WASHINGTON REPORT: 'Twas in January in '75
Sisyphus
WASHINGTON REPORT TWAS IN JANUARY IN '75 If ever a standard definition of politics as being the art of the possible needed to be proved out, this is the year. At home and abroad, things are...
...SISYPHUS...
...But Senators in Washington in advance of the convening of the new Congress didn't seem responsive...
...And, with or without the assistance of Alan Greenspan, chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and exponent of the mischievous Ayn Rand philosophy of "objectivism," Jerry Ford is beginning to tread water, if not swim, in the presidential pool of domestic problems...
...But there is every indication that the newer House members will somehow frame a national economic program to contrast with that of the President's...
...even in 1940, the rate was 14.6 percent...
...One major House offering will be a comprehensive national health bill...
...Indeed, for the first time in a generation, the House will be more "liberal" than the Senate, which may serve during the new 94th Congress, as George Washington envisioned it serving, the saucer into which the hot drink of the House is poured to cool...
...It's becoming somewhat tiresome to hear about how President Ford played star center on the Michigan football team and suffered accordingly, or he can't think and chew gum at the same time...
...2. The authority of a President to commit troops to combat overseas was defined and narrowed and made subject to congressional veto...
...During the two-year 93d Congress that adjourned last December, three major steps were taken: 1. Funds were eliminated for military land actions by our forces in Indochina...
...first fired...
...Economically, it could be worse, however unacceptable the unemployment rate is now...
...George Orwell, the secular prophet, may have known something in advance, at that...
...The keener minds in Washington encouragingly continue to operate on a Camusian premise that however pessimistic one's intelligence, one's will should remain optimistic...
...act is this clause: "The Congress finds that the ceaserfire provided for in the Paris Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring the Peace in Vietnam has not been observed by any of the Vietnamese parties to the conflict...
...And higher electricity rates may restore cohesion to the American family as they gather together in the only room that the old man can afford to have lighted...
...Although it has permitted itself to become somewhat a marginal institution of government, the Congress is staging a comeback...
...Fear can be a greater energizer than oil and a dash of Grand Rapids optimism is welcome—an intangible that eludes Gallup and Harris pollsters in the course of their periodic computations...
...Young members of minority groups are beginning to understand the meaning of their fathers' folk-wisdom: "last hired...
...Domestically, the jobless rate this year is expected to exceed 8 percent...
...The highest rate recorded during the 1930s Depression was 24.9 per cent in 1933...
...The Pentagon is urging the President to save the skin of Nguyen Van Thieu, President of beleaguered South Vietnam...
...Admittedly, this meeting dealt primarily with procedural matters, not ones of legislative substance...
...Beyond our 200-mile continental limit, Britain and Western European countries are into their worst economic times since they rebuilt themselves out of the rubble of World War II...
...At home and abroad, things are between a rock and a hard-place...
...The meeting called by the House freshmen members was comparable somewhat to a situation in which 9th grade parochial school pupils summon the teaching nuns to inform them there should be fewer catechism classes and no homework...
...Some matters, as all except the most partisan of congressional Democrats are beginning to acknowledge, are too serious to go to war about...
...La guerre may be finie there, but the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, nonetheless, will have a difficult time containing the Defense Department from finding projects for its 2-million-member military force, including flotillas, fighter planes and rockets, funded by Congress in the amount of approximately $80-billion...
...The answer is that both men can do both—and do...
...And, in general, our government and others operate increasingly on a theory that what is not forbidden must be made mandatory...
...In America, an observer from abroad once commented, things are never as good as they appear or as bad as they seem...
...3. A comprehensive, methodical system was established for supervising the federal budget, which now totals more than $300-billion annually...
...There are legitimate differences as to how to cut taxes —by rebate or by deductions...
...Sections of the Voting Rights Act expire this year and Jim Allen of Alabama may gain a seat on the narrowly divided Senate Judiciary Committee which has jurisdiction over renewal legislation...
...And yet...
...These alterations have been achieved, or made possible, by a fact seldom noticed—more than hah* of the membership of the 535-member Congress has been replaced within the last 10 years...
...So did Republicans...
...Sixteen percent of the membership of the House are first-term members...
...This changed condition enabled the dozens of new members in mid-January to summon the elderly baronial committee chairmen to a meeting where the latter were questioned as to how and why they operated the legislative committees as they did and why these matters should be changed...
...Majority Leader Mansfield said, in effect, the United States should no longer be Thieu's banker...
...The resulting two budget committees of the Senate and House of Representatives and a supporting "Congressional Budget Office" won't be tested as to their efficacy until two or three years have passed, but the undertaking, long overdue, is underway...
...Overall, there are a growing number of concerned persons in responsible positions to encourage a belief that we'll manage some of the ferociously formidable business of the day...
...The chairmen were summoned and they came, including unrepentant war hawks such as Representative Hebert of Louisiana, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Representative Patman of Texas, chairman of the Banking and Currency Committee, who at 81 is an ineffective economic populist...
...The Senate, on the other hand, in its windy, posturing John Barrymore manner, will seek to assert itself further in matters of foreign policy...
...A smallish nugget, perhaps, but one that Sisyphus is willing to start rolling up his Hill in January, 1975...
...The domestic and foreign problems are complex...
...It's costing as much as 80 percent more in the Metropolitan area for electricity than it did a year ago...
...The committee chairmen were shaking their heads for days afterwards at the boldness of the new members and the day of the Senate committee chairmen for a similar reckoning, but somewhat more genteel and at a committee level, looms ahead...
...The internal machinery of the House has been somewhat altered and Common Cause began 1975 by challenging the Senate to follow the example of the House...
...Maybe she'll cable the homeless gangster, Meyer Lansky, and give him refuge while she's in the mood...
...There's no super-bowl quality about the comeback to attract Howard Cosell's attention, but encouraging changes can be identified...
...He'll never do great, but he's all we have for now...
...Senator Glenn of Ohio, after all, slipped and fell in his bathroom—can he then not chew gum and shower at the same time...
...It's not yet time to curl up on the couch for the duration with Spengler or Joe Alsop —or both...
...They find that the Arabs have the oil, the multinationals have the tankers and the competition among buyers is fierce—the Market appears somewhat more Uncommon than Common these days...
...Gandhi discerns virtues in the PLO of Arafat...
...And little noticed in the newly enacted foreign-assistance...
...Whether to impose comprehensive wage-and-price controls or to impose selective controls...
...It's not quite time to buy wheelbarrows for the weekly shopping trip...
...Prices, outstripping wages, will continue their lineal ascent...
...After all, Israel expelled him a few years ago which should give him Class A credentials from her point of view—besides, Lansky is offering one million dollars to any nation that will let him in...
...Then there's the UN which now welcomes muggers to its rostrum...
Vol. 101 • January 1975 • No. 13
