Big Changes and a New Self-Confidence

The traumatic events of recent years--Watergate, inflation, recession, the energy crisis and the collapse in Viet Nam--have all overshadowed a less dramatic but potentially durable shift in American life. It is in the way in which the U.S. governs itself. Two years ago, Time Inc. devoted part of its 50th anniversary observance to a search for means by which the Congress could recover the constitutional powers it had lost to an expanding and increasingly dominant presidency. At seminars in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, members of Congress and academic experts expressed fears for the future of the Legislative Branch of Government because power was being increasingly concentrated in the presidency. Now, at a follow-up conference with nine Senators, ten Congressmen and 13 political scientists in Washington, TIME has found that the alarms have been quieted and that Congress has regained its self-respect. A report on the healthy new attitude and some qualifications, as expressed at the day-long meeting:

"The situation has changed dramatically and in a very exciting and satisfying way in these two years," said Democratic Senator Walter Mondale. Republican Senator Charles Mathias discerned "a feeling of institutional success and a feeling that Congress is meeting its constitutional obligations." Observed Republican Congressman Barber Conable: "Change is never comfortable, but this is an exciting time to serve in the Congress."

The new mood of self-confidence in the Congress stems from a series of recently enacted reforms aimed at checking the long-term erosion of power on Capitol Hill. The forced resignation of Richard Nixon, moreover, removed an immediate threat to the preservation of the Constitution's checks and balances. Barely two years ago, Nixon was refusing to spend funds that Congress had appropriated for specific programs, thus undercutting both the will of Congress and its power of the purse. He was claiming a vast protection of Executive privilege against disclosure of information on his Administration's decisions, hobbling the ability of Congress to see that laws were being properly enforced and programs carried out. And despite deepening doubts about Nixon's Indochina war policies, Congress was making little effective effort to exert its power to start or stop wars.

Even well before Nixon, Congress had failed to arrange its internal affairs so as to contest successfully the will of a strong President. It had never in modern times approached spending and revenue programs in an orderly, comprehensive way but had let itself be overwhelmed by the presidency's well-manned budget bureaucracy. The seniority system in both chambers of Congress permitted the whims of a few powerful committee chairmen to block almost any bill they wished. Crucial decision making was largely done in secret. The result was that Congress was notoriously slow to respond to a crisis or to the public will, and its esteem was low and slipping.

All that has changed. The impressive impeachment proceedings against Nixon in the House helped turn about Congress's slide in popularity and gave members new faith in their own ability to meet a crisis. Last November, in what University of Pittsburgh Political Scientist Charles O. Jones called "the greening of Congress," voters elected 92 freshmen to the House and eleven new Senators, most of them quite young. Those developments speeded up a great array of congressional reforms in an amazingly short time.

In Nixon's final months in office, Congress passed the War Powers Act over his veto, placing sharp limitations on a President's free hand in dispatching U.S. troops. Congress also specifically forbade a President to impound funds without congressional approval. To determine overall spending limits for each fiscal year, it set up House and Senate committees and created a Congressional Budget Office. As both chambers organized for the current term, they voted to open more committee deliberations to press and public. House Democrats shook up the seniority system to knock out four chairmen, and the majority caucus acted more aggressively to forge party stands on legislation. Two actions were taken to prevent arbitrary delays on bills. The traffic-controlling House Rules Committee became an arm of the Speaker, giving the majority party firmer control over the flow of legislation. In the Senate, the filibuster rule was modified to cut off debate with the consent of 60 Senators instead of the previous requirement of two-thirds of those present and voting.

Without embracing each and every change, TIME's panelists warmly welcomed these fresh breezes that are infusing Capitol Hill. The Congressmen and political scientists cautioned that it is still too early to tell precisely what impact the reforms will have. "No amount of reform in itself is going to lead to wise and humane policies," warned Democratic Senator Adlai Stevenson. The pivotal question, noted by the University of Rochester's Richard F. Fenno Jr., is whether Congress "can convert the self-confidence it gained in an extraordinary, temporary set of circumstances into a self-confidence more routine, more permanent, more institutionalized." Nelson W. Polsby, of the University of California at Berkeley, noted a beneficial shift in the presidency too, as Gerald Ford has "restored to relations between the President and Congress a sense of give-and-take within normal political rules." While Ford has been sharply critical of Congress, particularly on energy and economic issues, Republican Senate Leader Hugh Scott noted that he is far more open to a frank exchange of ideas with congressional leaders than was Nixon. Scott said his meetings with Ford are "relaxed and informal and no topics are taboo." While agreeing that ultimate legislative results will determine whether the reforms are effective, the panelists grew wary as they analyzed some recent changes. These included:

