Lame Ducks Lay an Egg

By Walter Isaacson.

Congress and Reagan clash over spending, missiles and new taxes

Army-style cots lined the cloakrooms of the Senate, while weary members, waiting for crucial issues to be rushed to a vote, suffered through hours of filibustering by a pair of obscure freshmen. The ever patient Majority Leader, Howard Baker, seemed dazed by the unfolding disasters while his punchy staff joked that the White House had decided it wanted to impose a "toy tax" before Christmas. After almost 30 straight hours of throbbing confusion, the chaplain rose to offer a prayer. "Father in heaven, the Senators are very weary in body and mind," he said. "In such circumstances, heat tends to transcend light, minds function with less discernment and precision."

The special lameduck session of the 97th Congress seemed to be at once bogged down by cantankerous obstructionism and buffeted by legislative grandstanding. Efforts to pass overdue appropriations bills for the fiscal year that began last October (the ostensible reason for the special session) were a dismal failure. The attempt to pave the road to prosperity with a nickel-a-gallon gasoline tax was stalled by a renegade filibuster. Ronald Reagan and his congressional critics were still at swords' points over the MX missile, and no one dared even mention Social Security, a beast that some had foolishly dreamed the special session would tame.

"It's like a hockey game out there," said Colorado's Republican Senator, William Armstrong. "If there's a trivial issue it's handled scrupulously, with hearings and rules. But really important issues are handled in an atmosphere of chaos and pandemonium." So it seemed all too logical that the Donnybrook Fair that erupted on Capitol Hill last week would culminate in another brawl between Congress and the White House, this time over public jobs spending, that threatened to shut down the Federal Government.

Congress could have avoided the sorry spectacle by following its own budget process. But by the time the lawmakers adjourned in October, they had passed only three of 13 appropriation bills needed to keep the Government running. Like lame ducks with their heads cut off, the members were able to approve only a few more funding bills during the special session and were forced to lump all other appropriations into a catchall continuing resolution that provides temporary funds for everything from missiles to Medicaid.

The climactic confrontation began when the Democratic House attached to its version of the continuing resolution a $5.4 billion "jobs program." The bill was a pork barrel brimming with public works projects: clearing Cow Castle Creek in South Carolina, rehabilitating a raceway in California, funding a tree-planting program, and repairing military housing facilities. Reagan, who vetoed a continuing resolution a year ago because he wanted more spending on defense and less on domestic programs, was infuriated. "I don't give a damn if it's Friday night and the Government is brought to a standstill," he told Republican congressional leaders. "I won't sign a continuing resolution if it has jobs legislation in it." The Democrats, hoping that Reagan would seem like Scrooge if he killed a jobs bill just before Christmas, did not shrink from a confrontation. "Who does he think he is?" demanded House Majority Leader Jim Wright of Texas. "He is not Big Daddy, the dictator who writes legislation."

Nor, for that matter, did Senate Republicans toe Reagan's line. Appropriations Committee Chairman Mark Hatfield added $1.2 billion for public works jobs into the Senate version of the bill. Said he: "Jobs are needed now." By a 50-to-46 vote, his colleagues agreed with his approach.

Both parties hoped that the President would accept a Capitol Hill consensus. Congress met through the weekend to work out a compromise spending plan, but Reagan stuck by his insistence that any major jobs program would provoke a veto. Since funding for federal programs nominally expired Friday at midnight, the Government was technically shut down until Reagan and Congress could reach an agreement.

Ironically, the President even had trouble winning approval of a piece of jobs-oriented legislation that he did support: a bipartisan plan to raise the federal gasoline tax and use the revenue to finance highway and transit improvements. Unlike the Democrats, Reagan refrained from terming the proposal a "jobs bill." Instead he called it a "user's fee" and a "highway bill." This euphemistic truce enabled both parties to embrace the proposal; it was overwhelmingly approved by the House and was expected to sail through the Senate.

The time constraints of a lameduck session, however, gave inordinate power to a handful of conservative Republicans who took it upon themselves to rescue Reagan from what they considered a fateful lapse into taxing and spending. Two Republican freshmen, Donald Nickles of Oklahoma and Gordon Humphrey of New Hampshire, previously known only for their obscurity, teamed with veteran marplot Jesse Helms of North Carolina to filibuster the measure to death's door. Majority Leader Baker tried to save the program by refusing to consider the continuing resolution until the gas-tax debate ended. But he made a strategic error by not permitting the Democrats to attach an amendment that would extend the eligibility period for federal unemployment benefits. As a consequence, the Democrats voted against Baker's attempt to cut off the filibuster.

Baker and Reagan then stepped up their efforts to persuade the renegade Republicans to end the filibuster voluntarily. But when the President called, Helms reminded him of his promise that he would not raise taxes unless there was a coup at the White House. "When did the palace coup occur?" Helms asked the President. Meeting with the dissident trio in Baker's private office near the Senate floor, Republican Elders Paul Laxalt and Robert Dole resorted to serious arm-twisting. Nickles, who had already been softened up by Reagan at the White House, looked shaken. Even Helms showed signs of discomfort. But Humphrey was adamant.

