WASHINGTON REPORT: Point and Counterpoint
Sisyphus
WASHINGTON REPORT POINT AMD COUNTERPOINT A Spring of new beginnings for the Congress, forecast in recent years by its friends, has not yet bloomed. Reform husbandry has been practiced with some...
...They look at the Senate as a place to pass through...
...In recent years, the Congress has achieved some improvements at both operational and legislative levels, four years ago, it approved an omnibus measure de-sfcpied to improve its operations, including a vast improvement in access to information upon which to legislate...
...Moreover, the caliber of these new members strikes observers as higher than that of those they have replaced...
...A few of its committees are finally beginning to exercise some monitoring ("over-sight") of the operation of programs that were established as a result of legislation these committees have jurisdiction over...
...This is still true...
...It's been years since income-reallocation has been discussed and, only recently, war-and-peace issues in inflamed regions of the world...
...Les AuCoin, a 33-year-old Democrat of Oregon...
...It may be time to reinstate a procedure of requiring that a legislative committee report to its full body, House or Senate, a bill unfavorably as well as favorably...
...Bright, energetic and disdainful of customs and rules, whose only rationale for existence is that they're in effect -often to the detriment of the Congress...
...At present only bills approved by legislative committees are forwarded for debate and voting to the full body...
...But time is running oat...
...It's about time...
...What does happen is that the member of Congress with 10 or 15 years' service on a legislative committee has become a broker and/or down-the-line supporter of the private...
...As a matter of fact, there is a problem in obtaining a redress of authority and power between the Congress and the Executive Branch...
...Nevertheless, despite the upward swing, the whole (the Congress) is less than the sum of its parts...
...More often than not, the Congress has been content to serve principally as a forum wherein economic conflicts are resolved-railroads against truck lines, subsidies for demanding shipbuilders and import-controls for demanding manufacturers...
...it need only reform...
...The affairs of state now may be too complicated to permit the Congress, or one or two of its leaders, to "run" the government, as occurred from time to time during the nineteenth century...
...This was once done in the early Congresses...
...The presidency is stripped of its halo as a result of the lack of skills on the part of its current occupant, savage abuses committed by his predecessor, and the excesses of power acquired by his precedessor...
...Consideration should be given to limiting the number of years a chairman can serve as such, and also the number of years a member may serve on a legislative committee, as well as on such important committees, basically non-legislative, as the Senate Rules and House Rules Committees...
...Wherever found, the lash should be put to them...
...This has led an observer to suggest that the Congress consists of committees that come together from time to time to ratify each other's decisions...
...Differences between the House and Senate versions of a bill are sent to a conference, composed of a few members of both the House, and Senate committees which have jurisdiction over the bill...
...Many members of Congress, particularly Senators, don't want to press the issue, too hard on the expectation that someday they'll be living as President at the White House...
...As a whole, the new(er) members are less susceptible to the institutional "traditions" urged upon them by senior members-traditions often used to disguise unfair practices and special-interest legislation...
...But this means the legislative committees, mainly through their leadership, dominate their respective branches, House or Senate...
...It may be that the House and Senate each as a whole should discuss a major piece of legislation before referring it to the committee of jurisdiction...
...A third is U.S...
...v Another legislative sector that needs both alteration and monitoring is the so-called "conference...
...These days, it is a middle-class, white, centrist institution located at the periphery of its potential effectiveness-placed there by its own inertia, the background of its members, and by aggressive Presidents who want to run the whole show...
...This may not occur as a result of this presidential-election year, but, quite probably, will as a result of the next-four years hence...
...The Congress need not repent...
...The Congress has taken first steps to retrieve its role in the federal budget process...
...During Henry Cay's occupancy, for example, the Speakership of the House was the most important Office in the Nation and he ruled President Madison just as he ruled the House he presided over...
...As a result of this Fall's congressional election, about two-thirds of the 100-member Senate and the 435-member house will be "newcomers"-mat is, elected within the last ten years, a startling change from traditional ratios in the first six-plus decades of this century...
...Or else, we'll be returned to a situation a President or two from now wherein all roads will again lead to the White House...
...Those days, just as the supremacy of the Yankees in professional baseball, have gone forever...
...Two examples, although they differ politically, are Senators Domenici of New Mexico, a 45-year-old Republican, and Haskell of Colorado, a 59-year-old Democrat...
...But the conference, like other components of the Congress, has shown itself not tb be immune from abuses and misconduct...
...A Senator or Representative with 10 or 15 years' service on a committee, is, by definition, not more "experienced" and "wiser" than a member with five years' service...
...There are other long-standing deficiencies that are finally getting attention...
...The presidency will soon have an occupant, highly acceptable to the electorate, who will set out to regain all the reins of governance...
...This is unfortunate, because the climate is conducive to improvements...
...Reform husbandry has been practiced with some successes, but the legislative results are nowhere near its potential...
...Nearly a century ago, Woodrow Wilson observed, in effect, that Congress in session is Congress on display, while Congress in committee is Congress at work...
...A meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee offers a splendid opportunity to watch a few of these "presidential" Senators bob-and-weave and zig-and-zag...
...There's enough merit in the observation to require some attention to the matter...
...Consequently, it is an auspicious time, if for no other reasons, for the Congress to improve itself substantially and to recapture the Constitutional authorities it has either let atrophy or willingly given to Presidents over the course of the last forty years...
...There are cartels and trusts within the Congress as well as in the business world...
...sector of the economy which has an interest in bills within the committee's jurisdiction...
...But the main danger for the Congress has not yet been dealt with...
...The Congress.has approved a proposal to bring "sunshine" to bear upon the darkened legislative process -such as making it more difficult to hold executive sessions of legislative committees, and to enable these committees, as some now do, to prepare, in open sessions, bilk being readied for presentation to their full body, the House of Representatives or the Senate...
...sisyphus...
...Non-legislative provisions, as well as legislative provisions, have been added to a bill in conference-provisions which were never considered earlier by the committees of jurisdiction, or the House and Senate itself...
...Elected by their constituents as a federal legislators, their hearts, nevertheless, belong a mile away to the West from the Capitol building-that is, at the White House...
Vol. 103 • January 1976 • No. 3
