Ford vs. the New Congress

...enlarged say about who fills the vacancies on the two most powerful panelssix slots on the 25-member Ways and Means Committee and 12 on the 55-mem-ber Appropriations Committee The Republicans, in addition to replacing defeated colleagues who were the ranking members on three committees, may seek some leadership changes Already the new liberal impetus is beginning to have an effect The American Medical Association, for instance, is considenng endorsing for the first time some kind of mandatory national health insurance Consumer interests and environmentalists (who defeated eight of their so-called "dirty dozen" in Congress) are similarly laying plans for next year's battles Thus the prospect now seems good that Congress will chop away at the legislative backlog, liberate Administration proposals and even tamper with some hoary traditions of its own Nonetheless, the chances of its undertaking the basic reforms that would make it a truly viable governing institution are little improved "It will not let go of its even most fictional grandeur/But must grope down in the muck of its past," wrote Washington poet Reed Whittemore in another context And it will take more than one landslide for that to change...

...Washington-USA FORDVS THE NEW CONGRESS BY WALTER R. GORDON Washington Trying to read the long-term significance of the 1974 election results is about as easy as interpreting the oracles of Delphi Nevadans did not want the madam of a bordello to represent them in Congress Californians preferred a paunchy wheeler-dealer congressman tarred by the ITT affair to a 29-year-old water-ballet starlet In Ohio years of scandal revolving around alleged diversion of campaign funds for personal use did not stop the voters from recycling their former Republican Governor, James Rhodes, even in this age of the widely heralded post-Watergate morality Simultaneously the electorate sent four of Richard Nixon's staunchest defenders on the House Judiciary Committee to the county dump In Kentucky a conservative Democrat unseated a moderate Republican senator In Colorado the environmentalists seized every rampart m sight Since American off-year elections are not national polls, they do not turn basically on national issues or communicate a single national message In each town, county and congressional district, voters pull levers for the personality, party or prejudice of their choice Thus the apparent Democratic landslide on November 5 contains both more and less than meets the eye For one thing, it probably did nothing to help the Democrats pick a successful Presidential candidate in '76, but it added at least three politicians to the list of contenders for the 1980s (Hugh Carey of New York, Dale Bumpers of Arkansas and John Glenn of Ohio) Although the Democrats picked up three or four Senate seats, the liberal-conservative balance there has been tilted only minimally The sum of the change is probably represented by Gary Hart, George McGovern's Presidential campaign manager m '72, replacing Peter Domimck, an old-line GOP conservative, in Colorado The Democrats also gained at least four governorships, including those of the two biggest states, but that is slightly less than the off-year average for the party out of power In the House, however, the change was dramatic, even traumatic With a couple of races still in doubt, the Democrats have picked up a net of about 43 seats, a total ot 54 Republicans have departed, either voluntarily through retirement or involuntanly through defeat Significantly, the liberal GOP House club, the Wednesday Group, lost only one of its 36 members, while the predominantly conservative House Republican Steering Committee lost 30 of its 70 members, including its chairman, LaMar Baker of Tennesseee The Democrats replacing the departing GOP conservatives are predominantly young, liberal and sometimes obstreperous Freshmen traditionally have little influence m this town, where intimate knowledge of the corndors of power is a sine qua non, yet their sheer numbers should enable the present batch of Young Turks to make their collective voice heard at least within the House Democratic caucus, an increasingly powerful institution that is beginning to move into the vacuum left by the weak leadership of Speaker Carl Albert and his lieutenants Still, individually most of the new House members will be seen little and heard less Not only ignorance of how to go about moving and shaking in Washington, but often an extreme case of political insecurity will tend to silence them Elected from normally Republican and conservative districts, the new Democrats who value survival will have to prove to their constituents that they are sufficiently close to the middle of the road ?nd cognizant of local needs for pork barrel and patronage to warrant renewal of their contract While the shifts in the House and the Senate may have a noticeable impact on both the substance and quality of Washington politics over the next two years, therefore, it is important to realize what will not happen Neither the Senate nor the House will be, as Gerald Ford Walter R Gordon, a former mem-ber of the Baltimore Sun's Washington bureau, is now freelancing claimed to fear, "veto proof" Despite the Democrats' possession of about three-fifths of the seats in the Senate and two-thirds m the House, in both chambers a dependable number of Southern defections will reduce the majority party's margins Only on those occasions when the President flies in the face of a broad national consensus will Congress be able to muster the two-thirds requisite to override a veto (After the Democrats seized comparable majorities m 1958, it should be recalled, Congress was able to override only nine of 44 Eisenhower vetoes ) Nor is there any danger of the emergence of "congressional government"a figment of the theoretician's imagination that has not existed since Reconstruction, long before the American system was re-created in its current Presidential form The simple truth is that 535 men and women cannot govern, for they have no institutional way of formulating policy or expressing their will coherently Neither houseno matter how liberal has ever been able to do more than block Presidential initiatives and launch isolated lighting bolts of its own Congress cannot even administer programs or compel the Executive to administer programs it does not want Moreover, all the reports from around the country indicate this will not be the kind of big-spending, activist Congress that would seek to dramatically alter the shape of American Me Besides vetoing some of the President's more unpopular initiatives?for example, the 5 per cent income surtax-this Congress can be expected to expand and liberalize Ford proposals dealing with such things as public service employment and veterans benefits It can also be counted on to enact several major pending bills that narrowly failed in the last couple of sessions, like the establishment of an independent consumer protection agency Internally, prospects are much improved for major congressional reform, particularly in the House In the Senate, where the most important changes stem from retirements rather than election defeats, Abraham Ribicoff (D -Conn } plans to use the Government Operations Committee as an aggressive investigative tool that will be a thorn in the side of the White House His predecessor, Sam Ervin (D -N C ). was witling to push hard on some civil liberties issues, but his otherwise conservative, pro-Administration predilections restrained the committee Even more marked shifts will come as a result of Gaylord Nelson (D-Wis ), an advocate of consumer and environmental causes, replacing Alan Bible (D -Nev ) as head of the Select Small Business Committee, and William Proxmire (D-Wis ), a liberal who is feared and distrusted by large elements of the housing and financial communities, replacing John Sparkman (D -Ala ) as chairman of the Banking Committee In one transfer that may partially nullify this new Senate aggressiveness, Sparkman will take over from J William Fulbright (D -Ark ) as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, the most prestigious, but not the most powerful, panel m Congress Although the Southern conservative has promised to speak softly and rule with a small stick, allowing the stronger members ot the committee (including both the majority and the minority leader) free reign, he will nevertheless control both the agenda and the staff A friend of the defense establishment and an Administration supporter on most national security issues, Sparkman will try to steer the committee away from such sensitive subjects as the continuing war in Southeast Asia and the role of the Central Intelligence Agency in subverting Salvador Alleode's government in Chile In the House, liberals of both parties will have an...