O Washington
Jones, Arthur
O WASHINGTON Arthur Jones Dorgan's Complaint Take the lid off the Capitol and what you have is a stockyard. "This place," says Representative Byron L. Dorgan, "is a feed lot for the rich." Who...
...Dorgan was elected in his own right in 1972 with 67 per cent of the vote, and re-elected in 1976 with almost 80 per cent...
...They're about money...
...After taking a business degree at the University of North Dakota, he earned a master's in business administration at the University of Denver, then stayed in the city with the Martin-Marietta Corporation...
...Fact is, most people here on the Hill don't want to give the voters anything more than pablum and toast...
...Sometimes you get the feeling you're talking to the suit while the real Dorgan is hiding in there, somewhere...
...he may have the knack...
...He's after the entire U.S...
...At 4:30 p.m...
...Space invaders for real means one thing to you and me (as taxpayers and corpses) and quite another to the gamesplayers...
...Because the space shuttle would cut "deployment time and cost" compared to firing Minuteman missiles ("a very large cost per launch"), the MX orbital basing system could be brought in within eighteen to twenty-four months for between $40 million and $50 million, says Summers, "not counting R&D...
...The House voted itself a $75-a-day Washington hardship living allowance...
...A while ago I went over to the Ways and Means Committee and testified...
...Will Dorgan be back next year...
...then, for the remaining railroad corporation, close down the unprofitable North Dakota branch line, among others...
...They probed the outlook for strategic space-based systems—that is, missiles that have been put out in space and can be sent in deathwards at the touch of a convenient button...
...Most freshman members of Congress only go for two committee assignments...
...It would not prohibit takeovers, says Dorgan, "it would simply get the costs off the backs of the American taxpayer...
...He did admit that a nuclear slug-out in space might raise the radioactivity levels at both poles a notch or two...
...Farm policy: "Fifty per cent of our Federal farm program goes to 10 per cent of our largest farmers...
...I sort of like what the populists did in the 1920s in the Midwest...
...He just sits there on the couch in his Cannon Office Building office, MBA smooth, and in a carefully controlled way expresses his provocative views...
...Dorgan smiled and said the coal company was offering a nickel a ton...
...We know what happened in Kentucky...
...Inside, he seems to be bouncing up and down, but he doesn't dare let it show: One, he was a street radical protesting the Vietnam war in the 1960s...
...It won't be allowed in...
...I'm so worried about our lack of research and development, that's why I fought Reagan's education cuts...
...They are civilians (or ex-military) importuning the Pentagon (which likes being importuned) with the latest iner-tial instrument, or laser, or optical wrinkle...
...Dorgan dug in the heels of his well-polished Oxfords...
...Conferences like the one I attended aren't about defense at all...
...It might be interesting to see whether he keeps his perspective, and to see how Congress and its fellow rich react to someone who wants to take the feedbag away...
...The spaceborne hardware—containing acceler-ometers and solid state gyros, no less—can be piggy-backed into space at practically no cost at all on the space shuttle...
...And he did make waves in corporate tax circles...
...He grew up in Regent, population 300, and boasts he graduated in the "top five" of his class...
...Those folks would start controlling their prices...
...They thought they were dealing with hicks," he says...
...Just in time for 1984...
...The only 'blue water' arena in a nuclear exchange is space...
...And Dorgan does...
...A revolt on the animal farm at the bottom of Constitution Avenue...
...Overall, says Alperovitz, Dorgan has "some pretty creative ideas...
...This stealth in space is not easily detected by the Soviets...
...He's enjoying it, but there's a toll: "This is a much harder job than I ever imagined...
...One of Dorgan's peculiarities is that he believes voters actually care about issues...
...He knows he's no hick...
...taxes...
...Don't let that "Potomac" fool you...
...Maybe peace, for some of them...
...Just rent part of the shuttle—like one-way U-Haul— whenever you want to send another one up...
...Western Electric was constructing the Grand Forks, North Dakota, antiballistic missile installation...
...Now to "blue water...
...We want an endowment.' " What they got was a "10 to is pci c...
...When you strip-mine coal in North Dakota, put in the plant to burn it, and make electricity, what are the people going to get for that extraction...
...And I have a greater opportunity than I did two years ago...
...Now this Government could prosecute 5,000, maybe 10,000 people for tax evasion...
...The way Dorgan tells it, eight lawyers and a general flew in to tell him that nobody could tax a missile system and that the AT&T subsidiary was simply an extension of the Defense Department...
