The Word from Washington
The Japanese call it tsunami—the huge wave that follows an earthquake on the ocean floor or an underwater volcanic eruption. For the Congress of the United States, last month's election results...
...And when the ballots were counted, dozens more had been sent into involuntary retirement...
...That the Ford Administration will have to find work, or the semblance of work, for many defeated Republicans...
...has also concluded, after close scrutiny of Pentagon expenditures, that "$5 billion can be taken off the defense budget...
...13320 is pigeonholed in the House Rules Committee, thanks largely to the energetic efforts of Representative Les Aspin, Wisconsin Democrat, and an unusual combination of interest groups—the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Conservative Union, the far-right Liberty Lobby, and several liberal labor unions...
...It meant, among other things, that the pages, doorkeepers, elevator operators, and assorted hangers-on who labor at patronage jobs in the Capitol will have to spend long hours studying the names and faces in their little picture books in order to b e properly obsequious to their new patrons when the Ninety-fourth Congress convenes...
...There is good news about H.R...
...13320...
...13320, tried to persuade the Rules Committee that the critics of the bill were "misinformed," since it confers no real powers...
...No concerted assault on the creaky Congressional gerontocracy and the corrosive rules that keep it in power...
...The Rules Committee vote divided evenly, thus falling short of the majority required to send a bill to the House floor...
...Senator Barry Morris Goldwater (of all people) is worried about the President's discretion to "reach in and push that red button" that would trigger a nuclear war...
...He believes, therefore, that the United States should have "a constitutional amendment describing and limiting the powers of the President in the area of war...
...As we noted at that time, the measure would authorize the President, upon declaration of a vaguely defined Civil Defense Emergency, to impose total censorship, seize private property suspend judicial review, and exercise other draconian powers...
...That some seats will have to be moved in the House and Senate chambers to accommodate the larger majorities on the Democratic side...
...Well, maybe...
...For the Congress of the United States, last month's election results assumed tsunamic proportions...
...What else did it mean...
...For the moment, at least, H.R...
...Chairman F. Edward Hebert of the House Armed Services Committee, which had given overwhelming approval to H.R...
...Chairman Hebert, who has never before suffered a setback in the Rules Committee, will certainly make an effort to revive H.R...
...I don't think it will happen," says the Arizona Republican, "but it would be a good thing to guard against...
...Aspin responded, logically enough, that if the measure confers no powers, it does not need to be passed...
...This department never abandons hope...
...That the rest of the losers, or most of them, will settle down in Washington as lobbyists or fixers, adhering to the ancient rule that "they never go back to Pocatello...
...No creative surge of innovative legislation sparked by the infusion of young, energetic lawmakers...
...But it no longer holds its breath...
...Maybe there is hope...
...Next time, at least, he will probably be compelled to hold public hearings on the bill, and this, in itself, would be a radical departure from the customary practice of the Armed Services Committee...
...Senator Goldwater (can it be the same one who once chattered about dropping a nuclear bomb on the men's room at the Kremlin...
...No massive effort to transform the Government into an institution that serves the people rather than the special interests...
...13320, the bill to extend for four more years the Federal Civil Defense Act of 1950, as amended, which was described and discussed in this space three months ago...
...And nothing more...
...Potomacus...
...Even before the voters went to the polls, several dozen members of the House and Senate had decided, more or less voluntarily, to withdraw from public office...
Vol. 38 • December 1974 • No. 12
