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1 SEC. 3. Whenever the Congress shall refuse to approve a 2 proposed impounding of funds set forth in a special message 3 submitted pursuant to section 2 (a), the President shall not 4 again submit a special message to the Congress proposing to 5 impound any of such funds in whole or in part during the same fiscal year.

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SEC. 4. For purposes of this Act, the impounding of

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(a) the withholding of funds (whether by establishing reserves or otherwise) appropriated for projects or activities, and the termination of authorized projects or activities for which appropriations have been made, and

(b) the delaying of the expenditure or obligation of funds beyond the close of the fiscal year in which the expenditure or obligation was intended by the Congress in appropriating such funds.

SEC. 5. (a) The following subsections of this section

19 are enacted by the Congress

(1) as an exercise of the rulemaking power of the House of Representatives and the Senate, respectively,

and as such they shall be deemed as a part of the rules

of each House, respectively, but applicable only with respect to the procedure to be followed in that House

in the case of resolutions described in this section; and

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they shall supersede other rules only to the extent that

they are inconsistent therewith; and

(2) with full recognition of the constitutional right of either House to change the rules (so far as relating

to the procedure of that House) at any time, in any

manner, and to the same extent as in the case of any other rule of that House.

(b) (1) For purposes of this section, the term "reso9 lution" means only a concurrent resolution of the House of 10 Representatives or the Senate, as the case may be, which is 11 introduced and acted upon by both Houses before the end 12 of the first period of sixty calendar days of continuous session 13 of the Congress after the date on which the President's spe14 cial message is received by that House.

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(2) The matter after the resolving clause of each reso16 lution shall read as follows: "That the House of Representa

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tives (Senate) approves the proposed impounding of funds

as set forth in the special message of the President dated

(3) For purposes of this subsection, the continuity of a

session is broken only by an adjournment of the Congress

sine die, and the days on which either House is not in session 23 because of an adjournment of more than three days to a

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day certain shall be excluded from the computation of the sixty day period.

(c) (1) A resolution introduced with respect to a special

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message shall not be referred to a committee and shall be

privileged business for immediate consideration. It shall at

any time be in order (even though a previous motion to

the same effect has been disagreed to) to proceed to the 5 consideration of the resolution. Such motion shall be highly 6 privileged and not debatable. An amendment to the motion 7 shall not be in order, and it shall not be in order to move to 8 reconsider the vote by which the motion is agreed to or 9 disagreed to.

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(2) If the motion to proceed to the consideration of a resolution is agreed to, debate on the resolution shall be 12 limited to ten hours, which shall be equally divided between 13 those favoring and those opposing the resolution. An amend

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ment to the resolution shall not be in order. It shall not be

in order to reconsider the vote by which the resolution is

agreed to or disagreed to, and it shall not be in order to move

to consider any other resolution introduced with respect to

the same message.

(3) Motions to postpone, made with respect to the consideration of a resolution, and motions to proceed to the consideration of other business, shall be decided without

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(4) Appeals from decisions of the Chair relating to

the application of the rules of the House of Representatives

or the Senate, as the case may be, to the procedure relating

to a resolution shall be decided without debate.

Mr. CONTE. My bill, which presently has 28 cosponsors, approaches the problem of restricting impoundments differently than other proposals which provide for congressional approval after the fact of impoundment.

My bill provides that the President shall not impound any funds unless and until he first obtains the specific approval of the Congress. Like other bills, however, it does provide for an expedited procedure for the President to have his request to impound funds considered by the Congress.

There are several reasons for my adoption of a different approach. First, I wanted to include a prohibition against the reimpounding of funds after the 60-day period had expired, or after the Congress had specifically disapproved the impoundment. This would prevent the President from impounding funds for the entire year simply by reimpounding them.

