Capitol Ideas / HEW' s Silver Anniversary

...Our newsstands are awash in prominently displayed pornography...

...He introduced the legislators to the assembled party-going HEW employees: "Senator Brooke—" (applause), "Senator Javits—" (applause), "Senator Randolph—" (applause...

...Alexander Solzhenitsyn, as is by now well known, preached a sermon at Harvard roughly on the foregoing text...

...The first is A Time for Truth, by William E. Simon (Reader's Digest Press, $12.50, preface by Milton Friedman, foreword by F.A...

...But it's no wonder that you have the big complex organization you have now...because since the beginning tremendous responsibility has been placed on this Department, much of it from the courts of the United States and a lot of it from Congress....I asked the Secretary one time, when he first took office, how many people are employed in HEW...

...How many people are paid out of the federal till...

...Simon then decides to go on the attack: And I would stress sharply that by stupidity I really mean stupidity...

...The assembled rabble constituted the worst possible advertisement for their cause—the legalization of marijuana...

...When Nixon made clear his intent to push welfare reform, Moynihan was quickly provided with a detailed plan by fellow Democrats in the federal bureaucracy...

...For example, if we had spent only one day on each major program, and worked Sundays and holidays, which we did, it would still have taken us well over a year to work our way through all the programs...

...With every passing day, he presents us with an ever more unattractive picture...

...We started out very small," Senator Magnuson said...

...Secretary...

...production, they knew what they were doing—i.e., that they were guilty of a conspiracy...

...Arthur Burns' deputy during the first Nixon term, Anderson writes interestingly of the problem that immediately confronts an incoming administration—the pressure to produce "programs" implementing campaign promises: When President Eisenhower left office, there were somewhere around 40 major domestic programs...

...be grateful...

...Though the different opinions issued by various members of the Court are both lengthy and complex, the essential viewpoints expressed are fairly easily described...

...As stated in the critical paragraph of their 24 The American Spectator August/September 1978...

...A great whimpering was heard across the land...

...And, as Malcolm Muggeridge does not tire of pointing out, thanks to the pill and abortion, sex has been separated from responsibility...

...They are not conspirators...

...For some, one month might be enough...

...It was then rechristened the Family Security System (later to be changed to the Family Assistance Plan...

...Now," Califano continued, "I would like to ask Senator Magnuson, who chairs our Appropriations Committee in the Senate, and has worked hard to fund somany of these programs over so many years and who was here at the creation, if he would say a few words on behalf of the Senate...

...Four Justices—Brennan, White, Marshall, and Blackmun—concluded that quotas and less direct expressions of preference for minorities based on race were perfectly permissible, under both the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Constitution...

...Other problems, such as welfare reform and the ending of the draft, required many months and even years before those involved felt any degree of confidence in what they were doing...

...The bureaucrats are always more than happy to oblige...

...The good news is that Senator Russell Long ordered 40 copies of this sensible book and sent one to each member of the Senate Finance Committee and his staff assistant, with a covering note...

...Next, Martin Anderson's Welfare (Hoover Institution Press, $10.00...

...On the other hand, when baby screams all the time demanding attention, even when fed and dry, he discovers that mother also remains in the other room, and perhaps even closes the nursery door...

...This is done in the name of "free speech...

...Too many Americans, particularly pro-free enterprise conservatives, have assumed immense intelligence in the liberal world and have concluded that when liberals destroyed U.S...

...And then, of course, there is the cost...

...Senator Moynihan put his finger on a part of the problem in his discussion with Henry Kissinger (published in the American Enterprise Institute's useful bimonthly journal, Public Opinion...

...Unfortunately, her father, who made his money in a regulated, subsidized industry, does not understand it...

...This he has done in what he no doubt perceives to be the nobler cause of race war...

...This extraordinary affair cost the taxpayers $15,000, paid out of the "Office of Public Affairs budget and contingency funds," according to a spokesman...

...As it is, there's always the chance he will appoint Bella Abzug to look into the matter...

...In a curious decision reached by overlapping majorities, the Supreme Court held that rigid numerical quotas such as those used by the medical school at the University of California at Davis were impermissible, but that some form of special consideration to minorities based on race was permissible...