...But I do have the capacity to add my voice to the debate...
...he asks...
...But nobody lives there...
...The thing that makes most voters upset, I think," he says, "is that most politicians don't give them something to be interested in...
...You know, the real soft sell on things...
...What Dorgan senses is that nobody yet understands the havoc the lopsided tax structure has wrought...
...As a politician he's just one among hundreds in Washington...
...But the Strangeloves tout ideas for dollars...
...Large corporations do not always tell state government how much business they do in any one state...
...But is he...
...The Japanese are investing like heck...
...The system has ground-based control vans that can be kept on the move...
...Orwellian thoughts, indeed...
...Two years ago I was in Bismarck...
...Unfortunately, they don't have people there with good judgment so they're throwing out a lot of necessary regulations with the unnecessary...
...and-down cycle of world prices which they can't control...
...But the determination, the ruthlessness and fun of the chase that had him battling for five years for a coal severance tax, he has transferred to Congressional corridors, cloakrooms, and caucuses...
...The Democrats have the best built-in political issue in the country: restructuring the progressive tax system back to the way ordinary folk thought it was meant to work...
...The answer rests in part with what Dorgan did as North Dakota tax commissioner...
...Chances are you won't be allowed in, either...
...I probably do just the same thing, except that I frame the issues on behalf of working people, small businessmen:" But what difference can a freshman member of Congress make...
...They'd determine what they want for a bushel of wheat...
...And hoping next year to get on it...
...He asked for, and received, three: Agriculture, Small Business, and Veteran's Affairs...
...He's been in statewide politics since he was twenty-six...
...Dorgan wants that changed...
...I may have been the only one in the room who didn't know that a preferred euphemism for an active war zone is "blue water...
...But he has one other attribute: He's an expert on taxation...
...Dorgan is hooked on taxes and politics, but he doesn't get fighting mad...
...Billed as "an unprecedented conference on space defense systems," sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the two-day gathering was at the Sheraton Potomac...
...This income tax system is voluntary...
...some 50 per cent of the voters are independents...
...Steel, and Colgate-Palmolive through the courts for tax money they owed North Dakota...
...Is that good...
...Three years later, Western Electric settled for $4 million...
...Dorgan fought his coal tax battle all over the state...
...The economy: "We're being lulled to sleep on energy...
...Dorgan understands, and he wants the Democrats to pick up the ball and run to the voters with it...
...I had to pass up both the drink and the clones...
...The reason most people file in this country is because they know their neighbors are going to file...
...We're not training the scientists and engineers...
...Tanks and missiles...
...the room was awfully dark...
...Now I think they deserve a good fight...
...And even if we do train scientists and engineers, what are they going to work on...
...This may not be the time for too much individuality in Congress: His strength is what he knows and what he thinks...
...At least I think they were fascinated...
...But people are beginning to perceive that the system's unfair...
...Now to reality...
...Every single tax-reform package that comes through Congress is billed as 'pro-business.' The Chamber [of Commerce] stands on the sidelines being the cheerleader, and what they're saying is, 'Yes, yes, let's pass another bill for big business that's going to screw small business.' I can give you dozens of examples...
...The state has the largest lignite bed in the world, and Dorgan felt it should fight for a 33 per cent severance tax...
...But not by the people...
...Says Dorgan, "If agribusiness wanted to farm the whole county, they'd still only get the same number of dollars in support as one average family farm...
...So he's learning political etiquette, and Capitol Hill folkways, exercising Congressional decorum, and maneuvering like mad...
...People there] have no idea what the country needs...
...An economic photovoltaic cell is an exciting prospect, pretty special, pretty important...
...So when Dorgan comments on the Congressional animal farm, that means he has spotted still another giveaway that favors the wealthy and the multinational corporations...
...Small business: "Small businesmen are beset...
...Or, in Summers's words, the Soviets aren't going to be too eager "to play High Noon with us...
...line three, here's what you pay.' Instead, we've created an industry out of the annual tax return—people pay tax preparers such as H&R Block roughly $1 billion annually to help with this chore...
...Guess who'll pay...
...Nuclear explosions in space do not destroy the Earth's people and their environment...
...Right...
...Dorgan's biographical material proudly proclaims that in 1980 he was "the only Democrat in the United States to wrest an open House seat from Republican control...
...Those in the press who have noticed him have tagged him a "prairie populist...