BUDGET CONTROL. Democratic Congressman Brock Adams, chairman of the new House Budget Committee, which first sets spending and revenue goals for the House and then must try to see that they are followed, candidly confessed that he does not know whether his committee "will work or not." He explained, "I am not certain that the Congress, as big as it is, is capable of forming a continued consensus on the budget without help from the Executive." Alice Rivlin, director of the Congressional Budget Office, pleaded that no one should be surprised when Congress fails to reach instant agreement on something as complex as the budget but praised the reform for forcing legislators to face, rather than evade, the tough money questions. She criticized, however, the "undercurrent of unnecessary hostility between the two houses" in trying to agree on budget limits, and the hostility between Congress and the Executive Branch. The bureaucrats in the Executive Branch, she said, tend to consider Congress "a bunch of dopes" who cannot comprehend budget matters, while Congress figures that the administrators "will just mess it up" if kept informed about what the Legislative Branch wants to do to the budget. Senator Edmund Muskie, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, pointedly wondered how many Congressmen voted for the budget limitation--they ruled that the deficit for fiscal 1976 should not exceed $68.8 billion--while reserving the right to vote for their own pet programs.

WAR POWERS. Louis Fisher, staff analyst for the Library of Congress, warned that the War Powers Act, which requires a President to consult with Congress before committing U.S. troops abroad and to report promptly after doing so, may simply permit a President to throw such decisions "back into Congress's lap"--to the lawmakers' political embarrassment. Ford may not have fully "consulted" Congress before he ordered U.S. armed strikes on Cambodia to free the crew of the Mayaguez merchant ship. But Alton Frye, a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, argued that Ford had begun reporting to Congress, thus setting the stage to "trigger congressional deliberation" if the military operation had been prolonged or gone sour.

Moreover, Frye contended, the incident showed that the act "does not paralyze the President," as Nixon had argued it would when he vetoed it. Democratic Congressman Henry Reuss agreed that the workings of the new act already amount to "a turn-around and a landmark" in this potentially most fateful of all governmental powers.

SENIORITY SYSTEM. Reducing the authority of arbitrary and aging committee chairmen was generally applauded, though a number of panelists cautioned that this has created a dispersal of power and a leadership vacuum that could work to the advantage of a strong President. To prevent this, panelists argued, either the party leaders in both chambers must act more forcefully or the unwieldy party caucus must assert itself.

The seniority shake-up touched off a lively debate on the merits and liabilities of long service in Congress. There were varied suggestions that members of Congress be Limited to twelve years in office, that no one over the age of 70 be permitted to hold a chairmanship, that committee assignments be rotated every ten years. Democratic Senator Alan Cranston suggested that staff members in the Executive bureaucracy above the level of clerk might be Limited in service to prevent the creation of "professionals who become total experts that defy Congress and even the President."

Such suggestions were deplored as "antidemocratic" by Democratic Congressman John Brademas, who insisted that it takes years for a Congressman "to learn where the bodies are buried and to get the feel of the substance of legislation." He argued that to Limit service would reduce the attractiveness of Congress as a career. But Republican Congressman Barber Conable countered that congressional service ought not to be viewed as a profession but as "the highest expression of a citizen's responsibility in representative government." The professional politician, in Conable's view, devotes himself to "the techniques of political survival rather than trying to reflect the citizen's interest." Democratic Senator Philip Hart agreed that long service promotes expertise, but he contended that such experts "always ask the same questions after the sixth year. New faces are needed to produce new questions and sounder legislation."

Repeatedly, the participants criticized the press, and most pointedly television, for contributing to the poor reputation of Congress by failing to explain how it functions on a daily and human basis. "The number of journalists who understand the operation of the House of Representatives can be counted on one hand," insisted Brademas. Hart protested that reporters too often want "instant but brief reaction." That forces legislators to play the demagogue or deal in "oversimplification," which the press later deplores. Among suggested remedies: more press coverage of the lawmakers as they confront constituents at home, in order to convey the diversity of pressures on them. Less plausibly, there were suggestions for gavel-to-gavel televised coverage or, at least, of the closing argument on major issues.

The widespread doubts about the ability of Congress to carry its constitutional weight against a dominant White House, which was so evident two years ago, gave way at this conference to a healthy skepticism about the practical impact of the recent rush of reforms. If reform goes too far, cautioned Republican Congressman John Anderson, "an imperial Congress under a King Caucus would be just as destructive of our constitutional framework as the imperial presidency was under Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson."

The Congressmen did not expect neat solutions to difficult problems like formulating an energy program, on which there is no consensus in the nation. If Congress is to be truly representative, Stevenson observed, it will always be "the most messy and least efficient" of the institutions of the Government. Republican Congressman William Cohen put the dilemma most realistically: "Congress is designed to be slow and inefficient because it represents the total diversity in this country," he said. "Yet people are accustomed to instant gratification, and when they don't get it, they have instant disappointment and instant cynicism. I don't know if we will ever be able to measure up to public expectations." Perhaps not, but the fact that Congress is finally trying seriously to do so is a welcome shift from the defeatism among the lawmakers so evident such a short time ago.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.