Night of the Long Winds

A chaotic filibuster dramatizes Carter's problems with Congress

Shortly before sunrise one day last week, the Hon. Ernest F. Rollings, Democrat of South Carolina, appeared on the Senate floor in a bright green jogging suit. "It makes good pajamas," he observed. In the corridors and cloakrooms around him, less comfortably attired colleagues padded about in stocking feet or dozed fitfully on cots provided by the Army and Air Force. "Barbaric," croaked rumpled, unshaven Minority Leader Howard Baker as he surveyed the blanket-littered hallways. "An outrage," seconded Majority Leader Robert Byrd. Over the ayes, nays and occasional snores of his bleary-eyed colleagues, Senator Robert Dole told of encountering a woman who had come to observe the all-night session. It was the best show in town, she explained: "The zoo was closed."

In perhaps the most remarkable filibuster in Senate history, first-term Democrats James Abourezk of South Dakota and Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio turned the chamber into a marathon slumber party that kept the Senators up until dawn the first day, late the following night, and threatened to continue this week. Their stated objective: to block any move to lift the federal ceiling on the price of natural gas sold interstate. The ordeal was fresh evidence that an independent and unpredictable Senate is defying its own leadership and the White House. The week also marked the emergence of Byrd as one of Carter's closest and most important political allies, both in and out of Congress.

The filibuster was the latest in a long string of indignities for Carter at the hands of a newly willful Congress. Younger and better educated than ever, legislators of both chambers have been roughing up Carter's appointees and rewriting his legislative packages. Four of the nine major parts of his energy program have been rejected at least temporarily, and most of the rest face trouble in the Senate.

The fight last week stemmed from Carter's proposal to 1) retain federal price controls on natural gas sold across interstate lines but 2) raise the ceiling from $1.47 to $1.75 per thousand cubic feet (m.c.f). That scheme made it through the House, but the gas industry's friends in the Senate wanted to abolish controls altogether, which would leave the price to be set by free-market forces. Byrd plumped for Carter's bill. He sensed, however, that he would lose in the Senate, which would vote to lift price ceilings. Nonetheless, he figured that any decontrol measure would later be undone by the House when the time came for a compromise on a final version of the energy bill. In the end, reasoned Byrd, Carter would get his way.

That position was not acceptable to Abourezk and Metzenbaum, who flatly oppose any decontrol. They believe the increase proposed by Carter--28-c- per m.c.f. --would be an unnecessary burden on consumers without significantly increasing the supply of natural gas. Said Abourezk: "If the Senate votes for deregulation, even if it's lost in conference, the gas boys will be back next year and the next and the next. If we can get both houses on record against it, that should settle it."

The two Senators are liberals, a breed not given to obstructionist tactics, and neither is among the Senate's more visible stars. Yet they managed to outwit Majority Leader Byrd, who is considered to be one of the chamber's most skillful parliamentarians. To head off their filibuster, he scheduled a cloture vote for Monday, Sept. 26. (Under Senate rules, this would limit debate on the subject to one hour for each Senator and bar any new amendments.) But Abourezk spotted a loophole in Byrd's strategy: old amendments could still be called up for action. So Partner Metzenbaum put his staff to work all weekend writing 508 amendments, mostly technical, which he filed only hours before the Senators voted 77 to 17 for closure. Then he and Abourezk insisted that each amendment be voted on separately by roll call, a process that takes about 15 minutes for each measure.

The result was bewildering chaos and confusion, as well as some entertaining legislative theater. Fearful that one of the 508 amendments might slip through, weary Senators set up camp in and around the chamber, trying to catch a few minutes' sleep and listening for the bell that signaled roll calls. After several votes that were made harrowingly close by the absence of heavy sleepers, Byrd ordered aides to compile a roster of Senators, listing the nooks and hallways where they were catnapping, so they could be roused in time. Abourezk and Metzenbaum spelled each other occasionally and consented to several brief meal-and-shower breaks for their colleagues during the all-night session.

Through the night, Byrd met constantly with other Senators on the floor and in his office. On Thursday morning he sensed that the moment was ripe for a compromise. "Last night did some good," he said. "Psychologically, it made us all realize we had to find a solution." The one he found was a proposal by Henry ("Scoop") Jackson to raise the price ceiling to $2.03--higher than the Carter plan but lower than what decontrol advocates figured the free-market price would be ($2.75 to $3.25). Byrd won the approval of Abourezk and Metzenbaum for the Jackson compromise. But the Senators who favor decontrol refused to go along. To block the compromise --and prevent a move to freeze prices at the current ceiling--they began their own talk fest. Said Louisiana Democrat Russell Long: "A filibuster is an act of piracy. So if there's going to be a filibuster, I'm going to be a pirate too.* With that, he began calling up for votes the remainder of Abourezk's 508 amendments.

