No Get Up and Go

Carter will need more than a carrot to rouse Congress to action

The U.S. Air Force can barely find enough planes to accommodate all the members of Congress heading for distant parts of the world during the Easter recess. House Speaker Tip O'Neill is leading one group to Ireland; House Whip John Brademas is taking another to the Soviet Union. Members of the House Narcotics Committee are on their way to sunny Colombia. So many Congressmen are traveling to China that a quorum call might just succeed in Peking. The Easter recess, in fact, is turning out to be considerably more lively than the session, which so far has set a record unmatched in two decades for legislative inactivity. Critics have already dubbed the 96th the "do nothing" Congress, the same fighting words used by President Harry Truman in his famous "Give 'em hell" assault on the 80th Congress when he was running for election in 1948.

Since the session started on Jan. 15, a grand total of nine bills has passed. Only two were of any consequence, and circumstances forced both of them on Congress: one readjusted U.S. relations with Taiwan, the other raised the ceiling on the national debt at the eleventh hour, allowing the Treasury to pay its bills. "This is the slowest Congress I can remember," says Illinois Congressman John Anderson, an 18-year Republican veteran. "The activity on the floor has been almost nil." Says Nevada's G.O.P. Senator Paul Laxalt: "It's just been eerie around here."

Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd has kept things quiet by refusing to schedule votes on Fridays, thus inviting Senators to leave town Thursday night for weekend politicking back home. While floor action often runs beyond dinnertime in busier periods, the Senate has been adjourning around 5:30 p.m. Minority Leader Howard Baker jokes wryly that new members may get the wrong idea and think these hours are normal. Says he: "I have to remind them not to get used to it."

Capitol Hill has not been suddenly afflicted with laziness; the slow pace is calculated. Congress has received the message from the voters back home that they have had a surfeit of experiment and spending. They need a breather. Explains Byrd: "Congress this year is reflecting a general feeling on the part of the American people that there have been enough new programs." Echoes O'Neill, among the stoutest of liberals: "The public wants to cut the bloat out of Government." Montana's newly elected Democratic Senator Max Baucus sums up: "The country is tired of rules, regulations, statutes and everything else that has to do with Government. None of it seems to be able to solve today's problems."

The White House is not complaining very much about the somnolent drift in Congress. It, too, is playing something of a waiting game. For the time being, the President is willing to take it easy on Congress, since he needs support for urgent legislation later in the session. Beyond that, Carter has been preoccupied with foreign affairs. The White House has submitted only one major spending bill, real wage insurance, which was rejected by Congress because it was too inflationary. There is even less hope for other money bills. The funding of congressional elections, says a Democratic leader, is "an idea whose time has come and gone." The time also does not seem to be right for national health insurance. Says an aide to House Whip Brademas: "Nobody wants a program of medical insurance that will run into the same cost problem as Medicare and Medicaid." The one spending bill that has a good chance is the aid package to Israel and Egypt, an indication that no price is too high for peace.

From the time that Congress returns from its 13-day recess until it adjourns in the fall, excitement may build over measures that do not involve spending money. A hot debate is sure to greet the President's plan to decontrol the price of oil and to impose a windfall profits tax on the petroleum companies. Last week an angry Senator Henry Jackson introduced a bill to postpone the lifting of controls (see BUSINESS). The multilateral trade bill that has been negotiated over the past 5 1/2 years will come up for a vote this session. Controversial legislation is also expected to be introduced to deregulate the railroads, and possibly trucking and busing as well; to set aside wilderness areas in Alaska; to guarantee support prices for sugargrow-ers; and to speed up the licensing of nuclear plants. SALT II will dominate the session if the treaty is signed in time for consideration. Since opposition is steadily building, Byrd, who controls the flow of legislation, may put off debate if it would tie up the Senate long past October, when he hopes to adjourn.

