Then Along Came Jones

Democrats who urge tax breaks for business used to be as rare as Southern supporters of memorials to Ulysses S. Grant, but that was before Oklahoma Congressman James Robert Jones started working the corridors. As the party's primary advocate of liberalized depreciation rules, Jones is at the fore of a neoconservative fiscal bandwagon that is straining the old free-spending coalitions of the New Deal and the Great Society. He is also one of the most effective and fastest rising members of Congress.

The son of a Muskogee potato chip maker who went broke in the Depression, Jones, 40, grew up in the city's segregated black ghetto because it was the only place where his family could afford to buy a home. Armed with a taste for politics and a sense of social justice, he got a night-school law degree from Georgetown University, gravitated to Lyndon Johnson's 1964 campaign, and wound up as the President's appointments secretary, one of the handful of White House staffers closest to L.B.J. Of that period he now says, "We created a lot of cynicism, both for those supposedly being helped and those footing the bill. Our ideas far surpassed our ability to make them work."

Like his mentor L.B.J., Jones is more interested in advancing by compromise than confrontation. After whining a seat in Congress from an affluent and largely Republican district of Tulsa in 1972, he was assigned to the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee in 1974. When the tax-cut bill bogged down in the committee last summer, Chairman Al Ullman asked Jones to see if he could find a compromise. Jones pieced together a combination of general tax reductions and capital-gains cuts that won the committee's endorsement. When the legislation came to the House floor, he led a coalition of center-right Democrats that helped pass the bill by an overwhelming 362 to 49.

To the irritation of party leaders like House Speaker Tip O'Neill, who regards him as something of a rebel, Jones last January maneuvered himself onto the powerful Budget Committee. He has since recommended cuts in spending for the Urban Development Bank, the Department of Energy's mismanaged Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the Labor Department's scandal-plagued CETA employment program.

He also chaired a subcommittee that put out an influential report urging tougher action against Japanese trade protectionism.

Though he denies plans to forge an alliance that would challenge Democratic chiefs on money and tax matters, Jones nonetheless has a growing following of members who look to him for leadership.

Says he: "There are 60 conservative Democrats who are mad about economic policies and could be persuaded to protest just about any liberal policy. Add them to the Republican votes and you have a majority. But that's not my interest."

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