During the debate, the chamber swarmed with gas-industry lobbyists, and Carter publicly warned the Senate against being swayed by them. Said he: "It is time for the public interest to prevail over special interest lobbyists." At a press conference later in the week, he softened his remarks, calling the lobbyists "well-meaning people" and saying of the Senators, "I am not criticizing them, but I think that as they hear the voice of the American people ... they will move to adopt the major parts of the program."

The natural gas battle was only one manifestation of a broader problem Carter has had with Congress since he took office. Having campaigned for the presidency as an anti-Washington outsider, he was slow to cultivate the old congressional hands who make things work on Capitol Hill. His White House congressional liaison staff was for a time small and inexperienced, and Carter's own efforts to charm the legislators have sometimes been inept.

One of his most worrisome issues is the new Panama Canal treaty, on which the Senate began hearings last week. To beat the drum for the Panama accord, Carter invited groups of Senators to breakfast--on folding chairs in a windowless White House conference room --and lectured them. Some victims of the sessions complained that other Presidents would have invited them to an official White House dining room and asked for their views, instead of preaching to them.

But Carter is learning fast. He has begun asking Senators to recommend 20 influential citizens from each state to receive flattering invitations to the White House for chats with him and senior officials about the canal treaty. Last week Carter had a group of Republican legislators over for breakfast in one of the spiffier state dining rooms, and surprised them with effusive thanks for their help in overcoming Democratic opposition to a number of White House proposals.

In framing this new be-kind-to-Congress policy, Carter is relying more and more on the counsel of Byrd. The majority leader at first found Carter aloof and inflexible, disliked his early criticisms of Congress and resented his refusal to follow advice on how to handle the Senate. Though both men are products of the rural South, having made it to the top by dint of single-minded persistence, Carter's remote manner irritated Byrd. But after realizing that the majority leader's predictions of senatorial behavior were unerringly accurate, Carter began listening. He actively sought Byrd's advice on the Lance affair and accepted his judgment that the Budget Director had to go. Since the Lance ordeal, Carter and Byrd have become rather close.

Byrd likes to emphasize that he may now be Carter's friend but he is still the Senate's man. "We are under no obligation to rubber stamp anything the President sends up here," he told his fellows last week. Indeed, he has even refused to place on the Senate calendar a number of Carter proposals--including instant voter registration and the creation of a consumer protection agency--that he senses his colleagues do not want. Byrd has cautioned Carter against pressing for early adoption of the Panama Canal treaty, and he even publicly bawled out Vice President Walter Mondale for a minor breach of parliamentary courtesy while Mondale was presiding over the Senate (they later traded apologies). Having spent nearly two decades in that chamber, Byrd sometimes seems more interested in the rules and folkways of the Senate than in the issues it decides. "He makes the trains run on time," goes an oft-heard appraisal of his reign, "but the cars are all empty."

Byrd's friends say he does have strong views but prefers not to impose them directly on his colleagues. That leadership style is well suited to the Senate's new hunger for recognition as an efficient deliberative body. Neither a cajoling arm twister like Lyndon Johnson nor a permissive parent like mild-mannered Mike Mansfield, Byrd is distinguished by his ability to gauge correctly what a majority of the Senate wants. Then he manipulates the rules and cashes in enough old favors to ensure that its will is done.

Thus Byrd was shaken by last week's filibuster, which he had striven mightily to head off for fear that it would tarnish the Senate's image and kill a major part of Carter's energy bill. That fear--and a certain anger at the inconvenience--was widespread among colleagues, but Byrd managed to be philosophical about the mercurial nature of his beloved institution. "The Senate is very much like a violin," said the leader, who plays one himself. "The sound will change with the weather, the dampness, the humidity. The Senate is a place of great moods. It can shift quickly, very quickly." And dramatically. The last time the Senate was kept awake all night by an obstinate filibusterer was in 1964, when Robert Byrd talked for 14 hours straight in an unsuccessful attempt to block passage of a civil rights bill.

*The allusion was intentional: the word filibuster comes from the Spanish filibustero, meaning pirate.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.