Saying No to Nixon

It was the first gathering of the nation's Governors since the November elections, when the Republicans' 32-18 margin in the statehouses faded into a 29-21 Democratic majority. With the state executives in Washington, the White House worked overtime to woo their support for the revenue-sharing plan President Nixon promoted in his State of the Union message. There was a black-tie dinner at the White House featuring Bob Hope; there were pep talks from Vice President Spiro Agnew and Treasury Secretary John Connally, a briefing with jazzy slides and graphs from Presidential Assistant John Ehrlichman and a closed-doors pitch from Nixon himself.

Nothing helped. The Governors trooped up to Capitol Hill to see House Ways and Means Chairman Wilbur Mills and learned--if they did not know it already--that the Nixon plan has little chance in Congress. Mills is stonewall set against the scheme. He refuses to have the Federal Government pass out funds to the states and cities with no strings attached. He favors instead having the Federal Government relieve state and local governments of one of their fastest-growing expenses: the cost of welfare, which now runs to $14.2 billion a year. For their part, the Governors have no objection to Nixon's plan, which would give their states and cities $5 billion of new money in its first year. But they are partisan politicians and political realists. What Mills wants is what they will get, and most of them recognized it.

Lights Out. Louisiana's Democratic Governor John McKeithen spoke for many: "My conversations with my state's delegation lead me to believe that our chances of getting federal revenue sharing without strings attached are virtually nil." McKeithen's is no ordinary congressional delegation: it includes House Majority Leader Hale Boggs and Mills' Senate counterpart, Russell Long, chairman of the Finance Committee! Pennsylvania's Milton Shapp, also a Democrat, attacked the Nixon plan for offering neither short-term nor long-term solutions to his state's problems. Agnew in turn taxed Shapp with eroding "the unified, massive effort it will take" to get revenue sharing through Congress. But the cause of federalized welfare was already making headway with the Governors. Shapp's own need is desperate, for his state is on the brink of bankruptcy. "If Shapp doesn't get help," said one conference observer, "next Monday they'll put up a sign: 'Will the last person to leave Pennsylvania please turn out the lights?' "

The most loyal support for Nixon's idea of revenue sharing came from two Republicans who were Nixon's rivals at the Miami Beach convention in 1968--New York's Nelson Rockefeller and California's Ronald Reagan. Rockefeller's political estimate of Congress differed from that of his colleagues. Because the cities are teetering on the edge of going broke, Rockefeller predicted that "toward summer, Congressmen from our big cities will have a very strong change of heart." Reagan, like the others, favors revenue sharing as a new source of funds for the states. But he has an ideological horror of having the Federal Government take over welfare. He opposes any further concentration of power in Washington, and he recently attacked his own state's welfare system for "subsidizing those whose greed is greater than their need."

Bull Session. At the three-day conference there was talk of other things besides welfare and money: the environment, urban programs, even a bit of 1972 politics. Indiana's Senator Birch Bayh, a presidential hopeful, dropped most of the Democratic Governors personal notes asking them to come by his office for a chat. Maine's Governor Kenneth Curtis, North Carolina's Robert Scott and Missouri's Warren Hearnes put together a cocktail party for Edmund Muskie. But even presidential politics could not keep the Governors from their preoccupation with finding a means to have the Federal Government relieve financial pressures on their home states. "It's like sex in a barracks bull session," explained Utah's Democratic Governor Calvin Rampton. "Whatever we started out talking about, we ended up talking about revenue sharing. It's foremost in everybody's mind." It was plain, too, that Nixon has not won the support he wants from the men he expected would back him most.

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