CONGRESS TURNS RIGHTWARD

...What appears to be happening, if the freshman Democrats do represent a long-term trend, is that, as congressional Republicans move further to the right and decrease in numbers, the vacuum in the center is being filled by Democrats, and that the majority party is itself moving to the right...

...Louis and one of the stars of the freshmen class, noted with some pleasure during an interview...

...In addition to the small district cadre that any candidate needs to get elected, Congress, in the name of reform, has granted each member a personal staff of 18, a computer service that is the envy of any directmail specialist, and the creation, by every agency of the executive branch, of a "congressional liaison" section, whose function is to grant a prompt response to every request from a member on behalf of district constituents...

...Louis City Council as a young turk and now, as a member of Congress, he does not owe his election to any city organization...

...J ust as important as the changing forces in district politics is the shift in representation that will take place after the 1980 census, a 15 change demographically foreshadowed by the 46 freshmen Democrats...

...Ten years ago, the thought of the representative from Panetta's district challenging the chairman of Military Construction would have been inconceivable: the district includes Fort Ord, the Monterey Language School, and the naval postgraduate training school...

...Other votes include passage of antibusing amendments, a blanket prohibition of the use of federal funds for abortions, the denial of benefits to Vietnam War-era veterans whose discharges were upgraded under a presidential directive, and defeat of key minimum-wage amendments...

...In these areas the proportion of whites has been steadily declining, and the typical response has been to create black core districts while forcing white incumbents to compete for a declining number of seats that are being diluted with larger chunks of suburban wards and precincts...

...The increasing shift in balance of pressure on individual House members from the congressional leadership to organized local groups work, in turn, as a pull to the right...

...The measure for which he is given the most credit —the ethics code—was in fact critical to the establishment of his credibility as a leader...

...geographically, the 46 were elected from districts that are likely to produce most change in the composition of the House after the 1980 census: the Sunbelt tier and suburbia...

...This style of representation includes a strong commitment to procedural 16 reform of the House, but, while the 75 Democrats of 1974 blended reform with the basic tenets of liberalism, the freshmen have an entirely different ideological undercurrent...

...What makes these Democrats unique is that they are more liberal—in the traditional sense of a commitment to social-welfare legislation, prolabor bills and income redistributing measures—than either their seniors or juniors...

...This group, which now has a majority of members who have served three or fewer terms, gives final sanction to committee and floor rules, elects the leadership, and decides whether committee chairpersons will keep their jobs...

...New members dismiss out of hand what in the days of Sam Rayburn was an accepted truth: that the leadership had absolute control over each member's congressional career...

...In addition, lack of congressional experience functions as a credential instead of a liability...

...Louis, and to prevent any court challenge based on discrimination...

...Legislation passed in the current session prevented a sharp cutback in the housing-aid levels to the older cities, but it is highly questionable whether existing formulas can survive the shift in the balance of power in the House after the next census...

...In the long run, particularly after the growth in suburban and sunbelt representation following the 1980 census, the consequences are likely to prove both more subtle and significant...

...without it, he faced debilitating defections from the junior members...

...from a city district, a seat on Education and Labor...

...This joining of the reform drive with domestic conservatism among the youngest Democrats is probably the major factor in the seemingly exceptional strength demonstrated by the dwindling Republican minority during the 95th Congress...

...Reform, once seen as the vehicle to free the House of Representatives from the constraints of conservative leadership, is now serving increasingly to weaken the power of a liberal leadership at a time when pressures on the younger members come from the right...

...O'Neill's talent as speaker has been to define the terms on which his own power is judged...

...logic, and not the offer of a job to a backer or the promise of a campaign contribution must prevail...

...Election-day voter registration, perhaps the most effective measure to increase the political leverage of the poor, is dead...

...Over the past three years, however, the effect has been to shift all the new funds to jurisdictions, largely in the Southeast and South, that had been receiving no money under the old, discretionary system, and to maintain funds for the older cities in the Northeast and Midwest at essentially stagnant levels, despite inflation...

