannot take reich solace in the President's own prr.jertion3 of Gm 1),-.:r- omt fur 077 and 6.4 percent for 1973, 2 years down the road. Still, we bicker about whether or not we ought to respond to this problem si•ith legislation. 1.976 No, 511 —Vome people including the Prealdent, Wenderand hope that, if WC tan jest Wait long enough, things Will somehow improve of their •own accord. These people are probably right, in tayink,that it we are willing to wait for several years.We May erne again reach tolerable level of mietnployinent. ut can only gliess at the Staggering cost of Stich a honricaley to the Nation, both in Inunan and budgetary terrns. It is gen. trolly agreed that for every increase of 1 percent hi the unemployment rate over full employment the cost to the. I).S. l'reaSury is $17 billion, $3.b1.11ion 'in hi - creased benefits to the unemployed and $14 billion in last revenues. This means that the current unern- Ployment rate of 7.5 percent is costing taxpayers an unbelievable $50 billion a year, 'That happens to be the amount of the deficit that this Senate wrote into the congressional budget just yesterday, less than 24 hours ago. Yet there are those eho say we do not need to do anything about it and that what we are trying to do is a "Christmas txec." )'or those of our colleagues who dbject to the cost of my amendment to, the pending bill or to the cost of the pack- age as a whole, I say ponder these costs; the costs of doing nothing; ponder, also, the costs that are not so easily meas- urable, the costs of the city of Detroit, for example, where the mayor lays off 1,200 more employees as he did last week for a total of more than 6,000 In all; or the costs to the city of Philadelphia, if that' city's only public hospital must be closed; or the costs to the national eco- nomic policy of State and local tax in- creases such as we have had just this winter in Maine, which negate the im- pact of costly tax reductions we in Con- gress have enacted as a stimulus to the economy. We do one thing to move the economy in one direction and then sit blithely by while State and local governments do the reverse thing which offsets the economic policy we undertake to set. The amendment I ant offering today is essentially the same as legislation the Senate has approved on two prior oc- casions. I think it offers us n unique and useful antirecession tool. The antireces- sion part of this amendment is an ele- ment of. the congr-,sion,L1 blidt;et %;e wrote a year alm. V.1e. reaPirmed it in the second concurrent budget resolution last December. We came close to overriding the Presidential veto of it this winter. And yesterday, Mr. President, we reaf- firmed the countercyclical part. of this amendment in the first concufvent budget resolution for fiscal year 1977. ApPi1 is, tgNo t SS1b .t. itttOkb invite those who Supported that Mr. &'resident, 1 have invested et urea. etheUrrent tr^4o)utIoil yesterday to deal of my time and my energy in the hart this atnendriaent. We Considered t ongrecslona) budget Process. 1 have tet'en tUCcessive amendments to the supported, fought for, and succeeded in 'itifttget tesotutioii, and T lei in rejecting getting Senate approval for budget res- ttll•.trt theta, even though sever•a) of them b)utlons that did not conform in every tt$ti)d have been consistent with votes 1 respect with my own priorities. 3 did to took Sri tnetkups bf the budget Cornmit= because T think it is important that bon, tee.1 held the line. alit$? I3ecatue 1 tools grass Should Cstablish !ts Priorities. the position that it Was essential to es- When Congress establishes its priorities, tablish the budget process. Now I say to T take it that that imposes bresponsl- those Who jbined Me hi that, ;loin Ine bt)tty on the part of every Member of this again to keel/tin the Priorities We set body to be influenced by it and to support t.befe. "ibis tves part of it, and the fact it to the extent he can, in a body Where that It is part of It tags fused its an argu= there must be give and take between tthent against some of the hmendmeft3 differing points of view: that Were defeated yesterday and OttT'hia is a clearly stated congressional Prlday. So 1 ask Senators to show and policy, .iitated over and over and over demonstrate a little consistency' artuh the again. Tt should not be necessary for the congressional policy which is a year old, • to stand here and exhort my colleagues •which was reaffirmed yesterday. It Sena- to support it. We have talked a great deal tors Want to give the budget process some in the Budget Corntntttee about the ltn- credibility, do to When it does not neces= portattee of establishing the credibility tartly Conform to their views as I did all of the budget process. I ,assume that day yesterday and all day Friday because it Is congressional policy, that objective does not exclude those %Vhy do I think this is a Unique arid provisions of the congressional budget Useful antirecession tool. Mr. resident? with which individual Members disagree. If I am Wrong in that respect, I will reconsider some of the votes I cast yesterday. Congress has said for years that doing something about this unemployment is an important congressional priority. It specifically has approved countercyclical assistance. So I am asking that we do what we have said had to be done. With respect to the other part of this program, the so-called Talmadge -Nunn part of this amendment, my colleagues will recall its origin. It originated last summer, on the floor of the Senate. when Senator