More Sad Than Bad

At the beginning of the 92nd Congress, Richard Nixon welcomed the legislators with hyperbole. They had, he said in his 1971 State of the Union address, "a chance to be recorded as the greatest Congress in America's history." He then recited the "six great goals" that underpinned his "new American revolution." Said the President: "If we act boldly--if we seize this moment and achieve these goals--we can close the gap between promise and performance in American Government, and bring together the resources of the nation and the spirit of the people."

When the 92nd Congress finally adjourned last week, the gap between performance and promise yawned wide enough to engulf not only the lawmakers but the President as well. Of Nixon's six goals, only one had passed as requested: his landmark revenue-sharing bill that will provide $30.2 billion to state and local governments over five years. Two others, the reorganization of the Federal Government and the creation of a national health-insurance program, never even made it to the floor of either the House or Senate. A fourth, welfare reform, was killed three weeks ago, largely because of Nixon's reluctance to fight for it (TIME, Oct. 16). The major legislation on his two remaining priority goals--a call for environmental cleanup and a plea to Congress "to cooperate in resisting expenditures"--did not come to a showdown until the Congress's last days, when it provided for a rare and dramatic confrontation between the Administration and Capitol Hill.

This summer, the Administration proposed and helped draft legislation that would clamp a $250 billion ceiling on spending and grant Nixon wide latitude in making the necessary cuts to meet that limit. In part, Nixon was motivated by a genuine desire to rein in runaway expenditures. But he was also seeking grounds for castigating the Democratic Congress as a fraternity of high spenders, setting it up as the scapegoat for what seems to be an inevitable tax increase next year. He also hoped to obscure the fact that his Administration had set spending records in spite of his self-proclaimed conversion to Keynes. Congress sensed the trap, but many members regarded the President's proposal as a domestic version of the blank-check Gulf of Tonkin resolution, one that could only result in further reducing the legislative branch's already badly eroded constitutional powers. Refusing to part with, or even pare Congress's prerogative to determine appropriations, a coalition of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans handily defeated the measure in the Senate.

The White House was neatly prepared for that contingency. Well in advance, Nixon had determined to trade bill for bill; when Congress rejected his spending ceiling, he quickly retaliated by vetoing a major congressional measure sitting on his desk--a water pollution-control bill that would provide $24.7 billion (the President called that an "unconscionable" price tag) over the next three years primarily for the construction of waste-treatment plants (see ENVIRONMENT).

But the water bill happened to be one of Congress's legislative showpieces this session; the Senate and House overrode the President's veto just before adjournment. Thus Nixon lost two major battles, but he may still have won the political war. He now has two pieces of evidence with which to convince American voters that he is a conscientious administrator, trying to check inflation and prevent tax increases, while the Democratic majority in Congress is simply profligate. As he often does, Nixon denied that he had even considered the politics of the situation. "I have nailed my colors to the mast on this issue," he announced. "The political winds can blow where they may." Nixon had, of course, tested the winds first and concluded that they would blow him into a safe harbor.

That final week of battle was unusual for the 92nd Congress. For the most part it had been marked by standoffs. With Nixon devoting most of his energies to international rather than domestic affairs, Congress had often operated in a power vacuum. Important bills died, several for want of White House support. Among the victims:

> Nixon's welfare-reform measures, designed to overhaul the nation's welfare "mess"--which, he feels, now encourages people not to work--by providing both work incentives and work requirements.

> A bill establishing a new consumer-protection agency (the White House quietly fought against it, partly in response to pressure from big business).

> A new and expanded coverage minimum wage bill, upping the minimum wage from $1.60 to $2 an hour right away, and to $2.20 by 1974.

> A massive highway bill, with riders that would have permitted the funding of mass-transit systems with money now set aside exclusively for highway construction (the President did not support the mass-transit amendments).

> A strong strip mining-control bill.

> A major housing and urban development bill.

> An Administration-backed bill banning more school busing for the sake of achieving racial desegregation. Recognizing the same political advantage the President saw, the majority of Senators and Congressmen were ready to pitch in and make this bill law, but they were thwarted by filibusters by Liberals Jacob Javits and Walter Mondale.

Among the important bills the Congress did pass, in addition to the water pollution-control bill and the President's revenue-sharing scheme:

> The 18-year-old vote and the constitutional amendment expanding the basic rights of women.

> Tighter but still far too mild legislation designed to control campaign spending.

> New welfare legislation, with virtually no reform measures, that raises Social Security benefits 20% and benefits to widows and widowers from 82.5% of a dead spouse's entitlement to 100%; extends Medicare coverage to 1.7 million people under 65 who are on Social Security disability pensions; and grants a minimum federal income of at least $130 a month to every aged, blind or disabled American without other income.

The White House, of course, can find little good in that record. Says William Timmons, the White House's Congressional liaison man: "This lethargic Congress will be distinguished in history more by missed opportunities than by constructive performance. The legislative Scoreboard is more a sad record than a bad record." House Speaker Carl Albert offered a weak rebuttal. The 92nd was, he said, a "do-something Congress," one that "did not wait to be led but acted on its own." The fact is that neither the Administration nor Congress had much to be proud of. Urgent business had been sidetracked and scarcely a beginning had been made in Nixon's new American revolution.

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