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THE BATTALION
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 11, 1976
Threshold test ban: cosmetic pact
By SANFORD GOTTLIEB
The word “cosmetic” comes from
the Greek, meaning skilled in
adornment. That’s a good descrip
tion of the threshold test ban treaty
between the Soviet Union and the
United States. The treaty — or
more precisely two treaties, one on
underground weapons tests and a
second on so-called “peaceful nu
clear explosions” (PNE’s) — had its
genesis in Watergate. In 1974 Pres
ident Nixon was under fire, and
needed a quick and easy treaty with
the Soviet Union in order to en
hance his image as a peacemaker.
The result was the 1974 threshold
test ban treaty, banning under
ground nuclear tests above 150 kilo-
tons. This ceiling is equivalent to
150,000 tons of TNT, 10 times the
size of the Hiroshima explosion.
Underground tests are used for
weapons development; tests up to
150 kilotons permit development of
nuclear weapons of considerable
size. Under the guise of “arms con
trol,” the treaty gives the military
establishments of both nations dip
lomatic immunity to seek bigger
and better weapons of mass destruc
tion.
The threshold treaty was signed
by both sides, but the Nixon and
Ford Administrations did not sub
mit it to the Senate for ratification.
Meanwhile, the two governments
slowly negotiated a pact linking
“peaceful nuclear explosions” to the
150-kiloton threshold. Now the Se
nate must decide whether to ratify a
double treaty which permits both
kinds of nuclear tests to continue
below a level of 10 Hiroshimas.
Moreover, the PNE accord would
allow a series of linked nuclear de
tonations totaling 1,500,000 tons of
TNT equivalent!
The private groups and individu
als which constitute the arms con
trol and disarmament community
are opposed to the threshold treaty.
They see it as a setback to their ef
forts to bring the suicidal arms race
under control. They present a solid
front, urging the Administration to
reopen negotiations with the USSR
in order to achieve a total ban on
underground nuclear tests.
The Administration makes much
of the fact that the PNE treaty pro
vides for on-site inspection for the
first time. But the complex proce
dure for inviting “designated per
sonnel” to a specific place at a cho
sen time resembles in no way the
kind of mobile inspection that ex
perts talked about 15 years ago. This
carefully stage-managed version of
inspection would not be a good pre
cedent for serious disarmament
treaties. Nor would it even be
\
necessary to monitor a con
ban on underground tests. 1 (
instruments are capable ofidj
ing most seismic events asj
earthquakes or explosions.
In the Limited Test BanTij
1963, the super-powers pi
themselves to seek an end to
clear tests. In the 1965
Proliferation Treaty, they pi
themselves to seek nuclean j] rs
mament. With the threshold
they are doing neither. Socos
are needed to make it
smell like something thatitis
Gottlieb is a correspondent for lull
Interest, a press service of thef.
Peace.
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yfitnmy Carter s secret is zero base budgeting
k WASHINGTON — Last week.
Sphere was a fascinating example of
!me gap between campaign rhetoric
jjnd governmental reality. It in
volves the somewhat forbidding
djipic of “zero-base budgeting.”
^ Zero base budgeting is a manage-
Jjnent technique that was developed
“bight years ago in private industry, at
jtTexas Instruments. The technique
tivas carried by its inventor, Peter A.
•jPyhrr, to the state of Georgia and
japplied by the state government
^luring the four years Jimmy Garter
jwas governor.
As defined by Allen Schnick, a
rtnanagement specialist in the Con-
David S,
Broder
jgressional Research Service, zero-
jjbase budgeting or ZBB is “a proce-
jjidure for examining the entire
•budget, not just the funds requested
Jtebove the current level of spending.
It thus differs from (normal) incre
mental budgeting in which review is
concentrated on proposed increases
while the base’ is given little atten-
ion. The term zero-base budgeting’
indicates that a government’s budget
should be rejustified from scratch
each year or two, with the same
standards applied to old and new
programs.”
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Carter, in his presidential cam
paign, has promised dozens of audi
ences that zero-base budgeting will
be instituted in Washington “by
executive order the day I become
President. He has publicized ZBB,
along with his promised but unde
fined “total reorganization” of the
executive branch of government, as
the principal tools for cutting down
“the wasteful, bloated, overlapping
inefficient” federal bureaucracy.