...Take two examples, the photovoltaic cell and the ceramic turbine engine...
...What they did was they said, 'When we're exploited by large economic interests, dammit, we're going to do something to take some of our destiny in our own hands.' " Dorgan doesn't claim to be a populist...
...North Dakota, population 960,000, has only the one Congressional seat...
...But five years ago, when he was also in Bismarck, Dorgan said, "Washington is like a private playground infested with power...
...They took the coal and left the poor people...
...Dorgan's biggest North Dakota fight was over coal...
...Dorgan sent a $54 million state tax bill which, under North Dakota law, was final unless protested within thirty days...
...The following year, 1967, he became deputy tax commissioner for North Dakota...
...Some of them should have been certified...
...Well, the Burlington Northern railroad wanted to transfer its land-grant real estate to a separate company...
...What they want is somebody who gives a damn about some of the issues and is willing to fight like hell for them...
...He assured the audience that while he, too, favored disarmament, taking the nuclear fight out into space was the way to answer the troublesome questions posed by disarmament types...
...I'm worried about the lack of research and development...
...It requires more hours...
...Whoever comes out with a car that gives 50 to 80 per cent better mileage—guess who's going to be on the leading edge of auto sales that decade...
...The fact is, it didn't matter whether the people were Republicans or Democrats...
...After that, you'd clog the courts...
...Instead we're turning out MB As and lawyers, creating that whole paperwork industry which creates nothing for our economy...
...Byron Leslie Dorgan was born forty years ago in Dickinson, North Dakota...
...Several of his bills have great merit...
...The one-to-five-employees business, all the way up to the 500-employees, is beset with Government regulations...
...Speakers like Summers work for research firms or big corporations looking for the "R&D dollars" Summers didn't factor into the $40 million to $50 million he projected for the orbiter system...
...And this gets back to the tax system...
...To sit through the Strangelovian highlights of nuclear space invaders is to understand the madness in "nuclear madness...
...That means Dorgan has to orate like a statesman, talk like a Republican, think like an independent, and operate like a Democrat to please the folks back home...
...Dorgan fought it and wants it repealed...
...he teethed on multinationals...
...Ceramic parts to an engine allow an engine to run hotter, therefore much more efficiently...
...By 1986, under Reagan's scheme, they'll pay less than 7 per cent...
...there was a cocktail reception: "One free drink to all attendees...
...two, he's decided that the best way to win people politically is as the earnest moderate...
...Look...
...On that score, it's worth taking a closer look at Dorgan and carefully working through a few tax issues with him...
...that when it came to mining once-in-a-lifetime resources, "We wanted to be the first group of people who did it right...
...Reagan is dead right—I give the Reagan Administration credit for trying to cut through a lot of red tape...
...Dorgan wants to target all price supports to the "average" family farm in America, to that farm's average production costs for each product...
...Why not...
...economy to the increasingly bizarre tax structure devised by Washington lobbyists: "These lobbyists, when they frame tax issues, frame them in a very appealing way in order to get the most outrageous kind of tax provisions past Congress...
...Now we don't want to rip them off, but we sure as hell don't want to be left with the bust end of a boom-and-bust cycle...
...I mean a really good fight...
...the Sheraton Potomac is in Rockville, Maryland, a $28 round-trip airport van ride from the Potomac...
...We're making the wrong choices in public policies today...
...A chance to meet the speakers and your peers in government and industry...
...They have confidence in the system...
...Currently, when corporations borrow millions or billions to finance takeovers, they can deduct the interest from their Federal tax returns...
...I don't have the capacity to call a press conference tomorrow and say, 'Here's the Dorgan agenda for America.' Nobody's going to attend...
...The present tax structure effectively tells the twenty largest banks, 'Okay, you don't have to pay taxes.' The tax structure tells General Electric, 'You can make billions, we'll give you a refund even.' " What makes Dorgan worth attention is not his politics but his economics...
...That corporation," says Dorgan, "wanted to asset-strip the railroad...
...We're just setting ourselves up for major economic failure unless we start debating publicly what we want to invest in...
...They can pretend their profits were made elsewhere...
...I suppose everybody at the meeting was classified...
...I don't know that I'm a conservative or a liberal," Dorgan says, but he knows he's up for reelection this year...
...Can Dorgan change that...
...Under cover of darkness, I entered the hall where slides of real life-and-death space invaders were splashed on a screen for a fascinated audience of scientists, engineers, government officials, and military types...
