Free at Last, Free at Last

By Ed Magnuson

Congress bows out, and so do some respected veterans

We're engaged in a game of chicken-and we all look like turkeys," protested Republican Senator Warren Rudman of New Hampshire. Even the Senate chaplain seemed to be seeking forgiveness for the dilatory and disorderly conduct. "Father in heaven, we are here under duress," intoned the Rev. Richard Halverson. "But we imposed this on ourselves." The flagellation was fully justified. Congress had shrugged off difficult decisions for months, failing even to finance basic governmental functions. With the pre-election adjournment approaching, it had swung into a belated frenzy of partisan maneuvering that produced only gridlock. Four of its self-imposed deadlines slipped past.

Finally, last week a compromise was reached after endless negotiations that left the office of Alaska's Ted Stevens, Senate floor manager for the funding bill, strewn with litter. The end was in sight. The Democratic House completed its chores, and most of its members scurried out of Washington. The Republican Senate convened for the final formalities, including an affectionate farewell tribute to retiring Majority Leader Howard Baker. All that remained was to raise the national debt ceiling by $251 billion, to $1.824 trillion, since the old limit would otherwise be surpassed. But then Democratic Senators balked. Long berated by Republicans for raising the debt limits in previous Administrations, the Democrats sought revenge. They demanded a roll-call vote, knowing that so many Republican Senators had left town that the bill could not be passed. It lost.

Senate leaders frantically dispatched Air Force jets on Friday to retrieve wandering legislators from campaign and home sites. The Pentagon placed the cost of flying Senators John Tower of Texas, Jeremiah Denton of Alabama and Thad Cochran of Mississippi back to the Capitol from their home states at $4,100. Air Force funds are routinely set aside for such travel in a congressional crisis. By afternoon nine more Senators willing to vote for the debt hike had returned, and the bill passed, 37 to 30. "I thought this day would never come," said Baker after casting the last vote of his 18-year Senate career.

In its wake, the 98th Congress left a helter-skelter of dead bills. Among the principal casualties was a long-overdue reform of the nation's immigration laws, the Simpson-Mazzoli bill. Also abandoned was a civil rights measure that restated the intent of Congress, in the aftermath of a contrary Supreme Court ruling, to deny all federal funds to entire institutions, rather than just to the offending department or program, if discrimination is practiced. Killed, too, was a bill to renew and increase financing of the superfund program under which Washington helps states and localities clean up toxic-waste dumps. The fates of these bills will depend heavily on the unknown makeup of the next Congress and Administration.

Several politically charged issues had virtually immobilized the legislators. The House had voted to end all further funding of the CIA-sponsored contras fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua and slow President Reagan's Star Wars defense plan by banning the testing of antisatellite weapons in space. The Senate, however, insisted on funding both programs. In addition, the House wanted to spend some $100 million next year on 39 water projects, many in the West. Reagan let it be known that he was prepared to veto any funding bill that included major water projects and denounce the Democrats as big spenders.

The House-Senate conference wrangled inconclusively over these matters. At one point, Massachusetts Republican Silvio Conte, a House conferee, eased the tension by donning a pair of comic eyeglasses. The impasse was broken by what some labeled a Democratic ploy. House negotiators agreed to drop the water projects, thus putting pressure on the Republicans to abandon contra funding. The Republicans finally relented; contra aid was cut off at least until next February, when a new vote can be taken if the President certifies that Nicaragua is still trying to subvert its neighbors in Central America. As for the Star Wars proposal, the Pentagon was permitted $1.4 billion in new funding for three antisatellite tests and other research.

After the carnage, a few veterans began to remove mementos of their Capitol Hill careers from office walls and prepared to return to private life. The week was the last one in Congress for other Senate veterans besides Baker, among them John Tower, 59, and West Virginia's Jennings Randolph, 82, and for House Retirees Barber Conable of New York, 61, and Jack Edwards, 56, of Alabama.

Baker looked at the shiny new plaque his colleagues had voted new to put over the door of the majority leader's office: THE HOWARD H. BAKER JR. ROOM. Despite last week's chaos, Baker contended that, on the whole, "it's a better Senate now than it was when I came in. There are fewer personal animosities, fewer institutional conflicts." Although he was able to piece together a slim majority on dozens of crucial bills, Baker was occasionally criticized for being too much of a cajoler and not enough of a browbeater. "It doesn't make any difference how loud, or how boisterous, a leader gets," he replies. "You only have certain remedies, short of physical assault -and we haven't had a caning in the Senate since 1848." (Actually, it was 1856.)

Baker, who will head the Washington office of a Texas law firm and who wants to run for President, said he has one regret about his Senate years. He failed to persuade his colleagues to let their sessions be televised, as the House's are. "Some day the Senators will lose their concern that people will see them for what they really are",he predicts.

Conable, who has spent 20 years in the House insists that he is not leaving Congress out of frustration. Nor is he appalled by the way his last session ended. "Exhaustion and exasperation are frequently the handmaidens of legislative decision," he notes. Overall, he claims, Congress is functionally the way the founding fathers intended not very well." He explains, "They understood that if you move too quickly, our democracy will be less responsible to "the majority. I don't think it's the function of Congress to function well. It should drag its heels on the way to decision." That the 98th Congress certainly did, dillying and dallying on important legislation, then rushing to judgment while exhausted.

-By Ed Magnuson. Reported by Jay Branegan/ Washington

With reporting by Jay Branegan