A Cautious Senate Begins

In the present stingy mood, getting organized may be half the fun

The first day of a new session of Congress is like no other. The Capitol and the House and Senate office buildings are bursting with people and pride. Rooms overflow with the families and friends of newly elected members, with well-wishers, autograph hounds and those who like to brush up against power, however briefly.

So it was last week as the 96th Congress convened. Virginia's new Republican Senator, John Warner, hoisted his famous wife, Elizabeth Taylor, onto a table so that she could greet the crowd; later she blew kisses to her husband from the Senate gallery as he was sworn in. The Senate's only woman member, Republican Nancy Kassebaum, pleaded with visitors from her native Kansas: "Please don't ask me what it's like to be the only woman in the Senate. I don't know yet. Maybe in a month or two I will know." Republican Jake Garn, the senior Senator from Utah, dropped by to offer congratulations to the new G.O.P. Senator from Minnesota, Rudy Boschwitz. Garn walked right by Boschwitz without recognizing him, then turned back and took another look. "You're so quiet," Garn told Boschwitz. "I was wondering, where's the Senator? And there you are." Replied Boschwitz: "Well, folks back home would have a laugh about that."

The festivities testified to the enduring stature of the U.S. Senate, the only upper house among the legislatures of the world to gain, not lose, power and authority in modern history. At noon, Vice President Walter Mondale gaveled the Senate to order. In time-honored tradition, the new Senators were escorted by the incumbent Senators from their states to the rostrum, where they took the oath of office. Only New Hampshire Republican Gordon Humphrey ruffled Senate sensibilities by refusing to be escorted by his Democratic counterpart, John Durkin.

But beneath all the boisterousness and the backslapping, business was being conducted under the shrewd, ever watchful eye of Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd. Schedules were being negotiated, committees assigned, legislation readied.

By all forecasts, it will be a session of frugality, retrenchment and caution. Republican conservatives, their numbers strengthened somewhat by the last election, are poised to challenge the President on foreign policy. "We're going to raise hell on Taiwan," pledges Nevada Republican Paul Laxalt. "We're going to be heard on the Middle East." His views are echoed by moderate G.O.P. Newcomer William Cohen of Maine: "We seem to be committed to a course of withdrawal from major parts of the world, which raises questions about our reliability."

SALT II, perhaps the most crucial business before the Senate, will be subjected to stern scrutiny. Democratic Whip Alan Cranston of California has put together a bipartisan group of Senators who have been meeting with Administration officials to exchange views on SALT. Cranston acknowledges that the treaty "can't be based on trust that the Soviet Union will live up to its terms. We've got to have the ability to monitor their adherence or nonadherence." SALT opponents, who estimate that they have close to 25 solid votes against the pact (34 are needed to defeat it), have even talked with an author of SALT I, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Says Laxalt: "He has been invaluable in giving us perspective."

Most of the legislation on the congressional agenda reflects the members' cost-cutting mood. "Congress has an eye toward fiscal restraint," says Byrd. "In the last Congress we cut appropriations about $15 billion. In the upcoming Congress, we'll see a continuation of that mood." Edmund Muskie, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, says he is determined to hold the line on spending. He admits that his committee work has modified his views. "I have been educated," he says. "I have become convinced that we've got to be more prudent and restrained and selective."

To combat inflation, Jimmy Carter has proposed a relatively lean fiscal 1980 budget of $531.6 billion with a deficit of $29 billion. Congress may want to reduce it even more. At his first meeting with legislative leaders on the second day of the session, Carter was pleased to learn from an aide that there is a "good mood on the Hill, an attitude of 'Let's get to work on the tough ones right away.' " So the President immediately threw a couple of tough ones into the hopper. Once again, he has asked for his hospital cost containment program, which was shelved last session after fierce lobbying by the medical profession. He also submitted a wage insurance plan, which is supposed to give unions an incentive to moderate their demands for pay raises. Under the plan, workers who accept wage increases of 7% or less would be compensated by the U.S. Government should inflation exceed 7%. Neither program is given much chance of passing, but the President is pushing them for their symbolic value in the battle against inflation.

Other anti-inflation measures stand a better chance. After the stunning success of airline deregulation, a coalition of Democrats and Republicans will try to remove the red tape that limits competition among railways and trucking lines. There also will be an attempt to reduce the blizzard of regulations from federal agencies that cost American business an estimated $150 billion a year.

If the economy heads toward recession, as some economists predict, frugality might quickly lose its popularity. Tip O'Neill has told Carter that if unemployment (currently 5.9%) reaches 6.3%, the President had better have an economic stimulus plan ready. "If you don't," O'Neill warns, "we will." But others feel that inflation has gone too far to be neglected once a downturn begins.