...There was wall-to-wall music outside the Humphrey Building," the Post reporters wrote, "as well as a sort of 12-ring circus in the building's lobby, and a birthday party at midday with Big Bird leading The American Spectator August/ September 1978 23 the crowd (estimated at 600) in 'Happy Birthday, HEW, Happy Birthday To You.' " Congressmen and Senators responsible for funding HEW came down from the Hill and joined in the fun and games...

...In the characteristic style of the demoralized Wimp, it is his own race that he has turned on...

...A juxtaposition in the Washington Star's story about her reply somehow managed to summarize everything I have been trying to say...

...And the good news about Simon's book is that it somehow made the New York Times bestseller list...

...Simon's chapter on the New York "disaster in microcosm" should be required reading across the land...

...But I'm not critical of it, and we in Congress are not critical of it, because we know that you have become the people's agency...

...I particularly liked Simon's characterization of the liberal ideology: "a hash of statism, collectivism, egalitarianism, and anticapitalism, mixed with the desire for the results of capitalism...

...The welfare reform plan that had been brusquely dismissed by President Johnson was hauled out and dusted off...

...It is by far the best-written book by a high government official in many a year...

...The result is no leadership at all...

...In other words, according to my reckoning, the party consumed a mere two-and-a-half seconds' worth of HEW's budget...

...At times, however, the Court's reluctance squarely to confront an extraordinarily controversial case produces a confusing and somewhat expedient decision which straddles the critical issue involved, when a forthright and straightforward resolution would have been more appropriate...

...THE NATION'S PULSE by PeterJ...

...Arthur Burns, I, and others on our staff soon discovered that while it was difficult to come up with a better program in any one of these areas, it was even more difficult to find out exactly what was going on in the existing programs...

...Carter will find that the average man is more concerned by what he pays in taxes than by what his neighbor pays...

...That growth, thrust upon us by the Congress and the American people, has created a more just and caring society...

...That has happened in this country in a way, and it has made for great internal change...

...Moreover, it has been forcibly put to the test in California, against the will of politicians...

...When a case also involves a widespread and potentially divisive conflict in the population at large, there is further danger that any decision by the Court will be perceived as result-oriented and political rather than as a principled judgment...

...Often, therefore, the Supreme Court's hesitancy when faced with such issues is to be commended: It reflects less a shirking of the Court's constitutional responsibility Peter J. Rusthoven is an Indianapolis attorney...

...Having thought about this for a while, I have concluded that America is now fittingly presided over by that characteristic specimen of the 1970s, the demoralized white male protestant—"Wimp," for short...

...Predictably, however, this latest assault will backfire...

...Once again, it is a pleasure to report that this book, covering such a broad and complex area of economic policy, is lucidly written —the more surprisingly, perhaps, since it emanates from the academy...

...This June's decision in Re,gents of the University of California v. Bakke—which involved the legality of so-called "reverse" racial discrimination—is an unfortunate example...

...Weekdays...

...There are other progenitors...

...Rusthoven Bakke: America's Oldest Medical Student With periodic exceptions (most notably the crusading impulses too often indulged during the era of Chief Justice Earl Warren), the Supreme Court has usually approached with marked reluctance issues that are the focus of sharp and emotion-laden controversy in the body politic...

...Finally, and perhaps most controversially, we have The Way The World Works, by Jude Wanniski (Basic Books, $12.95...

...Carter, it was reported, "will focus on neighborhood and community development programs in the coming months...

...Thus we arrive at the root meaning of the word demoralized...

...Fortunately, , the present occupant of the White House, in retreat at Camp David, was not in a position to gaze out over the assembled throng...

...This is a bold, original, occasionally eccentric survey, using the Laffer Curve to reinterpret history...

...I can't resist another quotation, this one about the role of the press: I was constantly shocked by the lack of seriousness, by the lack of concern for fact, and, where I was personally concerned, by many journalists' failure to understand that I was not simply a malignant symbol to be hissed at in ritual hate, but a representative of a serious economic and constitutional position...

...Applause...

...The suggestion that we should therefore be stronger and more resolute struck terror into the hearts of Wimps everywhere...

...Hayek...