Over half the Senate and more
than 100 members of the House have
cosponsored legislation applying the
principle of ZBB to the budget. The
Senate Government Operations
Committee recently approved a bill
sponsored by Sen. Edmund S. Mus-
kie (D-Me.), requiring virtually all
existing programs of the federal gov
ernment to undergo zero-base re
view prior to a decision on whether
they should be continued. The bill
sets up a systematic schedule of pro
gram reauthorization between 1979
and 1983.
The “sunset legislation,” based on
laws passed in Colorado and other
states, has also been heavily pub
licized by politicians this year as an
answer to the public’s rising impa
tience with ineffective, costly and
duplicative government programs.
Given all the political attention to
this topic, it was somewhat surpris
ing to walk into a hearing on ZBB at
the House Budget Committee one
morning last week and find no other
reporters'.' present. Nor .was .tips a.
unique situation. Reading the tran
script of the hearing which Muskie
conducted on his bill last spring, you
find him lamenting the fact that only
one reporter, John Averill of the Los
Angeles Times, was present during
key testimony from Dr. Alice Rivlin,
head of the Congressional Budget
Office.
What this reflects is the tendency
— which all of us in the press have
been guilty of— to publicize a slogan
or proposal without giving compara
ble attention to its substance. Par
ticularly is that the case when that
slogan is announced in circus-size
headlines of a presidential cam
paign, while its substance is slowly
being explored in the fine print of a
congressional hearing.
This journalistic habit of leaping
first and looking afterward is itself a
major contributor to the public dis
illusionment with politicalpromises.
Too many proposals have been
acclaimed in the press and and then
revealed to be hasty, ill-considered
and exaggerated. ZBB may well be
one of thern, judging from the
largely ignored testimony.
Last week, the four principal wit
nesses before Chairman Brock
Adams’ (D-Wash.) House Budget
Committee hearings were highly re
garded professionals in the area of
government program evaluation. All
of them have spent most of their
working lives in pursuit of greater
productivity and effectiveness in
government. And all expressed
strong cautions about a precipitous
plunge into the world of ZBB and
“sunset laws,” even while reaffirm
ing the need for more effective
evaluation of government spending.
Schnick, the Library of Congress
expert, noted, for example, that “the
few studies of ZBB in operation have
suggested that it does not signifi
cantly affect the efficient allocation of
a government’s financial resources,
that the content of the budget is not
necessarily different after ZBB than
before.”
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Cbe Battalion
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Editor • • . . -Jerry Needham ’
Managing Editor • • . • -Richard Chamberlain
Sports Editor ■ Paul McGrath'
Campus Editor Lisa Junod 1
Photographers Sfr^ve Cfoble, Kevin Venner 1
Production L^Ann Roby, Susan Brown
the Urban Institute, a Washington
think tank and evaluator of govern
ment programs, said that the review
program envisioned by the Muskie
bill would vastly overstrain “the
capacities or potential capacities” of
the executive branch and Congress
and inevitably “undermine the cre
dibility of the act. ”
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Similar warnings came during
Senate hearings from: Roy Ash, the
Nixon administration budget chief;
James T. Lynn, the current budget
director; Alice Rivlin of the Congres
sional Budget Office and a dozen
others who would not be considered
soft on wasteful government spend
ing by anyone.
Paul H. O’Neill, the deputy direc
tor of the Office of Management and
Budget, said ZBB and the “sunset
legislation” establishing it “may lead
to a paperwork process that is
mind-boggling even by Washington
standards. ”
As Peter Pyhrr, the inventor of
ZBB, said, “Some of Sen. Muskie’s
words at the time of the introduction
of this legislation are most appropri
ate to such a massive change as I
think zero-base budgeting would
produce.
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Phillip S. Hughes, assistant
comptroller general in the General
Accounting Office, the congres
sional watchdog agency, cautioned
that experience with “sunset laws”
and ZBB is “very limited” and
warned of the “danger . . . that it be
regarded as some magical black
box. •
What Muskie said was: “In too
many cases, we in Congress have
satisfied ourselves with the rhetoric
of legislation, leaving the hard work
of implementation ... to the
executive branch.”
“A good many more people are
writing books telling you how to do it
than are actually doing it effec
tively, he said.
William Gorham, the president of
To which one could add: In too
many cases, the press has satisfied
itself with publicizing a program in
stead of examining both the pitfalls
and potential of a program. Let’s
hope that’s not going to be case
again.
(c) 1976, The Washington Post Company
For Battalion Classified
Call 845-2611
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