Showdown on the SST

ONCE again the Congress faced a question of national priorities. Much of U.S. labor and all of the aerospace industry had rallied behind the supersonic transport aircraft as a symbol of technological supremacy. In one of those massive lobbying campaigns that had proved so effective in the past, the professional persuaders argued that U.S. prestige, thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in profits were at stake in the continued development of the plane. The pressure, economic and nationalistic, seemed irresistible. But last week the House of Representatives, which had staunchly supported the SST through ten years of controversy, stunningly reversed itself and voted to terminate all funds for the aircraft.

The SST's critics had revived all of the specters of environmental damage that a fleet of SSTs might inflict, including a frightening and seemingly exaggerated new emphasis on the increased hazards of skin cancer.

But basically they asked, "Who needs it?" With the nation's cities decaying, government at all levels screaming for financial aid, and welfare costs soaring, why should federal funds be used to help a relatively small number of passengers reach London and Paris a little faster? With the British, French and Russians already marketing a possibly uneconomical SST and worrying about selling it, why should the U.S. taxpayer be asked to join the gamble? On the other hand, if the plane was as surefire a moneymaker as its backers claimed, why not let free enterprise take the risk and reap the profits?

Accountable. Those were the arguments as House leaders of both parties urged their followers to vote what amounts to another $134 million to complete two SST prototypes, and thus to retain the possibility of salvaging something from the $864 million in tax money already invested. Both the galleries and the floor of the House were packed--a rarity in that chamber--as the SST debate neared its close. The strong feeling on both sides was audible. A guttural murmuring of distaste swept the floor as Democratic Floor Leader Hale Boggs harangued the House in support of the aircraft and was caught fudging about previous House votes on the plane by its principal House opponent, Illinois Democrat Sidney Yates. "If you vote for the SST," shouted Republican Leader Gerald Ford, "you are insuring 13,000 jobs today plus 50,000 jobs in the second tier and 150,000 jobs each year over the next ten years."

Finally, Yates regained the floor. "I demand tellers with clerks," he said, setting in motion a new House procedure* in which each member's vote on critical amendments is recorded. In the past, Congressmen voted secretly on those motions that really shape a bill, without their constituents knowing their positions; only their final votes on bills as amended were made public. Now, the possibility of being held accountable to the voters back home is a reality--and a sobering one to judge by what ensued on the SST amendment.

Slowly, the members filed up the aisles to cast their votes, putting green ballots against the SST funding into a box beside Teller Yates, red votes to keep the plane alive into a box supervised by a pro-SST teller, California Democrat John McFall. The green line looked longer, and Yates, a normally gregarious man whose face was furrowed with fatigue from the long fight, broke into a grin. "Green cards here," he shouted happily, as he saw that victory was his. The vote was announced as 217 to 203 against the plane. In the mandatory final vote the funds were rejected 215 to 204.

Center Stage. The new procedure was a major reason for the House turnabout. Many wavering Congressmen apparently were convinced that most of their constituents opposed the plane and posed more of a threat than the SST's lobbyists. The recorded voting also discouraged Representatives from staying away, which tends to strengthen the liberal forces, since liberals traditionally have been less conscientious about tending to the daily business of the Congress than conservatives. This year's House also contains 56 new members, and of these, 33 voted against the plane. The teller vote was not along party lines. Voting against the aircraft were 131 Democrats and 84 Republicans; for it were 114 Democrats and 90 Republicans.

While the House rejection of the SST was led by Yates, Massachusetts Republican Silvio Conte and Wisconsin Democrat Henry Reuss, the plane's most persistent and effective critic, Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire, loomed large. The stubborn Democrat (see box, page 13) has fought the plane from its inception; he kept feeding its House critics valuable information and staged a last-minute press conference to complain that the Administration was trying to gag one of the plane's scientific opponents: Dr. Gio Gori, of the National Cancer Institute who first agreed, but later refused, to testify about the potential effect of SST flights on skin cancer.

Proxmire will be at center stage this week when the Senate votes on whether to go along with the House in killing the aircraft. It voted no last year, and the latest House vote is a psychological lift for the plane's opponents, but there are new faces in the Senate too, and new pressures. So the fate of the SST is still in doubt. If the Senate votes to continue funds, some kind of compromise--now wholly unpredictable--would have to be worked out with the House. If the Senate continues its opposition, the Government would seem to be out of the supersonic-transport business, at least for a time. Then it would be up to the aerospace industry to show whether it really believes enough in the aircraft's future to gamble more of its own money on it--and to persuade private financial institutions to gamble as well.

*Put into effect this year, the procedure has been used only once before, on an amendment to a bill raising the national debt limit.

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