...Today we are 145,000 federal employees and we pay the salaries of another 980,000 state, local and private employees...

...Would we be asked next to forego porn, pot, and the pill...

...No, he made the wrong criticisms, saying we are weak, cowardly, spiritually exhausted...

...This is not previously unheard of—England in its prewar appeasement phase had many of the same characteristics—but it is surely unusual in the life of nations...

...The tax rate is 200 percent, also yielding zero attentiveness...

...When the infant lies silently and motionless in his crib upon awakening, mother remains in some other room...

...Interesting, then, to observe the reaction to it...

...That is as succinct a lesson in the ways of Washington as it would be possible to find...

...The party lasted for two days...

...They smoked marijuana openly, taunted police, trampled geraniums, or lolled inertly on the grass in a state of stuporous indifference while a scrofulous, hirsute, semi-naked, fully-crazed speaker harangued them with paranoid invective, assassination gibberish, and slogans: "Free the heads...

...Not to join.in is to be suspected of being "unliberated," possibly a Republican...

...No wonder Mrs...

...There is almost nothing that the Curve won't explain: The infant learns, for example, something that politicians and economists frequently forget, which is that there are always two rates of taxation that produce the' same revenue...

...As far as I know, these figures have not appeared anywhere outside the Congressional Record, in which the "Proceedings of the Opening Ceremony and Presentation by the Honorable Joseph Califano" were published, with no sign of embarrassment, at the behest of Rep...

...Let us hope that Wanniski's book will encourage politicians in Washington to try the same experiment voluntarily...

...Now, it's nice of you to ask us here today, Mr...

...The season offered a few "fringe benefits" such as several and Moliere, but I found none of them especially distinguished...

...The Family Assistance Plan wouldn't work, Anderson and others eventually concluded, because such guaranteed-minimumincome programs substantially reduce the output of low-income workers and lead to an increase in family breakup...

...they are intellectual basket cases in the realm of basic economics...

...For that, at least, we may Tom Bethell is Washington editor of Harper's and contributing editor of the Washington Monthly...

...I often thought that within any organization such as this that it's awfully nice to have your banker up for coffee and doughnuts once in a while...

...Others, the saxophone, trumpet, and trombone...

...In that case, the Supreme Court was able to avoid a decision on the merits: Since one of the lower courts had ordered that DeFunis be admitted to the University of Washington law school, and since he was in his last semester and about to graduate by thetime the case had been briefed and argued in the Supreme Court, the Court held that the case was moot and refused to issue a substantive ruling on the legality of reverse discrimination...

...Three books that have come my way in the past month are worth a comment...

...Some critics suggested half-heartedly that Solzhenitsyn, the American guest, had spoken out of turn...

...I have this joke—which Henry may or may not appreciate—about thepeople who started the war and ran it and are still working here in Washington...

...This murky conceptual mess renders even the most innately brilliant of men stupid...

...Mrs...

...The President most probably would have thought it had something to do with the Allman Brothers and Hunter S. Thompson, and so deserving of immediate action...

...Wanniski marshals an impressive amount of evidence pointing to the conclusion that tax cuts historically have stimulated the economy—an idea whose time has plainly come, and one whose truth does not depend on the reality of the Laffer Curve...

...The most shocking instance of conscious bias was that of Leonard Silk, a member of the editorial board of the New York Times...

...Our sense In brief, it was the kind of season to be expected at a moment of of indignation these days is chiefly aroused by evils in far-away jittery affluence when it would be inopportune or ill-natured to localities...

...The Wasp-turned-Wimp has been de-moralized...

...This is not a misprint...

...The plan was rewritten, numbers were updated, and a few new ideas were added...

...The press hostility took different forms, of course, ranging from a conscious intent to damage me, through a kind of conventional parroting of liberal formulas of outrage, to sheer ignorance...

...Their excuse today is that 'I was only giving orders.' " Moynihan said he thought that this "failure of nerve" was with us "more so now than a few years ago when I originally sensed it...

...The "tax rate" on mother is zero, yielding zero attentiveness...

...Abroad, Carter's most noteworthy act to date has been to take the side of the Rhodesian terrorists...

...Let us no longer be taken in by the euphemisms of "majority rule...