Said he: "I'm prepared to be here Christmas Day. I'm prepared to see the Government shut down."

Baker was finally forced late Thursday night to withdraw the gas tax from consideration so that the Senate could finish its work. But after both the White House and 48 Republican Senators urged him to make another push for the measure, Baker agreed to make a further attempt at outmaneuvering the inexperienced Humphrey and ending the filibuster.

Amid the debate over jobs and taxes, Congress launched a pre-emptive strike against the MX missile. The $988 million needed to begin production of the strategic weapon came under fire after Reagan announced late last month that he had chosen the Dense Pack method of basing it. Some Congressmen dubbed the idea "Dunce Pack," and became even more skeptical when it was revealed that three of the five members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff opposed the scheme.

The House cut out production money for the MX. A Republican-dominated Senate committee also defied the President by adopting Democratic Senator Ernest Rollings' plan to forbid any use of the production funds until both houses of Congress approve a basing mode. The full Senate accepted an Administration request to put a 45-day time limit on how long Congress can take to consider a basing mode. Most members of Congress privately accepted Hollings' prediction that "Dense Pack is dead." Indeed, even though Reagan announced a bipartisan commission to consider the basing mode, Administration officials fear that the missile itself is dead, particularly since the incoming Congress will be even more skeptical about the $30 billion program. "We couldn't get any basing mode approved in the House," says one presidential staffer.

During its final marathon sessions, the 97th Congress also wrestled with a number of other ornery issues.

Among them:

> Congressional pay raises are long overdue; salaries have risen only 5.5%, to $60,662, in the past five years, while the cost of living rose 62%. More important, top Government officials, whose salaries are linked to those of Congressmen, have also had their pay capped, widening the salary gap between executives in the public and private sectors to the point where the financial sacrifices being made by top Government officials have become absurd. The chairman of the Federal Reserve, for example, makes $60,662, compared with $581,533 for the chairman of Citicorp; the Secretary of Defense makes $69,630, compared with $1.2 million for the chairman of United Technologies, a major military contractor. Yet Congress has consistently panicked at the prospect of hiking its wages during tough economic times. When the matter first came up last week, the House voted 2 to 1 to raise its pay 15%, to $69,800. But then the lawmakers got cold feet: a move to revoke the increase was barely defeated when the House deadlocked, 208 to 208. House Speaker Tip O'Neill, who usually does not vote, cast a ballot for the raise.

The Senate was less forthright, sanctimoniously forgoing a salary increase while also removing the limit on outside income members can earn. This provides an unwelcome entree for special interest groups to pay Senators large speaking fees and "honorariums." The House and Senate will have to work out a compromise approach.

> The United Auto Workers have been lobbying hard for a misguided protectionist proposal to require foreign manufacturers to use up to 90% American parts and labor in cars exported to the U.S. It has been estimated the legislation not only might add $3,000 to the price of Japanese cars sold in the U.S. but also would probably destroy more jobs than it would create. The House passed the bill, 215 to 188, but some members claimed it was mainly a symbolic action. "It wouldn't have passed here if people thought it would pass in the Senate," said Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank. The Senate, to its credit, defeated the measure by letting it die in committee.

> Ohio Democrat Howard Metzenbaum used the threat of filibuster to block a host of self-serving bills of the kind that special interests try to sneak through at the end of a hectic session. As Rhode Island Republican John Chafee graphically described the process: "You can almost hear the hogs moving up to the trough--slurp, slurp, slurp." Among them were bills that would weaken regulation of beer distributors, doctors and lawyers, and the National Football League. None passed.

> Funding for the $3.6 billion Clinch River breeder reactor in Tennessee has long been a symbol of federal waste and environmental abuse. The House last week deleted funds for it and some other controversial projects, partly in retaliation against Congressmen who had led the fight against pay increases. But Clinch River has one invaluable patron in the Senate, Howard Baker. He told his staff that he had to reach deep into his pocket of lOUs in order to save the project, which he did on a 49-to-48 vote.

> For the first time in history, a high-ranking Executive Branch official was held in contempt of Congress. Anne Gorsuch, who heads the Environmental Protection Agency, was cited for refusing to turn over documents subpoenaed by a House committee looking into EPA's enforcement of hazardous-waste rules. Reagan, claiming "Executive privilege," ordered Gorsuch to refuse to cooperate with the House. She faces up to a year in prison if the federal courts uphold the House effort, but the Justice Department has filed a suit to make the case a civil rather than a criminal matter.

Last week's chaos was a fitting finale for a Congress that has lost control of its budget process and squandered its constitutional authority over the Government's purse. The special session all but made a mockery of Congress's role as a deliberative body and highlighted its impotence in handling economic matters. It also showed that Reagan, for all of his proven ability to sway Congress, is still inflexible on matters of principle, even with leaders of his party. The potential for governmental paralysis will be greater when the 98th Congress, more liberal and Democratic than its predecessor, confronts the unfinished business that the 97th could not face up to. --By Walter Isaacson.

Reported by Neil MacNeil and Evan Thomas/ Washington

With reporting by Neil MacNeil, Evan Thomas/ Washington

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