Brown's Budget Balancing Act

The Californian tests campaign themes in the East

"Carryon luggage only," was the order from Governor Jerry Brown's office in Sacramento to the dozen or so reporters, including TIME Los Angeles Bureau Chief William Rademaekers, who followed him eastward last week. "The Governor does not like to wait."

Officially still undecided about challenging Jimmy Carter for the Democratic presidential nomination, Brown made it perfectly clear that he is already running hard. As he set off on a six-day campaign-testing trip to Washington, New York and Detroit, he sat among the commoners at the rear of the tourist section on TWA's Flight 890, alternately signing autographs for fellow passengers and consulting a thick red briefing book entitled "Economics of a Balanced Federal Budget." His goal, he said, was "to launch a national debate on amending the Constitution to balance the federal budget."

Brown hoped to use a normally somnolent winter meeting of the National Governors' Association as a forum for his nascent campaign. Although he did manage to make it the dominant subject at the conference, he made no headway at all in pushing his peers into backing the calling of a constitutional convention to require a balanced budget. A U.P.I, poll showed that 26 Governors were also opposed to thus amending the Constitution. Brown did not even dare introduce a resolution to endorse his new pet project. He did not want to risk the same kind of setback he had suffered the week before when his own California legislature rejected a call for such a convention.

The Governors did not take very kindly to Brown. When the Californian made a rhetorical pitch for a balanced budget as "the central issue of our time," Vermont's flinty Republican Governor Richard Snelling snapped back a curt reminder that the Governors' group had had a committee studying that very topic over the past year, that Brown was a member of the committee but had never attended its meetings, that he had not even answered Snelling's letter seeking views on which specific federal programs the states would like to see slashed. Said Snelling: "I think the born-again lines he uses are reasonably offensive to those of us who have worked to reduce taxes for years."

Indeed, as most of the Governors sat through windy discussions of matters on their minds, Brown flitted in and out, followed by reporters. He also declined an invitation to dine at the White House, which 42 other Governors accepted. The Governors finally voted only to reaffirm their earlier plea that the Administration balance the budget by fiscal 1981. Less formally, they asked that budget cuts not be made at the expense of federal revenue sharing with the states.

Though Brown scored no triumph among politicians, he did attract attention, with major interviews on all three networks and nightly appearances on the newscasts. He also made gains at a series of quiet meetings in New York. He talked with groups of blacks, Jews and business leaders. Howard M. Squadron, president of the American Jewish Congress, concluded guardedly that "Brown says the right things." During a three-hour dinner with Mayor Edward Koch, Brown impressed one of the mayor's aides as being "neither flaky nor overly philosophical; he's a good politician." Nevertheless, Koch, long a Carter supporter, indicated he still favored Carter over Brown for 1980.

Despite his mixed reception in the East, Brown was effective when answering questions spontaneously, whether from newsmen or his varied audiences. He dazzled a crowded auditorium of students at Washington's Georgetown University, even though the noisiest applause came when one of the students unfurled a sign asking HOW'S LINDA? Brown, who has been seeing Singer Linda Ronstadt, looked away in embarrassment, then replied: "She's in Australia, working. Beyond that, I won't say."

Brown intrigued audiences with his unorthodox, sometimes obscure, opinions. He termed the Administration's energy and economic policies "a pretzel palace of confusion." A foe of nuclear power, Brown charged that the White House had made "a Faustian bargain with radioactive technology that will last for hundreds of thousands of years." Brown urged Americans to "join together, not in the sterile games of Metternich clones who want to play chess with the countries of this planet, but rather in a politics that recognizes that the central concerns are in protecting this planet and unifying the peoples of this earth."

More specifically, Brown ripped into "the medical-industrial complex" and the high costs of health care. "The hospital today is the equivalent of the cathedral of the Middle Ages," he charged. "There is a high priesthood; there are mandatory offerings." As hospitals and doctors enjoy more money, he said, "we get more surplus hospital beds, more surplus technology, and we create a medical arms race." Brown contended that the U.S. armed forces "have the highest tail-to-teeth ratio [support-to-combat troops] in the world. Cuts are possible; I say less tail and more teeth." He advocated some form of compulsory national service for young people, including nonmilitary duty. "We serve the country not by just marching around with a rifle, but by aiding the sick, watching over the dying, renewing the cities, by bringing friendship to other nations."

There was one glaring omission in Brown's blasts at the Carter Administration: never a word on either the broad trends or specifics of foreign policy. "There is time enough for that," Brown said. The fact is that Brown's background in foreign affairs is just about as bare now as Carter's was before he became President. Brown hopes to start catching up, with crash tours of China, the Soviet Union, Israel and Western Europe.

But people keep wondering about Brown's style. One of his questioners in Detroit asked whether Brown, if elected President, would actually move into the White House. Said Brown: "I thought you'd ask whom I would move in with. But I refuse comment on either question." sb

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