...line two, here's your rate...
...I was called radical by the Republicans, by the chambers of commerce, by business...
...Nor even about war...
...Let's look at three topics as he sees them: the farm, small business, the economy...
...Nonetheless, Summers obviously felt that the "zero aim approach" provided by "MX orbital basing" was the way to go...
...When the topic was "MX orbital basing," the idea of "blue water" became significant...
...The defense of the orbiter systems," explained Summers, "would be fought in space...
...One, tagged the "first things first credit act," would hamstring corporations making unfriendly acquisitions...
...Strangelove's Clones Don't take your tape recorder to a convention of Doctor Strange-love clones...
...And if voluntarism collapses, we're going to have a whole revenue-gathering system that collapses.' " To Dorgan, it's simple...
...We're being lulled to sleep over the very competitive future we're going to face in the 1980s and the 1990s...
...Being right up to the minute, Summers bemoaned bygone days when Britannia ruled the waves and great naval engagements could take place without troubling people on land...
...We want to provide for our future...
...How would Dorgan change things...
...Gar Alperovitz of the National Center for Economic Alternatives in Washington has been watching Dorgan's broadsides against the Federal Reserve...
...Okay...
...Well, Dorgan's there now...
...People there lose their perspective...
...But Dorgan is after bigger game than railroads...
...Because, if the consumer in New York thinks it's expensive now to have price supports to aid three million farmers out there, supports that get the farmer across the vicious up-and-down valley when he sinks his life savings into the spring planting, ask that consumer this: How expensive would the groceries be if there was only one farm in every county in America...
...nine "Regent Rangers" graduated that year...
...That's his restrained style— of necessity...
...The only reason for farm programs in this country, in my opinion, should be to allow the family farmers to survive the vicious up...
...Who cares what a freshman Democrat from North Dakota thinks...
...He believes, for example, that the basic personal income tax form needs only three questions on it: " 'Line one, what did you make...
...Democrats who support the progressive tax structure are blind, blind to the destruction of that income tax structure over the years...
...He chased such out-of-state corporations as AT&T, ITT, U.S...
...He's set his eye on a fourth: "I'm not on the Ways and Means Committee yet, but I'm working on it...
...Same old nonsense...
...The hell they're not...
...He also knows he's small potatoes in Congress...
...So what's Dorgan doing for North Dakota at the national feed lot for the rich...
...Dorgan has a way of linking the plight of ordinary people, of small business, and of the whole U.S...
...And they'd get it...
...Basic price support programs are not giveaways...
...Dorgan's bill would eliminate that tax break when one company takes over another against its will...
...Why...
...We're going to build tanks and missiles, and the Japanese are going to build tires, toasters, and television sets and beat the pants off us in the world marketplace...
...People don't want that nonsense...
...What I said to them was, 'You folks have got to understand there's real serious storm clouds brewing...
...So he sponsored a bill to change the Interstate Commerce Commission's method of adjudicating abandonment requests...
...But he said something else...
...tax structure: "In 1960, U.S...
...Dorgan organized a twenty-one-state Multistate Tax Commission to stop that game, then sent his tax collectors out knocking on corporate doors: "We'd send a guy to New Jersey and after three weeks he'd come back with a check for $625,000...
...corporations paid 23 per cent of the U.S...
...One of his political heroes is the late Senator Philip Hart of Michigan, who was as dogged about antitrust reform as Dorgan is about tax reform...
...We've got a problem with competition...
...And his appearance is moderate to the point of fuss-iness: The last bits of thinning hair brushed meticulously across the forehead, executive suite suit, and Fortune 500 glasses come together to present a model of corporate anonymity...
...they said, 'Dammit, we've got a resource that we're going to mine for the benefit of people in Detroit, Chicago, and Minneapolis...
...In 1980, North Dakotans, fiercely independent ticket-splitters, liked him well enough to send both Republican Ronald Reagan and Democrat Dorgan to Washington...
...It developed this way: The Eyring Institute's Thomas Summers didn't want the audience to think he was trying to compete with Ronald Reagan's MX cluster plan...
...Two years later, he stepped into the vacancy when the tax commissioner died...
...The average family farmer would get the same number of dollars in price support as Agribusiness Enterprises, Inc...
...And he won...
...Alas, the airport van couldn't wait...
...There are slightly more hard-core Republicans than there are hard-core Democrats in the state...
...The military's job is war...
Vol. 46 • July 1982 • No. 7
