Stirring in the Grass Roots

By Ed Magnuson

Legislators find their voters wary, but willing to sacrifice

Ronald Reagan routinely asked the White House switchboard last week to find Democratic Congressman Tom Bevill of Alabama so the legislator could be coaxed to support the President's economic program. Ever efficient, the operators found the lawmaker in New Zealand, where it was 4 a.m. The President gushed apologies for waking the Congressman at such an hour. Recalled Reagan: "I wanted to tell him that I was somebody else. It was too late. He knew who it was."

The trans-Pacific call was evidence that not all members of Congress use the Easter recess, which ended this week, to sound out their constituents at home. Yet as TIME correspondents tracked some of the many lawmakers who do, the voters seemed to be giving them a fairly consistent message. The gist: most citizens view the recuperating President as a highly likable person; his priority in attacking inflation by curbing federal spending coincides neatly with their own sense of the nation's most urgent problem. But they are not at all sure that his specific spending cuts are distributed fairly or will prove economically sound. They have even greater doubts about his tax-cut proposals. To a surprising degree, many Americans would be willing to pass up their own prospective individual tax cuts in favor of a smaller federal budget deficit. Many would even exchange the cuts for tax breaks that would more certainly help business to modernize and stimulate economic growth.

For most Congressmen the recess visits ran into talk of virtually only one subject: the economy. After touring his suburban Los Angeles district, Republican Congressman David Dreier observed: "I have heard nothing about affirmative action, little about abortion, the ERA or gun control. Maybe when the economy settles down, these things will jump back up there." Pushing Reagan's budget proposals hard in an area once represented by Richard Nixon, the freshman Congressman was elated over responses like that from Art Powell, a retired camera-store owner, who declared: "I'm all for Ron Reagan. I want to give him every opportunity--and I'm a Democrat."

Whether constituents agree with Reagan's plans or not, they are clearly stirred up and eager to sound off to their elected representatives. "The action out there is more than I've ever seen," said Republican Congressman Robin Beard after sweeping through the rural portion of his Tennessee district. "I have more people in my courthouse meetings than ever. They are concerned and worried and want to know what is going to happen."

Understandably, the lawmakers were berated most loudly by voters angry over specific proposed budget cuts. Still, many members of Congress sensed a new willingness to sacrifice among Americans and an admirable sophistication toward the economic issues. "There is more of this mood than I've seen in a long, long time," noted Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen. "People are looking more long-term than short-term," the Democrat added, citing a general preference for tax cuts that would stimulate business over personal tax breaks as one such sign.

Conservative Democrat Douglas Barnard was surprised to visit his Georgia district shortly after the House voted to kill an increase in dairy price supports and catch no heat for that move. "I have not heard one complaint from any of the dairy farmers I've seen," he said. "They told me, 'You did the right thing. We know we all have to make sacrifices.' " That does not mean, however, that leaders of local programs slated for heavy cuts are happy. "They tell me they can withstand reasonable cuts," noted Barnard. "But they ask me to please save their programs."

Oklahoma Democrat Jim Jones, who has proposed a Democratic alternative to the Reagan budget cuts, ran into criticism of reduced federal aid to education as he traveled through his conservative district, which includes Tulsa. At a breakfast with school administrators from the Tulsa area, Superintendent James Sutton attacked the cutbacks, and predicted: "We can probably survive for one year, but after that, our school district will be reduced to mediocrity, or worse."

This targeted criticism of specific budget cuts has grown an understanding of the possible impact of the reductions has spread. Democratic Senator James Sasser said that before the recess, "what I was getting from everybody was a feeling of optimism." But after visiting small communities in western Tennessee, he said, "I encountered anxiety bordering on fear by some old people. They are concerned about Social Security and food stamps."

Social Security recipients are especially aroused about plans to reduce minimum benefits for many and to restrict eligibility for disability payments. At the A.B. Milam General Merchandise Store in Neboville, Mrs. Milam told Sasser: "I'm concerned about the older people and the disabled because I know they're in trouble. I'm feeding them here and they can't pay their bills." More than 600 Social Security recipients and sympathizers showed up to plead for New York Congressman Charles Rangel's help at a meeting in Manhattan. They hope to muster a national rally of a million or more on the Mall in Washington this summer.

In heavily Republican Vermont, Congressman Him Jeffords drew repeated applause as he opposed Reagan's plans to cut child-nutrition programs, education grants, aid to people who cannot pay fuel bills and fuel conservation measures. Contended the moderate Republican: "Perceptions about the Administration's mandate are changing rapidly. The Reagan Administration read it to mean that the country will do anything the President wants it to do. But the mandate was to rid the country of an ineffective President and to bring the economy under control." Reported Massachusetts Congressman Gerry Studds, a liberal Democrat, after a whirlwind series of meetings in his relatively conservative Cape Cod district: People are saying, 'Hey, wait a minute. This is not what I voted for.' "

Grass-roots opposition to the Reagan budget cuts and tax changes remains surprisingly muted, but the lawmakers discovered during the recess that it clearly is growing. Whether it poses any real threat to eventual enactment of the President's full program will not become clear until congress gets down to work on it in the coming weeks. As political partisans, the congressmen tended to hear what they wanted to hear, of course. They were reminded often that the stakes are high in the current economic debate, for their parties as well as for the nation. Predicted Republican Congressman Jim Leach of Iowa: "If Reagan's program works, the Republicans will be in for 20 years. If it doesn't, then we're going to have a new President and a new Congress in 1984."

--By Ed Magnuson. Reported by Joseph J. Kane/Los Angeles and J. Madeleine Nash/Chicago, with other U.S. bureaus

With reporting by Joseph J. Kane, J. MADELEINE NASH

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