While shunning new expenditures, members of Congress are scrutinizing old commitments. Never before have they examined the federal budget in such exhaustive detail. The coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats that dominated Congress in the pre-Great Society days seems to have been reestablished. But liberals, too, are displaying a newfound frugality. When the Senate Budget Committee voted to slash veterans' benefits, Colorado Democrat Gary Hart made an impassioned plea to restore the money. The committee went along and added $600 million to the budget. Then Hart, a liberal who faces re-election next year, had second thoughts. He went back to the committee and agreed that the $600 million should be cut to $400 million. It was.

Hart is not the only Democratic Senator looking ahead nervously to 1980. Of the 34 Senate seats in contention in 1980, Democrats hold 24, many of them liberals running in areas that normally vote conservative. Among the vulnerable are Idaho's Frank Church, Iowa's John Culver and South Dakota's George McGovern. They feel their best strategy is to lie low. "The Democratic leadership is scared of the elections," says Senator Henry Bellmon, an Oklahoma Republican. "They don't want their 24 incumbents to make more decisions than is absolutely necessary." Byrd has acknowledged he wants to adjourn the Senate in October to give his troops plenty of campaign time.

Congress has also been paying attention to one of its other obligations that it has long neglected: overseeing the work of the bureaucracies it has created. Many members have been digging into the various agencies and departments, trying to see if they are performing as expected or even coming close to it. "I have a much better handle on the activities of the Justice Department than I ever had before," admits Republican Representative Tom Railsback of Illinois, a member of the Judiciary Committee. "There is a much greater focus now on how programs work," says Ohio's G.O.P. Representative Willis Gradison, a member of the Ways and Means Committee who is looking into the rising cost of disability insurance in the Social Security program.

In purely political terms, however, exercising oversight is turning out to be one of the most demanding and least rewarding of all congressional activities. It seldom offers a dramatic issue to propel a member into the headlines. When new programs are being considered, people and reporters flock to committee hearings for a piece of the action. But a sober assessment of programs after they are in operation holds little allure for the publicity-minded. "How do you attract people to these hearings?" muses a key staffer on the House Rules Committee. "They are so boring." They also demand a mastery of detail by any Congressman who wants to come to grips with the bureaucracy. Otherwise, he is punching a pillow.

Senator Max Baucus wonders if Congress has the "persistence to conduct meaningful oversight." In the course of extended hearings, he discovered that antipollution laws were not being enforced because the Justice Department lacked the funds. "It is frustrating because I feel I've only touched the surface, and I don't have the resources really to search out the nooks and crannies on this issue and follow it up." Says Representative James Cleveland, a New Hampshire Republican: "If Congress is going to take its oversight responsibilities seriously, this is not a do-nothing Congress at all. It's a Congress that has changed direction and is doing something very significant and important."

As they returned to their districts last week, members of Congress found their constituents not only not wanting anything new, but very worried about keeping what they already have. Inflation was on everybody's mind. "Food prices are driving people crazy," says Congressman Frederick Richmond, a Democrat who represents a low-income district in Brooklyn. While the average American spends 18% of his budget on food, Richmond's constituents shell out a whopping 44%. Up in Maine, Congresswoman Olympia Snowe found the same reaction, with a regional difference. She has received hundreds of letters urging the Government to establish a tax credit for wood-burning stoves, which cut heating costs and save oil at the same time.

Occasionally, members of Congress found that they were considered part of the problem. Some observers feel that Congress has become too fractious to do its job properly. The decline of the parties has liberated members to do whatever they and their constituents please. "Everyone is elected on an individual basis," complains Tim Hagan, Democratic chairman of Cuyahoga County in Ohio. "They don't understand the need for a consensus or an agenda. Without one, there can be no attempt on the part of a Government to fashion the legislation needed to deal with the problems of this RACK country." Frosty Troy, editor of the crustily independent Oklahoma Observer, agrees. "Everybody's a chief in Congress and nobody's an Indian," he says. "But it takes Indians to run a country. You have to have some way of maintaining discipline."

Still, the voters seem to be in an ornery, individualistic temper themselves, and this is reflected by their representatives. The Easter 1979 message is clear enough to members of Congress who want to get reelected: Do not do anything unless you are sure it will do some good. And even then, do not spend much money.

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