The second major difficulty is related to those funds which are required to be obligated or spent by the close of the fiscal year. In such cases, the executive could impound funds so late in the fiscal year that the Congress may not have an opportunity to disapprove of the impoundment before the funds are lost. This is especially true when expenditures, grants or obligations are made late in the fiscal year or when the Congress may happen to be in recess at the end of the fiscal

year.

The third problem I saw with other proposals was that it might be possible to misconstrue the authority to impound funds as authority to reduce the expenditure of the appropriations pro rata for that portion of the year between Presidential impoundment and congressional disapproval.

To illustrate this last problem, suppose that $12 million was appropriated for a program. Let us also suppose that the President chooses to impound the funds and that the Congress does not ratify the impoundment within the 60-day period. At this time the President would have to spend the funds. The problem is that the President could argue that he would only have to spend $10 million of the appropriation because his 2-month impoundment was specifically authorized by law.

These are the reasons I chose the approach that I did. By requiring that the President obtain congressional approval before he impounds any funds rather than afterward, the problems I have mentioned can be avoided. Further, the President will still have his desire to impound funds considered on a priority basis.

I believe that my Congressional Spending Power Act is a reasonable and workable proposal. It places the power of the purse back in the hands of the Congress where it belongs, and it gives the President a reasonable means to have his views on the spending of Federal money considered without undue delay.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I want to make it clear that I am not here as an advocate of irresponsible spending on the part of the Congress. Nor do I believe that impoundment of funds is never appropriate. There are times when money should be impounded because the money cannot be used effectively during the fiscal year. There are times that money should no longer be spent on ineffective programs.

However, I believe that the Congress must share in the decisionmaking process on these actions.

We are here today speaking of one means to reassert the power of the Congress. I strongly believe in and support the efforts of Congress aimed at reestablishing its authority. However, we must also recognize that, with this power, come responsibilities, Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee, but we must never forget that we do have it and we must maintain it and keep it.

Thank you.

Senator CHILES. Thank you very much, Congressman.

Mr. Gurney?

Senator GURNEY. Thank you, Congressman Conte.

I certainly want to welcome you here to the committee. You are one of the most respected members of the body, certainly of the Appropriations Committee.

I think you hit on one of the key points here, scrutinizing the activities of OMB and putting our own house in order. If we did this effectively we would go a long way toward exerting our power. It is an excellent statement.

Mr. CONTE. Thank you, Senator.

Senator CHILES. Congressman, have you had an opportunity to read or study the Ervin bill, S. 373?

Mr. CONTE. Yes, sir; Senator. I have my staff man here, Paul Lindsey. We have made an analysis of it. We like our bill a little bit better because we feel we give the President power to impound these funds but the President must come back up here. We sort of have a veto power over the President's veto.

Senator CHILES. That is what I was going to ask you if you could just quickly tell me how your bill would differ from S. 373.

Mr. LINDSEY. The primary difference is Mr. Ervin's allows the President to impound for up to 60 days subject to the approval of Congress, or if under Mr. Conte's bill, which is H.R. 415, the President has to come to the Congress before he can impound any funds, and see, the difference is the President can impound before the Congress has anything to say under Mr. Ervin's proposal and under Mr. Conte's proposal the President has to come to the Congress first.

Mr. CONTE. I think I will say something very quickly. The Ervin bill is after the fact and my bill is before the fact.

Senator CHILES. What does your bill contain in regard to the AntiDeficiency Acts? Are they accepted or included? How does it relate to that?

Mr. LINDSEY. There is nothing specifically relating to that, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. CONTE. We didn't go into that at all, Mr. Chairman.

Senator CHILES. We were hearing yesterday testimony from General Staats in regard to the Anti-Deficiency Acts. He is going to get more information for the committee.

His feeling was that generally speaking the impoundments Congress is worried about have not happened under the Anti-Deficiency Act, that most of the items that are impounded under that act really Congress would approve. They would be for temporary impoundments because there has been a change, there can be an efficiency or economy worked because of the impoundment, and his concern was whether it