Tat.uance and Senator Nunn raised the issue of the apportionment of waste treatment funds. They argued — and the Senate overwhelmingly sup - parted them —that the current formula for distribution was inequitable to their State ttnd to a majority of the States. They prevailed, and I was on the other side of the issue. They prevailed by a margin, I believe, of close to 2 to 1. So the Senate was solidly on their side on the Issue. We went to conference. We had a diffi- cult time persuading the house to recog- nize the equity of the Talmadge -Nunn case. It was only after weeks of long and dlfmcult negotiation that the issue filially was received by an approach that was supported by both the Senate and the Rouse conferees and subsequently by both the Senate and the House. That is- sue still hangs. It has not been received finally into law. It still hangs. What we undertake to do with this amendment is to put this also in the leg- islative stream once again. as a reflection of a clearly stated, carefully worked out congressional policy. It is not a Christ- mas tree ornament that we dragged out of a closet train last Christmas. The Sen- ator from Tennessee ur:derst,tnds that n'; tveit us 1 O. lioth element:. is !:err-- and to t is ;-ii 1 o:lt•r—hat e; been.soundly tint! sulidiy affirmed by both Houses of Con- gress and reaffirmed in an override vote that was supported by.7a percent of the Members of Congress. To describe an amendment that incorporates these two as a Christmas tree proposal, in my opin- ion, the height of cynical rhetoric. first. Because it responds to a problem that is a direct cause of the recession, the budgetary squeeze that has forced State and local governments to lay off their employees, policemen, and firemen, or raise their taxes. Second. It is a high job producer. 'The Congressional Budget Office estimated last September that for each SI billion in countercyclical assistance spent about 100,000 jobs would be created. In fact, the C130 found countercyclical second only to public service jobs in direct job producing impact among antirccession progratns. Third. The countercyclical funds would Fa out quickly into the economy provid- ing an immediate stimulative impact. ' Fourth. The program would shut it- self off entirely when the recession had subsided so that it would not contribute to n revival of inflationary pressures. Fifth. The assistance is very selectively targeted to reach only those places which have been severely affected by the reces- sion. Finally. countercyclical assistance would strengthen the hand of the Fed- eral Government in dealing with the re- cession by helping to prevent State and Rica! governments from taking budget- ary actions which undercut Federal ef- forts to stimulate the..economy. For those of our colleagues who ques- tion the need for this legislation, because unemployment is getting better, I point out that 60 of them have worse unem- ployment in their States than they had 1 year ago. Sixty of my colleagues in this body have worse unemployment in their States than they had 1 year aio. To those concerned about this legLs- latlon because of the size of the Federal deficit. let them rernemb,:r that the hed-' oral ci:•ficit we a1tl,rovc•ti yesterday is the product of Moil unemployment and t.hnt CO::tintied hiuh unemployment only means more and bigger deficits to come. Let me also remufnd my colleagi as again that countercyclical assistance'is a congressional priority. That Congress weighed these factors and decided to do nothing is not a message I would like to take home to the people in the State of Maine. • StWAtt fitoileall vote Nb. 149 Lee.) i4kAS=--+18 hash rr11+id * tteteatf 13icick . Hirt, ciao Mondale Arbbke3 Hathaway ).OM autitDeii . Millinga Muhkle Burdick 18uddlesters Hellion Byrd, Iwbert C. ituinphiey Nubia Caimen Inouye Palfttwe Pel1 1tlbldof Bchertilket Stafford Stevenson J * ' . invite Ch1 Johnston Clark fanned, Cranston . ;Leahy thrive!,Long Du rk tis • Magnuson Stone Eaauand . Mansfield . Talmadge Ford i&cOovern Welcker Glenn McIntyre . Willisein 'Si NATS,4 42 Mien tiara Scott, Baker • Goldwater Wltitban L. Barnett Origin Sparkman Beall Hansen a Stennis Bellmon Hatfield • Stevens Bentsen Helms . Symington Byrd. dkley Laxalt Taft Packwood Thurmond Dole F'.;J'r. Pearson YYoung Domenic! Randolph f'aruttn Scott, Hugh PRESENT AND GIVING A LIVE PAIR-1 Montoya, against. NOT VOTINO-19 Abourezk . Hartke . Eiden • Haskell Church . Hruska . Curtis Jackson Eag'eton Mathias Pon,; McClellan Hart, Philip A. McClure . McGee Morgan Per Roth Tunney So Mr. Aitrslczs's amendment, as mods• fled, was agreed to. 1Rollcafl Voto No. 160 Leg.) YEAS--b4 Bash Bentsen Brock Brooke Bumpers Burdick Humphrey Byrd, Hobert C. Impure Cannon Javlts Case Johnston Chiles Kennedy Clark Leahy Cranston Long Culver Magnuson Durkin Mansfield Ford McGovern Glenn McIntyre Gravel Mondale Hart, Gary Montoya Allen Baker Bartlett Beall Bellmon Buckley NAY$-2a Byrd, Harry F., Jr. Dole Domenic! Eastland Fannin Pearson Scott. Proxrntre • William L. Roth • Stennis Scott, Hugh Stevens Abourezk Ewen Church Cures t7o;; t r ro„ Hart. Philip A. Moss Hatfield lluskle Hathaway Nelson Hollings Nunn Huddleston Packwood Pastore Pell Randolph Rtbtcoft 6chwetker Sparkman Stafford Stevenson Stone Symington Talmadge Wetcker Williams Gam Goldwater Orifiln Hansen Helms Laical& Taft Thurmond Tower Young NOT VOTING-18 Hartke }JcClure }Iaskell Mccire rusks Metcalf J[ace.•.VI, Math;. 1'rre r.f:Ctc::�tn Tunuey I RECEIVE APR 28 iy; o OF1.;,:. ...tirOR rri ihso 1, t LOi DA •