Letter from a Whig
Slemp, C. Bascom
"Letter from a Whig" The New Congress Following the November elections much has been written on the ideological shift to the Left of the new Congress. There are ninety-two newly elected members in the House of...
...In the new Congress the Senate's eighteen standing committees will have only six chaired by Southern Democrats, although these chairmanships still include the big four—Appropriations, Armed Services, Finance, and Foreign Relations—as well as Agriculture and Judiciary...
...Under Burton's leadership the Democratic Caucus has already instituted a number of far-reaching changes, the most important of which was the stripping of the House Ways and Means Committee of its major source of power...
...However, the Ways and Means Committee will still be smaller than other major House committees, including Appropriations with fifty-five members, Armed Services with forty, Foreign Affairs with forty, and Judiciary with thirty-eight...
...In the Senate, Democratic liberals are also seeking changes...
...Mills had selected his fourteen Democratic colleagues on the Committee very carefully (although not carefully enough considering his successor), and not one of the Democratic Committee members in the Ninety-third Congress had been in Congress for less than fourteen years...
...except for the President, because his committee was responsible for Democratic House committee assignments, and for legislation related to taxation, social security, trade, and national health insurance...
...The shift in the political power of the Senate is still not realized...
...The most effective way to do this would be to modify the filibuster rule...
...chaired the Ways and Means Committee he was considered the most powerful man in Washington, D.C...
...Sisk for the Caucus Chairmanship reflected a decisive victory for the House Democrats' liberal Left...
...The much discussed reform proposals of the Bolling Committee were supported by House Republicans butwere defeated because of opposition from House Democrats...
...Under the new system Democratic committee assignments will be made by a newly founded policy group...
...But in terms of their ideological goals the new Democrats have to date reflected a strong sense of purpose and unanimity...
...In addition they would like to expand the size of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Finance Committee...
...The present Speaker of the House, Carl Albert (D.-Okla...
...However a more gradual change in the Senate power structure has been underway that has not received much noticeable attention, but which in the long run will be of far-reaching significance...
...Stennis (Armed Services) is seventy-three, McClellan (Appropriations) is seventy-eight, Sparkman (Foreign Relations) is seventy-five, Long (Finance) is fifty-six, Eastland (Judiciary) is seventy, and Talmadge (Agriculture) is sixty-one...
...All of these proposed changes are designed to reflect more closely the two-to-one liberal vs...
...They would like to expand membership of the Democratic Steering Committee (responsible for making Democratic committee assignments), and the Democratic Policy Committee...
...for the position of Speaker of the House in 1976...
...is considered ineffective and out of touch with the new radical mood of.the House Democrats...
...The Southern chairmen of these six committees, however, are close to retirement...
...If Albert does not retire in 1976 his position as Speaker of the House will nevertheless be challenged by these Young Turks...
...No leadership changes are expected among Senate Democrats, and the only battle for a leadership position on the Republican side of the aisle was between Sen...
...Another major victory for House liberals came with expansion of the Ways and Means Committee membership from twenty-five to thirty-seven...
...Congress is indeed becoming increasingly liberal, but baby it looks as if we ain't seen nuthin yet...
...Senate Democrats hope to change seniority rules as their counterparts in the House have already done and to select committee chairmen by secret ballot...
...It is perhaps surprising to some, but House Republicans have traditionally been more innovative than their Democrat counterparts—possibly the outgrowth of their being the permanent opposition...
...House Democrats in the Ninety-fourth Congress will select their committee chairmen on the basis of a secret ballot rather than seniority, but House Republicans have so selected their ranking members during the past two Congresses...
...These newly elected Congressmen are younger than their predecessors (the new Congress will have the youngest average age of any Congress—under forty-one), they seem to be more aggressive, and they have shown little regard for what they consider Congress' antiquated traditions...
...The successors to thesechairmen are all from a different generation, more liberal, and from geographic areas outside of the South...
...Burton's victory over fellow California Democrat B.F...
...conservative ratio present in the general Senate Democratic membership...
...The initial test of their strength came when California Democrat Philip Burton, first elected to Congress in a 1964 special election, was elected Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus...
...And although little has been said on the matter publicly, Burton's election makes him the clearcut favorite to take on Majority Leader Tip O'Neill, (D.-Mass...
...The House GOP has used a Select Committee on Committees as their vehicle for making committee assignments...
...It has been widely written that the new Congressmen lack discipline and that they are more individualistic than their predecessors—the Democratic freshman class for example could not come to an agreement on who their so-called class president should be...
...The vote on this motion is expected to be close in the new Congress, for as the Senate membership becomes increasingly liberal the pressures will grow to stalemate the conservative minority...
...A perennial proposal in the Senate after every election is a motion to reduce from two-thirds to three-fifths the vote required to break a filibuster...
...When Wilbur Mills (D.-Ark...
...Their opportunity has now come, and as one pundit recently observed, they have nobody to blame but themselves if they fail to deliver on all those election promises...
...There are ninety-two newly elected members in the House of Representatives in the Ninety-fourth Congress, seventy-five of whom are Democrats...
...Because of the ^‘-w additions to the House membership, and because of the structural changes the new members have already implemented, the new Congress has become a highly partisan liberal Democrat vallation...
...Carl Curtis (a conservative from Nebraska), and New York's liberal Jacob Javits for the chairmanship of the Republican Conference Committee (Curtis won...
...Since Southern Democrats have traditionally been returned to Congress moreconsistently than any other group, they have been able to control the Senate's most powerful committees...
...the same cannot be said for the House of Representatives...
...In the aftermath of the elections most of the popular attention has, of course, focused on the incoming freshmen and their challenges to authority...
...Senators from both sides of the aisle have also decided to change Senate rules so that all committee meetings will be open to the public, as they are in the House, unless the committee has good cause to close .a particular session...
Vol. 8 • March 1975 • No. 6