...The concept of a balanced budget coincides with the kind of reform impulse characteristic of the new member and of their constituencies, voters who see the placement of ethical restraints on members of Congress as an integral part of a larger constraint on the spending and regulatory practices of government, practices that were until now basic to the Democratic party and to the majorities it won among blacks, unions, and in city wards and precincts...

...The likely prospect is that his district will be pushed further out of St...

...This lack of a debt to any locally based political organization, which has become the rule among members elected since 1968, is one of the basic steps toward autonomy from the 12 House leadership...

...Panetta himself has minimal ties to the Democratic party: he was a Republican civil-rights appointee under the Nixon administration...

...These 46 freshmen are, as a block, more conservative on social and economic issues than any other class, a voting pattern that increases in importance with the recognition that these 46 are also a reflection of probable trends after redistricting...

...This weakness in the present Speaker's power was quietly reflected in O'Neill's decision to abandon any effort to keep Robert L. F. Sikes in the Appropriations Subcommittee chair...

...No constituent group is against it...

...Common Cause and the League of Women Voters, whose concerns reflect the values and interests of their predominantly upper-middle-class membership, are often working for the reduction of power of the liberal leadership...

...an amendment prohibiting federal funding of Legal Aid-backed desegregation suits was opposed by Democratic members 150 to 101, but supported by the freshmen Democrats, 21 to 20...

...The first-term members—those elected in '76—are representative of the population changes that will be integral to redistricting before the 1982 election...

...Analysis of their votes on the litmus issues that have surfaced in the first months of the 95th Congress shows: while Democrats as a whole backed the common situs bill by a margin of better than 2 to 1-191 to 88—the freshmen democrats gave only lukewarm support, 25 to 17...

...It has guaranteed a solid block of black representation in the House but at the same time has served to create almost lily-white districts in the same communities, consequently eliminating from these districts what had been a source of pressure to support traditional Democratic programs...

...These groups also share a deep distrust of traditional mechanisms in the congressional legislative process: log-rolling to build up majorities, patronage, and the distribution of pork-barrel benefits, the placement of a premium on personal and party loyalty as factors in making legislative decisions...

...Their conservative votes reflect what might be described, more accurately, as rational representation of middle-class interests...

...Although the prospect of redrawn districts is still three elections away, it is a growing force in the thinking of members of the House, particularly younger members who have the least leverage with the state legislatures that set the new district lines...

...On this assumption, the probability is that over the next three years the House will progressively recede from its public image as a force for continued deficit-spending and become at least a partial ally of the Carter adminstration's goal of a balanced budget, despite the grumbling from O'Neill and other House leaders that such a goal does not deserve a first priority from a Democratic administration...

...In any district containing an economic mix, the more affluent are far more likely to be organized than the poor, and far better equipped to make their position known to their representatives...

...With the near-elimination of "machine" districts, the style of campaigns in the past ten years has radically shifted in directions that further weaken the power of the House leadership to bargain for votes...

...The local organizations, which could once make or break a junior member, have been replaced by institutionalized personal organizations available to any member once elected...

...Discretionary programs have given cities the opportunity to take the litany of evidence of distress—percentages of decayed housing, number of unemployed, loss of small businesses—to federal executive branch agencies and there to corner all appropriations for housing or unemployment programs...

...on a minor consumer-protection bill prohibiting debt-collection agencies from harassment of debtors, Democrats were in favor 158 to 105 while the freshmen among them opposed the measure, 15 to 27...

...One of the traditional mechanisms used by the leadership to reward or penalize new members was the granting or denial of pork-barrel projects: courthouses, post offices, roads...

...The only way, for example, major revisions of the Food Stamp program were approved by the House was through a major vote-trading arrangement between farm and urban representatives, a process anathema to the constituencies of Panetta and Gephardt...

...New members can service their district and, through well-established public-relations techniques, project an image that is almost totally independent of committee assignment, passage of sponsored bills, or the award of public-works projects...

...The consequence is that each term a growing number of members begin locked into a set of positions: the bartering process characteristic of democratic legislating is ruled out, not only by middle-class constituents suspicious of the process, but also by a set of campaign commitments made well before the reality of the choice in committee or on the floor, and before the potential benefits of compromise are present...

