Preparing to Tackle the Domestic Front

Fresh from his first foreign foray, President Gerald Ford turned to the nation's pressing domestic business. Finally acknowledging that recession deserves equal time with inflation, he gave up his goal of trimming the federal budget to $300 billion this fiscal year and said he would settle for a spending total of $302 billion. As layoffs and unemployment continued to spread alarmingly, he promised a press conference this week to explain his economic policies (see ECONOMY & BUSINESS). To quiet grumbling from the Hill that he has drifted out of touch, Ford met with a range of congressional leaders both to talk economics and explain the SALT agreement tentatively reached with the Soviet Union. In an effort to persuade more draft evaders and deserters to respond to his flagging amnesty program, he granted full pardon to eight convicted resisters and conditional clemency to ten others. To counter criticism that his White House has not yet focused on domestic problems in the fashion that it has foreign affairs, Ford has decided, TIME has learned, to make Nelson Rockefeller his domestic "czar" once Rockefeller is-confirmed as Vice President by Congress.

The President is marshaling his domestic energies not a moment too soon. Clouds of doubt and dismay are forming over Capitol Hill, and not only among Democrats. "What happened to Jerry on the way down the avenue?" asks one disgruntled G.O.P. House leader. Once one of the congressional colleagues most open to consultation, Ford is now perceived as a loner who does not defer to Congress any more than did his isolated predecessor in the White House. "I don't know what's going on down there," says a top House Republican. "I don't know who's advising him. I'm not."

The Democrats are moving swiftly into the leadership vacuum, gearing up for a legislative onslaught worthy, on paper at least, of the New Deal or the Great Society. To that end, they are undertaking a major reorganization in the House. In meetings this week, the Democratic caucus intends to strip slow-moving, conservative committee chairmen of their power by putting more liberals on key committees. The caucus, in fact, plans to reassign Democrats to a better than 2-to-l majority on every committee, arousing cries of legislative tyranny among Republicans.

Brain Trust. With the legislative machinery in more disciplined order, Democrats hope to pass a spate of bills that have been bottled up or ignored: mandatory wage-price controls, national health insurance, a major public works program to relieve unemployment, tax reform including a scaling down of the oil-depletion allowance, an export monitoring system that will more effectively prevent the sale abroad of commodities in short supply at home, and the revival of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, an agency created by President Herbert Hoover in 1932 to help business survive the Depression. If

Ford vetoes these measures, the Democrats are confident they will have the votes to override. "I'm ready to work with the President, and most members are," says House Speaker Carl Albert. "But we're not ready to veto the election we've just had."

The President is prepared to fight back, and he doubtless estimates that he will have more of a chance with Rockefeller at his side, operating as a kind of domestic Henry Kissinger. Without additional formal title but with clear authority from Ford, Rockefeller will recruit a brain trust to delve into every aspect of domestic policy; he will arbitrate among conflicting Cabinet proposals and formulate plans for allocation of the nation's natural and financial resources. To give so much clout to a man with presidential ambitions of his own would seem to be an act of singular self-effacement on the part of Ford. But as an aide puts it, "The President has no ego problem."

Once the Vice President is installed, other changes of personnel are scheduled to follow. Top man to depart will be Roy Ash, director of the Office of Management and Budget. A prickly personality, Ash has won the respect of the President for his diligence, but he is too closely identified with the policies of the Nixon Administration to stay on in that job. He will be replaced, in fact, by another Nixon appointee, James Lynn, 47, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Despite his Nixonian background, Lynn has impressed friend and foe alike with his administrative ability and political know-how. OMB will return to its less grandiose role of monitoring the budget flaws day by day.

Presidential Counsellor Anne Armstrong, the top woman appointed to the White House by Nixon, resigned last week. Her duties as liaison with G.O.P.

officials around the country will be divided among several staffers. William Timmons, Nixon's chief congressional liaison, is planning to leave in the near future. His replacement: Max Friedersdorf, 45, who is currently Ford's lobbyist in the House of Representatives and was Timmons' assistant.

Own Image. When the shifts have been made, the White House staff is expected to perform more efficiently under the direction of Donald Rumsfeld, 42, who has not yet succeeded in establishing the authority that was anticipated.

Trying to operate somewhere between the secretive, closed-door policy of Nixon and the earlier open-door tendencies of Ford, Rumsfeld has managed to bring most of the staff under control--with the conspicuous exception of Bob Hartmann, 57, Ford's longtime, imperious adviser who often writes presidential speeches without consulting anybody else. In any event, Ford's aim by the first of the year is to have remade the Nixon White House clearly in his own Administration's image.

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