Flexing Muscles on the Hill
GORDON, WALTER R.
FLEXING MUSCLES ON THE HILL By Walter R. Gordon The dangerous doctrine that a bare majority of the two houses can absorb all the power of all the departments cannot under any circumstances be...
...And in the last third of the 19th century, first the House and then the Senate held sway...
...Eventually, the subcommittee and full panel would approve a measure similar to the original Administration request...
...Even the Economist of London, one of the most staid and perceptive observers of the American scene, has dubbed what is happening "a revolution...
...Rutherford B. Hayes The concept of "congressional government" is nothing new in America...
...Under the weight of popular indifference and individual corruption, the institutions of Congress atrophied, particularly in the House, where personalities of national stature and vision were seldom to be found...
...The 94th Congress convened last month with 103 fresh faces...
...In the past, after the President submitted a bill to Congress, it would be referred to House and Senate committees headed by aging conservative Southerners, products of the seniority system, who over the years had acquired vested interests in the departments and policies they oversaw...
...Announced only a week after the Administration's economic program was unveiled, it calls for a 90-day delay on the proposed tariff increases so that Congress would have time to "develop fair and equitable alternatives.' Senator Jackson went on to say that he believes a Ford veto of this measure would be overridden...
...The Mansfields, Byrds and Alberts are not the dynamic leaders or profound thinkers who could fill the Executive vacuum, and new figures like Representative Burton have yet to prove they speak for a clear majority of their colleagues...
...Conference and standing committee sessions will more often than not be open to the public...
...Although programs have so far remained peripheral to the congressional reformers, their impact on the substance of politics is likely to be large...
...The term itself was coined at that time by a professor of political science, Woodrow Wilson...
...But one of the first indications of the trouble he can expect from Democrats on the Hill over the next several months is the Kennedy-Jackson resolution...
...Then the Rules Committee would send the proposal to the floor with stringent limitations on the length of debate and the amendments that could be offered...
...On the Senate side there were four new committee chairmen...
...Already, one committee chairman has flatly refused to hold hearings on a key Ford proposal—that Social Security boosts be limited to 5 per cent—and the Republican Senate leader, Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, is joining a move to block a rise in the cost of food stamps...
...The real question, however, is whether the newly invigorated Congress has the ability to act rather than merely react...
...Between the Jefferson and Jackson Presidencies, Congress, via the caucus, reigned supreme...
...In addition, it would meet in secret, out of the public's sight but in a direct line of fire from Administration and private lobbyists...
...The heads of the House Democratic Caucus could turn out to be generals without troops...
...Many observers here think not, and they give two reasons...
...Under the Articles of Confederation, there was no alternative...
...Against the backdrop of a revitalized Congress, the failure of President Ford to unite the country behind his program could have sweeping repercussions...
...In this century, though, Congress has generally seemed at best irrelevant and at worst an obstacle to good government...
...Meanwhile, the Senate committee would usually take more independent action, producing a bill the White House disliked...
...Now, spurred by a pair of parallel developments, all this may be changing...
...The two developments are the startling internal transformations taking place within Congress, and the failure of the Ford Administration to formulate a broadly acceptable program for dealing with the interrelated economic and energy crises...
...More fundamentally, despite the House leadership's serious efforts, real power may be shifting away from the committee chiefs to the Democratic Caucus, and its agents are a handful of little-known, relatively young liberals led by Phillip Burton of California...
...Though a majority of both houses might oppose this version, the session would be nearing its end and most members of Congress would feel compelled to go along with it...
...So the start of the 94th Congress leaves the country pretty much where it was at the end of the 93rd: in search of effective leadership...
...The depth and breadth of the changes within the Congress have electrified political commentators...
...At the moment, the President can himself impose a $3-a-barrel oil tariff and decontrol domestic oil prices, and in late January he said he would take the first step with a $1 tariff in February...
...Finally, there is an obstreperous spirit of iconoclasm afoot that is likely to make legislators scream publicly if they feel they have been fleeced privately...
...Power in the House and Senate is being more widely dispersed now than ever before, procedures are becoming more awkward, debate lengthier...
...There is general agreement that Congress will approve a tax cut, if not the Presidential plan for parceling out maximum benefits ($1,000) to everyone making more than $40,000 while providing little or nothing ($100 or less) to taxpayers earning under $10,000...
...Others, including economists of such diverse views as Herbert Stein and Walter Heller, can find little good to say about the energy-economic package, except that it is unlikely to be enacted...
...This year, for one of the few times since the conservative coalition captured Congress in 1938, things seem about to take a different turn...
...While Presidents proposed and disposed, members of Congress fumed and finagled...
...One is that the legislators are no better equipped to deal with the problems of the age than the floundering economists and lawyers around the President...
...This democracy on Capitol Hill may be good for congressmen's souls, but it imposes difficulties that are bound to get in the way of producing policies...
...First elected to Congress in 1964, the 48-year-old San Franciscan could prove to be the strongest politician on Capitol Hill, the point man in the "revolution...
...FLEXING MUSCLES ON THE HILL By Walter R. Gordon The dangerous doctrine that a bare majority of the two houses can absorb all the power of all the departments cannot under any circumstances be approved when embodied in legislation...
...While Presidents publicly dealt in high-stakes policy, congressional leaders privately dished out pork barrel and pelf...
...In the House the chairman would hand the bill to a like-minded subcommittee head whom he had appointed...
...The predictable result would be a piece of legislation close to the original Presidential request...
...The second reason lies in the very reforms that have created the vision of congressional government...
...A simple outline of traditional legislative procedures illustrates why...
...The Rules Committee will be less able to strangle debate...
...The conference to work out a compromise, dominated by the committee chairmen, would almost invariably be more conservative than the Congress as a whole...
...in the House at least a third and possibly as many as half of the 22 committees will be run by new bosses, and for reasons going far beyond the personal ones that prompted Wilbur Mills to quit the Ways and Means chairmanship...
...Borrowing a remark, Senator Henry Jackson of Washington-Democratic Presidential hopeful and still probably the most influential senator, the embarrassment of the Soviet emigration-trade deal breakdown notwithstanding—said of the Ford program, "It's merely rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic...
...House and Senate leaders will be more liberal and more responsive to the wishes of the members...
...The high turnover in committee chairmanships has broken up some cozy, long-standing relationships between chairmen and lobbyists...
...In the last analysis, Congress will write the personal and corporate tax cuts, and Congress, not the President, will formulate what will be enacted...
Vol. 58 • February 1975 • No. 3