Most of the Senate newcomers are committed to cost-cutting legislation. William Armstrong, a Colorado Republican, admits that he is "borderline ecstatic" about the trend to conservatism. As a three-term member of the House of Representatives, he says, "I felt that I was swimming against the tide. I got to the Senate just as my ideas are becoming trendy, so it's really fun." On his first day in office, he introduced a constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget. "The consensus for a balanced budget is finally here," he announced. Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, is a liberal on social issues but tightfisted on spending. He intends to improve the efficiency of the federal bureaucracy. "I want to publicize incompetence and rip-offs," he says. "This will put the bureaucrats on their toes." David Durenberger, a moderate Republican from Minnesota, wants to reduce the centralization of authority in Washington. "The U.S. Government's role is to identify the issues," he explains. "But it should examine the private sector first for the delivery of the services called for. My emphasis will be on returning the implementation of educational standards to the hands of state legislatures and school districts."

The Senate's dwindling number of liberals are distinctly unhappy with the conservative turn of events. They are well aware that prominent liberals went down to defeat in the last election, and they are worried about their own political futures. Next year 24 Democratic Senators are up for reelection, and 15 of them are confessed liberals. Fresh from last year's successes at the polls, G.O.P. National Chairman Bill Brock is making an all-out effort to unseat them. "Being a liberal today is like having a disease," gripes a Democratic official. For Senate Newcomer Paul Tsongas, a liberal from Massachusetts, the atmosphere is chilly: "It's lonely not having so many soul mates around."

Last week COPE, the political arm of the AFL-CIO, distributed a memo to its members. "A lot of Democrats seem to have gone squeamish," complained COPE. "This attitude is not so much reflected in the real and justified concern about getting your money's worth out of Government. It's more a bending to the demagogues of the right and the pressures of the business community ... It could be a long and tough two years coming up in the 96th Congress." Labor's clout has been so weakened that it is not expected to get any important legislation passed this session. Not a single Democrat applied for the vacancy on the Senate Human Resources Committee, which handles labor bills. That seat had been held by Maine's William Hathaway, a liberal who was defeated by Bill Cohen. Finally, when no one else would volunteer, Ohio's Howard Metzenbaum relieved the embarrassment of his party by taking the seat.

Yet oddly enough, while liberals are hunkering down, hoping somehow to survive, one of their number flaunts his liberalism more boldly than ever. Despite his personal liabilities and the accumulated scars of political wars, Senator Edward Kennedy has emerged as the unquestioned leader of the liberal bloc. He has not appeared to give an inch to the conservative tide. With evocative, emotional, near demagogic oratory that lifts supporters to their feet cheering lustily, he has positioned himself to the left of Carter in case he chooses to run for the presidency.

Last week Kennedy hurled his most defiant challenge to date at the President. Denouncing budget cuts in programs for the poor, he urged the Administration to trim what he calls "tax expenditures," that is, tax breaks for the well-to-do, such as lavish expense-account meals. "Before Congress makes drastic cuts in food stamps and lunch programs," Kennedy wrote in a press release, "it ought to cut back this lavish tax subsidy that provides food stamps for the rich. The President should squarely confront Congress with this situation and insist that the rich take a place at the rear of the subsidized lunch line." Not all liberals, to be sure, are buying Kennedy's approach. Cautions a prominent Democratic Senator: "Look at the voting record and show me where on a programmatic vote, Kennedy gets more than 25 votes." Because of his charisma, the Senator says, Kennedy is able to bring bills to public attention, but he is not able to get them passed.

For the first time, however, Kennedy is operating in the Senate from a firm institutional base as the new chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Determined to revitalize a committee that was rather somnolently led by James Eastland, who retired, Kennedy has established an awesome agenda for this session. At the top of the list are confirmation hearings for 152 new federal district judges. Kennedy plans to insist on higher qualifications for nominees than in the past and more extensive reports on them from the Justice Department and the FBI. He will also seek more women and minority members among the appointees. Kennedy wants to report out an anti-merger bill intended to foster greater competition among the nation's giant corporations, which will certainly not welcome such legislation. Finally, beyond his Judiciary duties, Kennedy will be the principal sponsor of a national health insurance program.