...More important, the emphasis on shared challenges to tradition fails to recognize the dramatic ideological differences...

...For the members with a rudimentary sensitivity to their district, these perquisites guarantee reelection and have served to break critical dependency on the leadership for elective victory...

...Gephardt, for example, noted in an interview that Missouri 17 will probably lose one of its ten seats...

...Leading proponents of the use of vote-trading are representatives of minorities who, in an increasingly "rational" Congress, are going to find prospects of winning, or even maintaining, governmental benefits dimming...

...While not insensitive to the needs of and pressures on minorities and the poor, the critical factor for these representatives in the casting of a vote is the protection of the economic and social gains of those who are not in poverty...

...He does not place the prestige of his office behind a bill until it is ready for floor action and the votes are counted...

...Louis and adjoining white suburbs to the South, was elected to the St...

...These perquisites have been developed and are based on the argument that they provide the services essential for sound judgment on issues before the House...

...In these berths, members slowly acquired seniority and expertise in fields that would provide increasing benefits for their constituents...

...The flood of inserts to the Congressional Record and of releases to the press gallery during the debate on the ethics code was equalled in the last session only during the debate on a congressional pay raise, and on the day of the demise of the B-I Bomber...

...In 1974, however, 11 of the major urban programs were consolidated into a formula program—Community Development—in a pattern followed by a number of lesser publicworks and unemployment programs...

...These votes are cast at a time when only token remnants of the once-powerful conservative Southern Democrats remain in power...

...When Gephardt arrived in Congress last year, it was not the leadership who provided him with the most important post in his first term—an assignment that probably will be instrumental in his reelection...

...Carl Albert, one of the weakest speakers in history, has been replaced by Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, Jr., perhaps the quintessential Northern Democrat, and a politician who thrives on the manipulation of votes to build majorities...

...Creation of a consumer-protection agency, acceptable even to the conservatism of Jimmy Carter, faces probable defeat or dilution in the House despite the presence of 289 Democrats...

...In the first session of the 95th Congress, there is abundant evidence of a shift to the right...

...The conflict between the pressures of district groups—to which the younger members are far more sensitive than those who first won election in a different era—and traditional congressional politics was embodied in the drive to oust Representative Robert L. F. Sikes from the Military Construction Appropriations Subcommittee chair he had used to increase the value of personal investments...

...The Rules Committee has become in large part an arm of the leadership, but it is generally obliged to send bills to the floor with rules permitting up-and-down votes on major issues within the legislation...

...If that means not returning favors and (not) getting the pork barrel, it is politically right and what my constituents want...

...Louis, Cleveland, New York, Detroit, Baltimore and Chicago—has cut two ways...

...This dispute now takes place in the context of the continuing shift away from discretionary grant programs—urban renewal, model cities—to formula grant programs patterned in part on the principle of revenue-sharing...

...Finally, reform coincides with the growth of elective politics based on the media, and it is one of the most accessible vehicles a junior member can use to get coverage in the home papers...

...The 75 Democrats elected in 1974 were by any standard statistical freaks, containing a disproportionate number of men and women with roots outside regular politics, from the peace and antipoverty movements, who used the lever of Watergate to win elections...

...To a certain extent, power is the authority to make discretionary decisions, benefiting some and hurting others...

...A solid block of them, 20, are from Sunbelt states—the tier of states extending across the Southern third of the country— which has been experiencing the sharpest population increase—and a majority, 29, represent the range of districts where the largest population shifts, up and down, are taking place: once rural areas now subdivided into suburban population centers...

...You know, there is nothing the leadership can offer me, really nothing," Richard A. Gephardt, Democrat of St...

...Now, Gephardt pointed out, not only is there no traditional organization demanding that it be paid off, but "porkbarrel deals would hurt me in my district...

...In the past, a newly elected member from a farming district would seek a seat on the Agriculture Committee...

...the edges of declining cities in the East and Midwest...

