Toward Restoring the Balance

SINCE the 93rd Congress gathered last month, its effort to achieve equality with the Executive Branch has developed into one of the nation's most significant political questions. Last week members of Congress assembled to debate the question themselves at the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery. Their host was Time Inc. which celebrated the 50th anniversary of TIME The Weekly Newsmagazine with a dinner honoring Congress and a symposium on "The Role of Congress." Similar regional discussions had been sponsored earlier in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles, bringing together Senate leaders and congressional scholars (TIME cover, Jan. 15).

The focus of the continuing debate was the relationship between Executive and Legislative branches. The powers of one have been expanding and the other eroding, said Time Inc. Editor in

Chief Hedley Donovan, "in a way that throws the American system fundamentally and dangerously out of balance."

More than 500 Washington notables were invited to TIMEs golden-anniversary dinner. They included legislative experts, scholars, newsmen and members of the Executive Branch. But the largest number were from the Congress. House Speaker Carl Albert and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott assessed the role and powers of Congress. In addition, six other members participated--Senators Hubert H. Humphrey, Adlai Stevenson III and Ernest Hollings, and Representatives Patsy Mink, Gerald Ford and John Anderson.

At the earlier meetings, Donovan reported, "nobody wanted to stand up and say the Congress is working just the way it was intended to; nobody argued that the relationship with the President is exactly right." Still, Donovan pointed out that "the U.S. Congress with all its difficulties and shortcomings is still in many respects the strongest parliament in the world." Said he: "Its inadequacy is relative to the complex needs and stresses and opportunities of our society in the 1970s. The underlying question is whether at the highest level of national government we still see a place for collective wisdom drawn from the judgments and insights of many people--even as many as 535 people--as well as for the centralized, individual decision making, which is also essential in our system."

The sense of the earlier symposia, reported Donovan, had been that the body should be stronger. But, he added, "in urging that the Congress can make a more meaningful and constructive contribution to public policy, we do not consider ourselves to be attacking the presidency as an institution, or any particular Presidents, past or present. We need a strong presidency, and strong Presidents. And we need a presidency capable of deriving strength from a strong Congress."

Democratic and Republican speakers differed on the degree of strain between the White House and Capitol Hill. The G.O.P.'s Hugh Scott dismissed it as no more than "a degree of incivility." He added: "Nobody likes to be balanced, much less checked."

Scott considered that in view of 20th century political changes the Chief Executive inevitably had to become more powerful. "The 500 members of Congress always think they know better than that single fellow downtown. Yet they keep noticing that he is, by Orwellian measure, more equal than they are. Here the founders are to blame.

They created a strong Executive, which primarily distinguishes our system from the more usual parliamentary systems.

"If the presidency has become too powerful and Congress too weak--as I concede that they have in recent times--it is, I believe, because we have dealt with a great Depression and three wars since the 1920s. Congress was happy to turn the Depression over to a strong President. And wars cannot be fought and peace achieved by committee--certainly not by a committee of 535."

House Minority Leader Gerald Ford maintained that present differences over congressional power in such areas as impounding funds, executive privilege and war powers reflected a longstanding ambiguity. "Both the Congress on the one hand, whether Democratic or Republican, and the President, regardless of political party, have rather enjoyed the ambiguity that exists in the law on all three instances," he said. "I am not sure that the ambiguity shouldn't continue to exist as our President and as our Congress have to meet emergency problems today."

Democrat Carl Albert, who has led the fight for congressional reform as one means of recovering power, vigorously disagreed. Albert accused President Nixon of "creating a crisis that goes to the very heart of our constitutional system." He charged that the White House has "usurped" congressional power in all three areas of declaring war, spending money and executive privilege. The most serious usurpation, in Albert's mind, is impoundment, a device by which the President sometimes refuses to spend money appropriated by the Congress (see box page 14).

The Speaker cited the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972, which authorized $11 billion over two years in environmental spending. The President, invoking the danger of higher taxes and inflation, ultimately impounded more than half of that money. Said Albert: "It is obvious that what Congress has refused him, the President has undertaken to seize. The time has come for the Congress to call a halt to these wholesale Executive invasions of legislative powers and responsibilities."

The speakers agreed that Congress itself must change in order to regain power; already the concern over eroding strength has generated some reforms. Speaker Albert listed the most important: subcommittee chairmanships have spread out to include newer members, party caucuses will elect committee chairmen and ranking minority members, committee and voting procedures have been opened up to provide greater accountability, standards of conduct have been tightened.

Still more changes are necessary, however, if the Congress is to achieve coequality with the Executive Branch. Some proposed by last week's speakers sounded relatively simple. "Congress," said Scott, "spends too much time reading the minutes and squandering the hours. It needs the aid of computers and experts to operate them. In many ways we are still marching to the measured beat of another century's drums."

Ultimately, some speakers agreed reluctantly that Congress could not regain power until it demonstrated a greater sense of responsibility. Illinois

Congressman Anderson stressed a recurring criticism that the Legislative Branch still acted too often as a collection of regional blocs. "It is the failure of the Congress to develop a rational approach to the budgetary process that has produced this crisis," he said. Rollings added: "The issue is whether the Congress itself will get off its duff and do its job. The President has posed the issue after we both, on a four-year binge, have expended some $100 billion more than we brought in. We are equally guilty."

Whether or not Congress recovers power also depends in a sense upon the conduct of Congressmen and Senators as individuals. Said Illinois Senator Stevenson: "We must not only have men in the Congress--and in all our institutions of government--of the highest character, integrity, ability, but we must also emancipate them from the pull and haul of special interests. And that, I think, means an end to large campaign contributions, which now are quite capable of buying influence in the Executive and Legislative branches."

Even without new reforms, suggested Rollings, Congress already has the capacity to do all these things. "There is no education in the second kick of a mule," he said. "All we need is to have the House set the limit, and the Senate will follow that discipline, and then we can call the President into line. I have seen that power exercised by the House. I have seen it exercised within the Senate. In the words of Walt Kelly's Pogo, 'We met the enemy and it is us.' "

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