Cutting Through a Thicket

Tension, zigzags and a battle over energy

Although the major battle in Congress last week was over taxes, Senators and Representatives also had to fight their way through a bewildering array of measures. "I've voted enough today," snapped Democrat Barbara Jordan of Texas as she hobbled off the House floor on a cane at 11 o'clock one night. Admitted Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd one evening: "I'm so tired that I can't remember whether this motion is debatable."

Roll-call buzzers sounded repeatedly in both chambers. Aides gathered in corridors and hallways for hurried conferences with then-bosses. Pages scurried about, notifying Senators and Representatives of phone calls from powerful lobbyists, White House aides and even the President. Periodically, Democratic or Republican leaders rushed frantically onto the House and Senate floors to keep wavering supporters in line on key votes.

Members had to vote on legislation touching on an enormous variety of subjects, from Nobel prizewinners to evidence in rape cases, from drug addicts to Girl Scouts. Often, perplexed Senators and Representatives hardly knew what they were voting on. Said New York Republican Senator Jacob Javits: "I don't know about anyone else, but I'm chaotic."

Rivalling the intensity of the fight over taxes was the struggle over the energy bill. In the House, Speaker Tip O'Neill ran into unexpected trouble on energy with the House Rules Committee. He wanted to have the legislation, which comprised five separate bills, voted on as a single package. This way, he reasoned, House members would be less vulnerable to pressure against gas deregulation from a formidable array of lobbyists, ranging from representatives of large corporations to Environmentalist James Plug.

O'Neill's strategy had to be approved first by the Rules Committee. After a night of debate, the committee was deadlocked, 8 to 8. O'Neill and Administration strategists then focused their efforts on California Democrat B.F. Sisk, who had voted against the merged bill. Despite a 15-min. call from Jimmy Carter, Sisk refused to change his vote.

Thereupon, O'Neill and Majority Leader James Wright of Texas moved in. They played on Sisk's reluctance to be seen as the man who killed the energy bill and promised to fix problems of water reclamation and supply in his district. When the vote was taken again on Friday, it was 9 to 5 in favor of a single bill, with Sisk voting in the majority and two other Representatives in effect abstaining. A few hours later, the House went along with the committee by the narrowest of margins, 207 to 206.

In the Senate, Democrat James Abourezk of South Dakota, a diehard opponent of natural gas deregulation, mounted a one-man filibuster that delayed the final vote for three days. Even after a 71-to-13 cloture vote, Abourezk, who is retiring from the Senate this year, obstinately continued his filibuster, causing Majority Leader Byrd to slump red-faced with anger in his chair. Abourezk, with a handful of supporters, kept talking for 15 hours, then gave up. Hours later, the bill passed, by 60 to 17 in the Senate and 231 to 168 in the House.

There were other important confrontations on Capitol Hill last week, and they were no less dramatic. Among them: -- At the end of the week, the Humphrey-Hawkins employment bill seemed to be foundering because of an impasse between conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats. Stripped long ago of its provision requiring the Government to be an employer of last resort for the hard-core unemployed, the bill was mostly symbolic. The Democrats wanted it to set a goal of reducing unemployment to 4% by 1983, while the Republicans wanted to include another goal, an inflation rate of 3% that year and 0% five years later. The Democrats considered the limits on inflation rates to be incompatible with achieving a low jobless rate. > A House-Senate conference committee had agreed to permit Government-paid abortions under Medicaid in cases of incest and rape when reported immediately, or when two physicians decided that a woman would suffer severe or lasting physical damage from her pregnancy. Then the House zigzagged. At first, members voted against the bill, holding out for more restrictive language that would have limited abortions under Medicaid to situations endangering a woman's life. Two days later, the House reconsidered, and reluctantly adopted the conference committee bill.

-- When the $7.3 billion foreign aid bill came up in the House, opponents suddenly rounded up enough votes to send the measure back to a House-Senate conference committee, which would have effectively killed it. One explanation for the mood against the bill: several Latin American projects in it were similar to U.S. projects in the $10.1 billion public works bill that Carter had vetoed as too expensive two weeks earlier. But O'Neill got wind of the move to recommit the bill, rushed from his office onto the floor and leaned heavily on several Democrats to change their votes. Said Democratic Whip John Brademas of Indiana: "It was very close. If money for Israel wasn't included in that bill, it would have been lost."

In the midst of the hurly-burly of the final session, the House still found time for some stern measures against its own members. It formally reprimanded three Democratic Representatives from California, former whip John J. McFall, Edward R. Roybal and Charles F. Wilson, for not reporting cash contributions from Korean Influence Buyer Tongsun Park. McFall had received $3,000 from Park, Roybal and Wilson $1,000 each. But the probe of Park by the House Ethics Committee did not satisfy everyone. Complained Republican Millicent Fenwick of New Jersey: "Our legislative system wrestled with Koreagate and has been found wanting. I believe the American people deserve better."

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