...The dominant forces in district politics have become a broad array of issue-oriented interest groups— chambers of commerce, civic-improvement organizations, branches of Common Cause, ethnic social clubs, PTAs, farmers' organizations...

...O'Neill has the discretionary power to appoint special ad hoc 13 committees, such as the Energy Committee, but he has had to guarantee adequate representation in its membership of all regional interests...

...The development of procedural reform, as a separate terrain from which elective capital can be harvested, has provided a new, and quicker, avenue to congressional prominence...

...O'Neill, however, does not have the authority to be autocratic within the confines of congressional procedure or the power to either insure or seriously injure a member's chance of reelection...

...This vantage point results in a dangerously inadequate perception of Congress: it glorifies the new members' "independence" without recognizing that changed district politics require independence as a prerequisite to election...

...the presidential candidates were not, except perhaps in the South, major factors at the congressional levels...

...These projects allowed members to proclaim their personal power to the voters—but, more important, the projects provided jobs and contracts to the clubhouse politicians back in the district whose decision whether or not to endorse a new member for reelection often determined the outcome of the contest...

...The consequence, in the politics of the House, is that the problems associated with central cities are reduced to the problems of the black congressional caucus, a group gaining in sophistication and seniority but increasingly isolated from many of their white, urban colleagues...

...Most important, the leadership cannot penalize any recalcitrant member by taking from him this machinery for reelection...

...In a reflection of the changing nature of district politics, Panetta noted after the Sikes defeat, his position was "not only morally right, it was politically right...

...The presence of the caucus and its demonstrated willingness to vote out of office four committee chairmen—Patman, Sikes, Hebert, Poage—acts as a major brake on the exercise of discretionary power...

...Instead, the freshmen caucus made him their reform chairman, a position that will give him the opportunity to try to put an end to the cheap meals, free flowers, lavish athletic facilities, and other side benefits that now go with membership in the House...

...from a district with military bases, a seat on Armed Services, etc...

...Gephardt, to a large extent, personifies the difficulties facing O'Neill and the other, older Democratic leaders whose roots are in the Roosevelt coalition...

...In terms of House politics, however, the critical fact is that these benefits are handed out on an entirely neutral basis...

...I n the short run, the consequences of the reform-conservatism of the freshman Democrats is already apparent in the opposition facing such bills as consumer protection, election-day registration, and common situs...

...To them, an integral, although largely unstated, element of reform is the curbing of major parts of the basic Democratic majority: demands from blacks, unions, and urban interests for increased spending and protective legislation...

...From a purely political point of view, no freshman could ask for a better assignment, and no speaker could ever give it to a freshman...

...The problem of redistricting is most acute for white members who represent urban districts that have been core bases of liberal support in the past...

...What unifies almost all these groups is their insistence that congressional candidates spell out their positions in detail on every conceivable issue...

...There is no coherent party structure in the district, and Panetta won largely through his own work and organization...

...In this way, he has taken credit for the passage of a new ethics code, the federal pay increase, and the energy bill—while avoiding any liability for the failure of common situs, election-day registration, and consumer protection...

...This essentially liberal leadership is faced, however, with a growing body of younger members who are not only reform-minded but also conservative...

...As a sample of long-term trends, however, the 46 Democrats elected last year are far more significant...

...They argue, with some legitimacy, that the vehicle for the winning of votes, particularly among the younger members, now must be rational persuasion...

...Neighborhood and civic groups, less interested in federal issues than in local government, echo, however, a recurring plaint against their tax burdens...

...More important, the creation of these formulas gave Congress the authority to determine precisely how the money for each of these programs will be distributed, down to the smallest county in the state...

...The Panettas and Gephardts of Congress— prototypes of the new generation of members—have changed the rules of the ball game...

...O'Neill's attempt to formally expand his procedural power by winning approval for the creation of a House "administrator" recommended by the Obey Commission and to be appointed by the speaker was overwhelmingly defeated: 252 to 160...

...Of the current roster of 22 committee chairmen, 15 had favorability ratings of 80 percent or more from the AFL-CIO in 1976...

