Finch's Quandary

I don't really feel that I've lost any equity. Our relationship isn't built that way. We've been through lots of wars before, and we both realize that you don't win them all.

Robert Finch, as he himself insists, may not have lost any equity with Richard Nixon. But their 20-year relationship has become strained. Yielding to pressure from the potent American Medical Association last month, the President humiliated the Health, Education and Welfare Secretary by failing to support his choice of Boston Physician John Knowles for a top department post. Bowing to his supporters in the South, Nixon later allowed Administration conservatives led by Attorney General John Mitchell to overcome Finch's reluctance to relax the standards for school desegregation. Continuing conflict between Nixon and the Cabinet's outstanding liberal over the tone and direction of the Administration's domestic policies seems inevitable.

Conflicting Constituencies. Their differences are political and philosophical, not personal. Nixon and Finch serve conflicting constituencies. In his courtship of the broad American middle class, Nixon has largely ignored the very groups that his HEW chief must serve--the poor, the black, the young and the disadvantaged. In so doing, he has undercut his fellow Californian and made his already complex job even more difficult.

In what seemed to be a move to bolster Finch's stock in the Administration and on Capitol Hill, Nixon last week declared his "complete and unqualified support" of a set of HEW proposals to combat the rising costs of health care. Warning that the nation faced a "massive crisis," he placed his presidential imprimatur on a report prepared by Finch and Dr. Roger O. Egeberg, who was named Assistant Secretary for Health and Scientific Affairs after the Knowles appointment collapsed.

Rhetoric, Not Remedies. The report was stronger on rhetoric than remedies. Blaming the high (average: $70 a day) cost of hospital care on the previous Administration, it warned that the federal share of the Medicaid program of health care for the poor alone could sextuple its $2.5 billion annual cost by 1975 unless draconic measures are adopted. The HEW message proposed a combination of voluntary action by the medical profession and hospitals, plus close supervision by the Government. HEW, the report said, will increase and intensify its programs for reviewing drug utilization and effectiveness, tighten its surveillance of Medicare-Medicaid fees and payments, and realign or diversify federally approved hospital programs.

While Nixon's endorsement may have helped Finch regain some of his lost prestige, the school integration compromise did nothing to improve the Secretary's standing with his black constituency. Finch had argued that school districts should, without exception, comply with the 1964 Civil Rights Act by the fall of 1970, according to HEW's original timetable. Instead, the Administration provided a Dixie-wide loophole by allowing districts with "extreme and valid reasons" to postpone integration beyond that date, with no firm deadline for eventual compliance. Finch loyally rationalized that the Administration's new policy could actually prove stronger, since it would call for a nationwide rather than a regional approach to integration, but few liberal educators were convinced.

Surprise Suits. The Administration did, however, move quickly against several noncomplying school districts. Finch himself last week cut off federal funds to schools in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. The Justice Department, meanwhile, started desegregation suits against eight Southern school districts and warned a state and two cities to comply with federal guidelines or face court action. One of the warnings, aimed at Georgia, was hardly unexpected. Two others came ,as a surprise. The Administration ordered the city of Waterbury, Conn., to take immediate action to end racial imbalance in its schools or face a suit. It also gave Chicago a fortnight to end faculty segregation or face similar action (see box). Despite this flurry of activity, liberals and blacks, familiar with the slow pace of court proceedings, remain skeptical about the Administration's intentions and sincerity.

Finch remains publicly optimistic, although there has been more open sniping at him and his department by White House staffers since the Knowles contretemps. Philosophical about his recent setbacks, he admits only that his "batting average has fallen off sharply." But he denies rumors that he will soon be leaving the Nixon team to run for the Senate in California. "This," he said of his job, "is a four-year commitment." Whether he will be able to keep that commitment and still serve his constituency is highly doubtful.

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