He was off to a promising start last week, as he maneuvered to sign up Senators for six slots on his 17-member committee. "He wants the members of the committee to be compatible with his views," says an aide. "If they can't be compatible, he wants guys he can work with." First, Kennedy tried to persuade some moderate Republicans to ask to be put on the committee. When that effort failed, he turned to the Democrats. Moving among them, carefully sounding them out, he finally got four acceptable candidates: Iowa Liberal John Culver, who is a close friend; Vermont's Patrick Leahy and Montana's Baucus. For geographical balance, he chose a newly elected Southerner from Alabama, Howell Heflin, who is considered a worldly moderate in the mold of Sam Ervin. The Democratic Steering Committee, which makes the assignments to committees, approved Kennedy's selections. He was then assured a solid majority on the Judiciary Committee.

As the other committees were organized, conservatives fared better. Frank Church, the new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has emphasized that he wants to restore his committee to its former eminence. His chief of staff, Bill Bader, is now recruiting arms-control experts to help the committee with SALT. Church requested two liberals for committee vacancies: Muskie and Tsongas. He got Muskie, but Tsongas was rejected in favor of a conservative Nebraska Democrat, Edward Zorinsky, who after much public vacillation voted against the Panama Canal treaties last year. "There's no mystery behind that selection," said Byrd. "Zorinsky got the most votes on the Steering Committee."

On top of that, three conservative Republicans made a pitch for seats on the committee, in order to be in an advantageous position to oppose SALT. Jesse Helms, Orrin Hatch and Sam Hayakawa were promptly dubbed the "Horrendous Three Hs" by distressed Democrats. Another Republican, Indiana's Richard Lugar, also asked for a place on the committee. Fearing that conservatives might control the committee, Democrats devised a different strategy. "You can't change the ratios on committees," noted Cranston. "But you can fool around with them." So the Democrats did some fooling. They reduced the size of the committee by one seat. This enabled them to eliminate a Republican without changing the ratio. Thus they got rid of one of the Horrendous Hs: Hatch.

Another leading conservative, Finance Committee Chairman Russell Long, had a close call but eventually prevailed. He wanted to lend a hand to a newcomer, Oklahoma's David Boren, a Democrat who is a supporter-of oil and gas interests. Long asked for a place for Boren on the Finance Committee, but the Steering Committee said no and picked two liberals instead: Baucus and New Jersey's Bill Bradley. Then Long asked that Boren be assigned to the Energy Committee. Once again, the Steering Committee turned him down and gave the vacancies to liberals: Bradley and Tsongas.

Undeterred, Long had to move fast, since the full Democratic caucus would meet the next day to ratify committee assignments. "There's more than one way to skin a cat," confided a Long intimate. "You lose the first way, then you fall back on plan B." Long decided to increase the size of his Finance Committee by adding another Democrat and Republican. But that meant reducing the size of somebody else's committee, a treacherous undertaking amid a group that so jealously guards its prerogatives. But Long had a friend in Mississippi's John Stennis, chairman of the Armed Services Committee. Sure, said Stennis. He was willing to drop a couple of members. "It's a small reduction," he acknowledged. Long then approached Byrd, who convened a hasty meeting of the Steering Committee. Boren landed a place on Finance as well as a debt to Long that will not be easy to repay.

Despite the conservative trend and the new combativeness of Republicans, Byrd quickly took charge of the 96th ses sion. "Bobby Byrd has a hammer inside that velvet glove," says Cranston. The man who plays a mean fiddle off-hours displayed some fan cy footwork on the Senate floor last week. Frustrated in past sessions by the increased use of the filibuster and the postcloture filibuster, Byrd decided to do something about both obstructionist tactics. After much study, he was convinced, just be fore the session began, that he had found an answer, though he was not telling anybody what it was.

Byrd made his first move shortly after Vice President Mondale finished swearing in the newly elected Senators. The majority leader proposed to invoke cloture by a vote of three-fifths of the Senators in at tendance instead of the currently required 60 votes. He also wanted to eliminate the endless motions and amendments that make a post cloture filibuster possible. While the new Senators waited to have their pictures taken with Mondale, Byrd insisted on setting a time for a vote on his reforms. Otherwise, he warned, he would bring them up for a vote that would only require a majority to change the rules -- meaning the Democrats could simply ignore the Republicans and do as they liked. "I'd rather not take that route," he explained later. "I'd rather not say what it is. My hopes are that we'll get a time agreement. If we can't get that, we'll take the other way."

Minority Leader Howard Baker got the message and was soon talking com promise himself. He set up a Republican task force to study Byrd's proposals. "It is pretty clear now that something might be worked out," said Baker. "It is more than likely that there will be a meeting of minds." Was the majority leader bluffing about his new strategy? Nobody knew for sure, but nobody was willing to challenge his authority. In short, the Senate of the 96th Congress was in business.

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