See footnotes at end of table

COMPARATIVE STATEMENT OF POSITIONS FOR 1979 AND 1980 AND ESTIMATES FOR 1981

[Excludes Senate items and items under Architect of the Capitol for the Senate]

I am pleased to submit herewith the appropriations request of the Joint Economic Committee for fiscal year 1981, and I look forward to appearing before your Subcommittee.

The Committee is requesting the amount of $1,950,000 for fiscal year 1981.

The JEC request for FY 1981 is $608,000 below the request we submitted for FY 1980. This represents a 24 percent reduction from the total appropriation requested by the JEC for FY 1980.

This substantial reduction is made possible because the Committee will complete its Special Study on Economic Change by December 31, 1980. We are determined to complete the Special Study without additional funds beyond what has already been appropriated for that project.

The $1,950,000 figure for FY 1981 represents an increase of $90,000 over what the Committee requested for its regular activities for FY 1980. That increase is simply adequate to pay the cost-of-living increase mandated on October 1, 1979, during FY 1981.

Mr. Chairman, this is a very tight budget. The Committee for the fourth consecutive year is not requesting an increase in staff. While our staff size has remained constant, I believe the quality of our work is constantly improving and hence our

The Joint Economic Committee, along with the President's Council of Economic Advisers, was established by the Employment Act of 1946. The Committee is to the Congress what the Council of Economic Advisers is to the President the body which advises on the broad spectrum of economic issues. The Committee has a statutory responsibility to make an annual report to the Congress on the President's economic program.

In March 1979, for the first time in 20 years, all 20 Members of the Joint Economic Committee, Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, signed the Committee's annual report. The Committee also issued a unified midyear report in August. These reports recommend a fundamental change in the direction economic policy has taken over the last generation. The Committee called for an end to an economic philosophy which seeks to solve all economic problems by focusing exclusively on the demand side of the economy. Instead, we urged a new economic strategy to enhance the supply side of the economy through new incentives for saving and investment, rational reform of the Federal regulatory system, and reduction in the reliance on undependable foreign sources of energy.

We are proud of these reports and happy about the reception they have received from our colleagues in the Congress, from members of the academic community, and from serious financial writers and experts. As a result of our Committee's work, many of our colleagues have begun to focus their attention on the serious problem of our economy's dismal productivity performance.

In addition to the annual and midyear reports, the Committee released 13 reports and studies during 1979 covering such topics as structural employment and training programs; the Soviet economy and East-West commercial relations; the U.S. role in a changing world political economy; productivity in the Federal Government; the economic consequences of the Iranian Revolution; and problems of central city businesses.

The Committee held 16 sets of hearings, covering 67 days during 1979. Many of those hearings elicited information which will be of important use to economic policymakers within and outside of the Congress. The hearings have explored, for example, the inadequacy of the Consumer Price Index as a measure of the cost of living a topic I understand the House

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Appropriations Committee is very interested in because of the number of Federal programs which are "indexed.' The Committee also held a series of hearings on international comparisons of productivity performance which will be helpful as the Congress comes to terms with the need to reindustrialize America.

Mr. Chairman, I believe that there is nothing so powerful as a new idea. The Joint Economic Committee's responsibility is to be an "idea factory" for the Congress.

I believe the JEC is on the cutting edge of a new approach to economics. A very distinguished economic historian with a worldwide reputation recently suggested in an academic paper that the JEC's 1979 annual report may well be "an historic document. We hope to continue to produce this kind of work and we expect particularly that the Special Study on Economic Change will make a profound contribution to the state of knowledge about our complex economy.

Mr. Chairman, we have requested an appropriation which is lean, but which will permit us to continue to serve our colleagues in the Congress by providing new approaches to the serious economic problems we have today so that our economy in the 1980's and beyond will ensure an increased standard of living for our people.

Sincerely,

Enclosures

See attached list

Lloyd Bentsen
Chairman