Money Games Presidents Play
GLASS, ANDREW J.
Washington-USA MONEY GAMES PRESIDENTS PLAY BY ANDREW J. GLASS Washington Most people assume the sst program is finished because further subsidy has been blocked. What they fail to recognize is...
...Republicans used to claim that the President was doing his best to manage the economy and that requests to release impounded Federal funds were fiscally irresponsible...
...We have a devil of a time keeping these reprogrammings in hand," one of Nixon's men at the Office of Management and Budget (omb) told me...
...No Democratic politician who thinks about these things at all can come to any different conclusion...
...mass transit ($200 million...
...Were the White House to change its view, it is doubtful that more than $1.5 billion could be fed into the pipeline during the next 12 months...
...the mayors want their impounded money first...
...He states the matter simply: "Congress has approved the use of these funds for the benefit of our people...
...At 80, he has at long last achieved his ambition of heading Appropriations--the most powerful committee in the Senate and a fine guerrilla stronghold from which to harass the President...
...This is by far the smallest of the three categories--slightly less than $1 billion--but it is also the most potent politically...
...The final slice of impounded funds consists of public-works projects that came to life in the halls of Congress without White House blessings...
...Of course, the senator said that would be fine...
...Once Nixon decided that he wanted to hold fast on the Defense budget--that's where the real money is--there was very little room for us to play with, to get his program in and still stay within a predetermined overall ceiling...
...Lyndon Johnson initially plugged up the flow of highway trust funds, raised through a tax on motor fuel, to reduce inflationary pressures caused by the Indochina war...
...Even at that level of spending, virtually every heavy-duty contractor in the country would be engaged in laying down highways...
...One Presidential aide, who had somehow assumed that Jackson, alone of the Democratic Presidential hopefuls, would run for the office by defending the actions of its current occupant, was stung by the senator's remark...
...this year became chairman of the Subcommittee on Transportation of the Appropriations Committee...
...He then told some of the other people [on the Appropriations Committee] that if they had any objections they could express them directly to the Department...
...After January's announcement of the 1972 "full-employment budget," with its $11.6-billion planned deficit, they could no longer cite Nixon's anti-inflation campaign as a credible reason for not spending money already in hand...
...They asked him whether it would be all right with him to tap a research contract they had over in the Department [of Transportation] so they could continue to pay salaries and that kind of thing until Congress sorted out the mess and voted some more money [to close down the program...
...Quite often, we have to tell [legislators] that they have gone too far and that they must go back and put it in a supplemental [appropriations bill...
...The President is saying they shall not be used for that purpose...
...The second segment consists of what LBJ once referred to as "my Great Society money...
...An operative at the omb, next door to the White House, was more candid: "Most of the things in the budget are uncontrollables and on-going programs which for one reason or another a President can't touch...
...We have an argument, not over a program, but over a long-range policy...
...The sst people believed it would be prudent to contact him, since they continue to pay themselves a salary during the months that Congress takes to debate how many more millions it should spend to terminate the project...
...low-cost public housing ($192 million...
...Even Senator Allen J. Ellender (D.-La...
...On April 14, Senator Henry S. Jackson (D.-Wash...
...The matter is more complex than that, however, for the $13 billion being held "in reserve," as the Nixon men like to put it, falls into three distinct categories...
...Indeed, the issue was decided by members who opposed the President's project simply because he had put their projects on ice after having signed them into law...
...just about everybody in the opposition party is getting into the act...
...The first pile of frozen money is earmarked specifically for building highways, and amounts to about half the total...
...Every President has to decide what his priorities are going to be," a high official in the White House said, discussing the matter as if he were teaching a course in elementary political science...
...There is some evidence that the President has learned a painful lesson from this sequence and is now ready to dip a bit more freely into the Treasury...
...The din is already sufficient to assure that it will reverberate well into the 1972 Presidential campaign...
...Essentially," he says, "this is a political question and its ultimate solution must be found on political grounds...
...And one of Senator Sam J. Ervin's (D.-N.C...
...But no one as yet has been told how much of the $13 billion will be thawed and where it will goIn any event, a decision in principle will not lift the political siege...
...The impoundment issue has attracted Democrats of so wide an ideological spectrum largely because they are now impervious to political attack from the gop...
...Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D.-Mont...
...For another, the new ploy would spend money Congress never voted, which is held to be a lesser crime than not spending money Congress has voted...
...While reprogramming continues to flourish in quiet corners, the anti-impoundment drive has been gaining support through a barrage of hearings, press conferences and speeches...
...The President wants them to get Congress to pass the bill...
...There's no question that Nixon is going to open the floodgates of spending in 1972," Humphrey told me...
...one of the most experienced penny pinchers in Congress, has joined in the anti-impoundment drive...
...For one thing, the sum involved, $800,000, is puny beside the $1.3-billion development cost of the plane...
...Weinberger performed approximately the same meat-axe budget duties for Ronald Reagan in California that he now performs for Richard Nixon in Washington...
...This includes such bread-and-mortar urban programs as Model Cities ($583 million impounded...
...Forced to dwell in a gray world of semirecognition, they owe their political lives to their ability to land a conservation or development project for their district...
...It is frequently brought into play when, well into the fiscal year, someone discovers that a pet program has been underfunded...
...An informant on the Senate Appropriations Committee explained how the sst reprogramming was handled: "One of the sst people called up Bobby Byrd and told him that they had no authority to spend beyond March 31...
...called on the President to fire omb director George P. Shultz, whom he characterized as "Nixon's Dr...
...This assessment is widely accepted on Capitol Hill, where the villain is held to be Shultz' deputy, Caspar W. Weinberger...
...As befits his years of experience, Allen Ellender wants nothing to do with such musings...
...In addition, the President has heard an earful from the big-city mayors, who came to visit last March 23...
...Moreover, the drive is by no means restricted to activist Democratic liberals...
...judiciary subcommittees recently tossed around the constitutional argument with Weinberger and a panel of law school professors...
...Naturally, they found it hard to vote for aircraft jobs in Seattle while Federally subsidized projects in their own districts remained unfunded...
...In bureaucratese, the former tactic is known as "reprogramming" and the latter as "impoundment...
...Many members of Congress possess neither the brains nor the power to attract attention in the press...
...What they fail to recognize is that the Federal bureaucracy often succeeds in thwarting the will of Congress...
...Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (D.-Minn...
...Nixon has followed suit, merely increasing the proportion of blocked funds...
...This game is always in fashion, although it is not without risks to the players, as Richard Nixon discovered...
...wants the Supreme Court to decide the impoundment question...
...basic water and sewer facilities (another $200 million...
...thinks the President will release the impounded money early next year to prepare for his date at the polls...
...Reprogramming is a most informal process as government procedures go, and thus much favored by Administration functionaries...
...Yet, ironically, little has been said about the caper to keep the sst funded...
...Scoop apparently doesn't know that George has tried to be awfully reasonable," he said...
...That leaves a fringe at the top which is reported in the press as the Administration's program...
...Unlike Shultz, who had no hand in his appointment, Weinberger feels the President has the right to spend as he pleases, no matter what Congress happens to say or do...
...The defeat of the supersonic transport in the House was directly related to his refusal to release nearly $13 billion in fiscal 1971 appropriations...
...Senator Robert C. Byrd (D.-W...
...In their quest for fresh revenues, the mayors have seized upon the Nixon revenue-sharing plan...
Vol. 54 • May 1971 • No. 9