...The result of these political circumstances is a freshman class of Democrats that votes more conservatively on domestic social issues than any other class in the House...

...Common situs legislation expanding the right of organized labor to picket construction sites—a proposal passed in 1975 by a vote of 229 to 189—was defeated last year, March 23, by a margin of 217 to 205...

...A leader of the antiSikes forces was Leon Panetta, a freshman Democrat from Monterey, California...

...More affluent suburban governments were often either out of the running or unwilling to compete for funds requiring that recipients provide housing for the poor...

...Business organizations and their lobbying arms are demonstrating, in the current session, the most sophisticated use of constituent pressures, using lists of business people, conservatives, Republicans, and management personnel to create district opposition to consumer-protection, minimum-wage provisions and common situs...

...Business groups lobby against federal regulation, bills beneficial to labor, increases in the minimum wage...

...A second major characteristic of current local-interest groups is that they are predominantly middle-class, and the pressure 14 they apply is not for the creation of new, substantive programs, but for procedural reform or for the elimination and prevention of government initiatives...

...The difficulties facing the consumer-protection agency bill and the election-day registration bill are in large part attributable to the lack of support among the first-term Democrats...

...Gephardt, who represents the white half of St...

...They won election in a year when the remnants of the left-wing politics of the 1960s no longer had the adhesive of Watergate to hold together a dying coalition...

...Working in tandem with basic shifts in the substance and style of district politics and with the growing perception that the country may face an economy of scarcity, the reform movement in the House has in part returned to one of the roots of reform in American history: a restrictive view in which corruption and a government of largesse become, if not one and the same, closely intertwined...

...In writing about the two most recently elected classes in the House, there has been a strong tendency in the press to lump them together with an emphasis on their shared "questioning attitude" and "unwillingness to accept the status quo...

...Although the House has progressively weakened the powers of the committee chairs and seemingly added to the procedural leverage of the speaker—giving him control over the Rules Committee, for example—the major development has been the rise of the Democratic caucus on which, ultimately, almost all the speaker's powers depend...

...Had O'Neill tried to enter the controversy he would have faced a humiliating defeat at the hands of a collection of freshmen and sophomores...

...To intensify the conflict, reform has clipped the power of the speaker and the committee chairmen to line up votes among the younger members and, despite portrayals of O'Neill's tenure as a return to the tradition of a strong speaker, his political muscle is highly fragile...

...It is a guaranteed no-lose issue, risking none of the loss of voter support that advocacy of substantive legislation inevitably produces...

...Louis to the more conservative south, in a move to preserve the majority black district for the current incumbent, William Clay, in the northern half of St...

...The practice of creating black districts, characteristic of most northern cities— including St...

...In the 1976 contest in Baltimore's Third Congressional District— where the winner used to be picked by a small handful of clubs and , if he wanted to stay in office, he did as he was told—five candidates issued position papers on everything from juvenile crime to deregulation of natural gas to abortion...

...The pattern extends to proposals of shifting money to social programs, antibusing amendments, minimum-wage provisions and, to a lesser extent, to measures prohibiting federal funding of abortions...

...The democratization of House Democrats has served to reinforce the independence of the membership...

...This argument, however, works only for those with constituencies that coincide with the national middle-class majority and do not need exceptional benefits from government...

...Beyond the shifting power, reform is also serving to alter basic patterns of congressional behavior...

...Still in the formative stages is the beginning of a major dispute over the distribution of funds, pitting the South and Southwest against Northeast and Middle West, and suburb against city...

...well-established white bastions outside the cities that have high percentages of blacks...

...The almost universal practice has been to effectively place all blacks in a city in one or more districts, depending on the numbers, so that the black voting majority ranges from 55 to 80 percent, and then to establish adjoining white districts with black populations of 2 to 20 percent...

...Formulas guaranteed the distribution of money outside city limits to almost every governmental jurisdiction, no matter how affluent...

...Debates on alternative formulas in the House are not conducted on the basis of need but of computer printouts showing dollar figures for each state, city, suburb, and county for the duration of an appropriation...