...Hostility in varying degrees was heard from the New York Times, the Washington Post, James Reston, Arthur Schlesinger, and, most strikingly, Rosalynn Carter...

...Then he got down to the serious business of ensuring that there would be no let-up in this multiplication of spending money...

...CAPITOL IDEAS by Tom Bethell HEW's Silver Anniversary In front of the White House, on July 4, 1978, a dirt-encrusted, insensate mob of about 3,000 "yippies" filled Lafayette Square...

...He lashed out mercilessly at the "three thousand millionaires" who, he claims, will benefit from the Steiger Amendment to reduce capital gains taxes, perhaps forgetting that he is himself a millionaire...

...The Department of Health, Education and Welfare's 25th anniversary "birthday party" perhaps deserved more publicity than it received...

...At the trendy Washington gatherings, pot is circulated, cocaine sniffed...

...In any matter of import, there is danger that too swift and too certain an adjudication will decide for all time—and perhaps wrongly—an issue whose final resolution is better left for another day...

...Had Solzhenitsyn only condemned America for its 22 The American Spectator August/September 1978 racism, inequality, pollution, and poverty, the New York Times would certainly have commended his "thoughtful statement...

...At home, he practices the bitter politics of class resentment...

...In view of its relatively dry subject matter—New York's fiscal crisis, the origins of the Federal Energy Administration, etc.—this is a remarkable achievement...

...Amy Carter could understand perfectly well what was wrong with such a system if her father "regulated" her lemonade stand the way the liberals in Congress have regulated the energy industry...

...Unfortunately, the demoralized white male is not merely the child of Vietnam...

...But one day is not enough to grasp the full implications of any government program...

...as the arbiter of last resort than a recognition of the heavy burdens that responsibility entails...

...Well, it was a little difficult to get that figure...

...The book reads as though it were somehow ripped from the typewriter in one vigorous sweep of passion...

...Carter disliked it so...

...Most elites that lose wars lose their heads in the process...

...The peculiar consequence is that the nation-at-large is possessed of a collective good sense greater than that of its nominal leaders...

...HEW now employs 1,144,000 people.* That's bigger than the Army, I think, or the Navy...

...But that is not convincing...

...President Wimp presides, and "presides" is the right word, for by no stretch of the imagination can Carter be said to govern...

...Anderson reports that Carter's Program for Better Jobs and Income (a doomed attempt to avoid the pejorative connotations of the word "welfare"), alleged to cost $2.8 billion more than current welfare programs, will in fact cost close to $20 billion more...

...John Brademas of Indiana—another lawmaker who both initiates and subsequently benefits in his district from HEW appropriations...

...Jail the feds...

...When Nixon took office, there were over 400...

...The question whether preferences based on race may legally be given to members of minority groups, so long as the purposes be "benign," had first reached the Court in 1974 in DeFunis v. Odegaard...

...Finally he came up with it...

...There were also revivals of plays by O'Neill, Shaw, rock the boat...

...David Obey of Wisconsin played the harmonica...

...In the 16 years since I came to America, I can confidently assert that no chief executive has filled me with as many misgivings as Jimmy Carter: not merely misgivings about himself, but about the country that elected him...

...Califano said in his speech: "In 1954 we were 35,000 federal employees...

...Notice the suggestion that the only way we can deal with totalitarian advances in Africa is to make friends with our enemies...

...One of the few causes on behalf of which the Wasp-turned-Wimp is ready to turn out, drink a glass of wine, and cough up a donation is the legal defense of one or other of the more egregious pornographers or porn-film stars...

...Solzhenitsyn said that "the forces of evil have begun their decisive offensive...

...Secretary Califano spoke, noting proudly that HEW's budget had increased 26-fold in 25 years...

...The result is that you must depend on the bureaucracy that is there when you arrive...

...Two Washington Post reporters who covered the event genially noted that "this is not bad for an organization whose annual budget allows it to spend an average of $500 million per day...

...This year, in the Bakke case, no such easy out was available...

...It takes an immense resistance to logic and fact not to know that one cannot simultaneously control prices, inflate costs, ban production, increase taxes, grant counterproductive subsidies—and expect healthy vigorous production as well...