End of the 91st

The most chaotic congressional session in memory approaches its legally mandated end this week amid growing signs of self-recrimination that could lead to reform--and some signs of new testiness between White House and Senate that could lead to intensified political warfare.

With few days remaining before it officially ceases to exist, the 91st, lame-duck Congress had still wrought no definitive law on the big issues. Locked in a single, unwieldy piece of legislation were proposals for restrictions on trade, increases in Social Security benefits and portions of the Administration's far-reaching reform of the welfare system. Each passing day decreased the already slim chance that they could get through the Senate as a package or singly.

Sweating Them. Intensive but apparently unproductive conferences between Senators, presidential aides and lobbyists were under way all week in an effort to break the logjam. The mood was not always one of cooperation. A State Department official called a top-ranking Democratic leadership aide one night to find out if an important measure was about to come up for a vote. The aide, who knew the vote had been put off, refused to take the call. "We're sweating them," he said.

The Congress itself, particularly the Senate, had little more than sweat to show for the week's work. Some samples:

> Because Tennessee's Albert Gore, defeated for reelection, spent his final days in the Senate intransigently delaying consideration of U.S. contributions to international lending agencies, Congress finally sent to the President a bill drastically different from the one he wanted. It now contains no "soft" loan funds (low-interest, long-term repayment) for Asian nations, and only $100 million in such loans for Latin American countries instead of the billion Nixon sought.

> Because a Senate-House conference committee redid what the House had undone, Nixon is getting a housing bill providing broad executive powers to finance new communities and revitalize old ones. He is known to oppose those provisions of the bill.

> Because another conference brought forth a food-stamp renewal bill that Senator George McGovern of South Dakota finds "obnoxious," he threatened a filibuster to thwart its passage. For the almost 9,000,000 poor Americans who now receive the stamps, the alternatives at week's end appeared to be either a simple renewal of the current plan or no stamps at all. McGovern was outraged by a provision requiring recipients, except women with dependent children, to register for any available job in order to get the stamps.

The frustrated Senators were free with selfcriticism. "I think the Senate looks bad," said one Republican. Democrat Fred Harris of Oklahoma, and Republican Charles Mathias of Maryland announced they would hold hearings Jan. 18 and 19 to consider the reform of the seniority system. Harris said: "Too many people feel that politicians and political institutions are not sufficiently responsive to the public will. There is mounting feeling in this country that the Senate must be reformed, a feeling that has grown enormously as a result of the confusing last days of this Senate session." Mathias thought that Congress's seniority practices have "seriously impaired the validity of Congress as a representative body."

But the legislators were also angry at the President. Many Senators feel that the chamber and the White House are at such odds as to be virtually at war. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield refused to acknowledge that things are quite that bad, insisting that "we will continue to act responsibly." Conflicting signals came from the White House. One all-out Nixon supporter, Senator Robert Dole of Kansas, sent word to the President urging a friendly holiday visit to Congress. He received no reply. Nixon himself, in a letter made public by House Republican Leader Gerald Ford, expressed hope that the Senate might yet make order out of chaos before it quit, but his language held the seeds of a future accusation. "I am not yet willing to concede the Senate's indifference or impotence," he said.

At the same time, a White House aide was predicting an altered posture that could lead to conciliation with the Democratically controlled Congress: more Democrats in the Administration, an end to harsh personal political attacks, and a push for domestic-reform legislation. One White House visitor, the National Urban League's Whitney Young, emerged from more than an hour's talk with Nixon to announce that the President appeared ready to make a "new beginning" on race problems.

Political Folly. The Senate's skeptics cited Nixon's vetoes, his threat to convene the new Congress on Jan. 4 instead of Jan. 21, poor liaison with "his old friends" in the Senate. Said one Republican: "It's like he's running against the Congress already for 1972." One leading Democratic aide ready to accept, like many others, what they see as a clear challenge from Nixon, gleefully perceived political folly in some of the positions the President is taking: "Education, hospital construction, campaign-spending limits, manpower training. The things he's saying no to," the Democrat said.

Both the President and his congressional opponents appear poised to follow either of the two classic political routes as they head toward 1972. They can cooperatively meet the nation's needs and view their work with pride, or checkmate progress and view their foe's work with alarm. As so often in politics, the reality seemed likely to fall somewhere in between.

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