Price of Neglect

President Nixon gained no congressional plaudits on issues other than the war when he returned from Midway. Instead, he had to turn at once to Capitol Hill, where a series of smoldering debates were breaking into the open. Democratic liberals were arrayed in opposition to his order of national priorities. Republicans felt leaderless, and the Administration itself had allowed its lines of communication with the Hill to fall into disrepair. Items:

sbTAXES. House liberals balked at extending the 10% income tax surcharge, the most potent weapon available against inflation (see BUSINESS). In return for their support, they demanded a more thoroughgoing tax-reform package, including the oil-depletion allowances that have become a symbol of tax privilege. Only a last-minute personal intercession by Nixon saved the bill.

sbDEFENSE SPENDING. Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, under heavy pressure to cut further the $77.6 billion defense budget that many consider a prime cause of inflation, jettisoned the Air Force's six-year-old space-exploration project known as MOL, for Manned Orbiting Laboratory. By dropping the program, the Administration will save just over half of MOL's $3 billion projected cost. Budget Director Robert P. Mayo announced that henceforth the defense budget will receive the same scrutiny as that of any other department, instead of going directly to the President --though skeptics doubted whether the new ruling would last beyond the first showdown between Mayo and Laird.

sbARMS CONTROL. A bipartisan group of 56 Senators and Representatives urged the President to halt tests of missiles equipped with MIRVs, or Multiple Independently-targeted Re-entry Vehicles. Both the U.S. and the Soviet Union have been testing multiple warheads, though the Russians are thought to be considerably behind. The critics argue that if the tests continue, arms-limitation negotiations will fail. The mutual threat of multiple warheads, they insist, will only com mit both sides irrevocably to anti-ballistic missile programs and to another round in the arms race.

sbFOREIGN AID. Congressional liberals have threatened to withhold support from the $2.65 billion foreign-aid bill. It is a risky maneuver, since the Administration could saddle them with the political blame if the bill fails to pass. But it is also a measure of their discontent that they are taking that risk to dramatize their view that domestic needs have higher priority.

sbCAMPUS UNREST. Congressmen have readied a spate of bills to suppress campus disorder--and thus caused a fast turnaround by the Administration. As recently as mid-May, Attorney General John Mitchell assured Congress that there was no need for any such new measures. Yet last week, the White House put out word that it was considering legislation extending to federal courts the power to issue injunctions preventing students from disrupting classes. The aim is to head off more stringent legislation originating in Congress.

For an Administration that prided itself on cool and detailed planning, the new need to put out sudden brushfires in Congress was rather embarrassing. Once lost, communication with Congress cannot readily be re-established in the face of widening differences.

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