"The Conservatives Are Coming!"

By Ed Magnuson

Congress braces for the onslaught of the Republicans

"It's unbelievable--it's a revolution," declared a member of Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy's staff. "It's a total reversal--the change is going to be drastic," said an aide to one of the Senate's few surviving liberal Republicans, Maryland's Charles Mathias. The gloom and foreboding among the anonymous legislative technicians who had hitched their careers to long-dominant Democrats and once fashionable moderate Republicans in the U.S. Senate were symbolic of the postelection upheaval on Capitol Hill. Aides who could joke at the prospect of soon being out of a job mimicked Paul Revere: "The conservatives are coming! The conservatives are coming!"

They are indeed. The Republicans had seized control of the Senate, 53 to 46 (Virginia's Harry Byrd is an independent), and narrowed the Democratic margin in the House from 114 to 50, sweeping out many liberals in the process. Republicans are poised to pass conservative legislation, working hand in hand with Ronald Reagan. "We're not going to be arrogant or gloat," said South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond who, in one of the most startling shifts, will replace Kennedy as chairman of the influential Judiciary Committee, "but we're going to be determined to bring some changes that ought to be brought." His aim is nothing less, he said, than to "turn the country around."

Democrats have dominated Congress for so long that only two Republicans, Senator Barry Gold water, 71, and Congressman John Rhodes, 64, have ever served in a majority status. Heady with power, a few of the Republicans who arrived in Washington last week for the brief lameduck session of the outgoing Congress had truly feverish ideas. House Republicans talked about wooing 26 Democratic conservatives away from their party and thus voting Democratic Speaker Tip O'Neill out of his position. On more sober reflection, they decided that was, of course, a pipe dream.

Conservatives in the Senate similarly talked about preventing Tennessee's Howard Baker, the current minority leader, from becoming majority leader in the new Senate. A major complaint against Baker: he voted for the Panama Canal treaties. But Nevada's Paul Laxalt, overnight one of Washington's most powerful men, promptly squelched that minirebellion.

Still, the incident showed that the Senate Republicans have to get their act together. They are now divided roughly into three bickering groups: the 15 or so middle-of-the-road conservatives, who will try to get bills passed through compromise; about 25 arch-right-wingers, led by

North Carolina's Jesse Helms, who are determined to push their long-thwarted wishes even if the Democratic majority in the House will block their bills; some ten moderates and liberals, whose profiles will probably remain low.

Amid the confusion in the Senate, Republican leaders hoped that their newly won power will produce a sense of responsibility among legislators who have long been accustomed to providing only opposition to Democratic initiatives. Working through Laxalt, Reagan may develop a smoother relationship with a split Congress than Jimmy Carter was able to achieve with a Senate and House dominated by his own party. Neither Reagan nor Laxalt is a zealot; neither is likely to support the more radical proposals that may be pushed by some of the Senate's new committee chairmen.

Push could well come to shove. Republicans will take over the chairmen-ships of the Senate's 15 committees and its 91 subcommittees. While reforms have removed some of the autocratic power of chairmen to defy their party's leadership or kill bills simply by ignoring them, the chairmen still have great influence over which proposals reach the floor and how rapidly they do so. With authority to hold public hearings, investigate issues and command large staffs, the chairmen can also attract the kind of favorable publicity that enhances their careers. Kennedy, for example, has built up a Judiciary Committee staff of 60 people. Reduced to being the ranking minority member of the committee, he will have this staff cut to seven. Concedes one of Kennedy's aides about his boss: "He will no longer be a shadow government. He will be reactive, rather than a force."

Just as Thurmond will develop a strong team of his own on the Judiciary Committee as he replaces Kennedy, other Republican chairmen will luxuriate in new perks and power. The witty and acerbic Robert Dole of Kansas will replace shrewd and independent Russell Long of Louisiana as head of the Finance Committee. John Tower, the brusque Texan, will take over the Armed Services Committee from Mississippi's judicious but aging John Stennis, 79. Utah's archconservative Jake Garn will head the Banking Committee, which Wisconsin's William Proxmire had used to promote his maverick views. Conservative James McClure of Idaho will head the Energy Committee, the forum from which Washington's Henry (Scoop) Jackson had assailed the oil companies. Oregon's scholarly and moderate Mark Hatfield will replace Warren Magnuson of Washington as chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee.

The chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee will probably go to Charles Percy of Illinois, a moderate never beloved by the right wing. He will succeed Frank Church, the liberal from Idaho, who was defeated for re-election by the conservatives. Jesse Helms, a North Carolina archconservative, talked briefly of challenging Percy for the job but backed down.

What do all the changes mean for the Reagan legislative program? Until the new President sets out a specific list of priorities, and the details of bills begin to emerge, it will be difficult to tell. Reagan has vowed to keep his list of legislative desires spare and his program simple. He seems certain to seek and is likely to get a substantial tax cut, sharp increases in military spending and progress toward deregulation of business and the elimination of needless bureaucratic rules. The mechanism that Reagan may try to use is the passage of "sunset laws" killing regulations unless they are examined periodically and specifically reapproved. There is growing bipartisan sentiment for all such measures.

But many of the newly influential Republican Senators will want to go much further. Garn is out to amend the Davis-Bacon Act so that it no longer raises the pay of workers on federally assisted construction projects. Says he: "Organized labor is going to scream to high heaven, but I think we've got the votes." Utah's ultraconservative Orrin Hatch, the new Senate Labor Committee chairman--who greeted his ascendancy by exclaiming, "I thought I'd died and gone to heaven!"--is in favor of lowering the minimum wage for young workers, a proposal Reagan has supported in the past. Hatch is determined to push his ideas as hard as he can, regardless of the immediate outcome. "You ultimately win by being willing to take losses--and letting the American people know how their Congressmen voted," he contends.

The Kennedy-to-Thurmond shift at Judiciary best reflects the altered congressional mood, as well as reveals the legislative hurdles that confront a strong new chairman. Thurmond has a wide array of proposals he would like to see enacted, including a ban on abortion except in cases of danger to a woman's life, incest or rape. He opposes busing for racial integration and wants to allow prayer in public schools. He hopes to get a constitutional amendment passed that will force the Federal Government to balance the budget.

Thurmond wants to give the states more control over voting rights, to reinstitute the death penalty for serious crimes and to eliminate some of the due-process protections suspected criminals have acquired under Supreme Court decisions but which police officers claim hamper their work. He also wants to increase federal sentences for the possession of marijuana and to tighten immigration laws. Argues Thurmond: "I don't think people ought to be allowed to come into this country just because they want to come here." In his view, most of the Cubans, Haitians and Asians arriving in the country are "not political refugees. They are economic refugees. Unless they are political refugees, they should be kept out."

Yet Thurmond's best-laid plans can be stymied by his counterparts on the House Judiciary Committee, controlled, as before, by Democrats. There New Jersey's liberal Peter Rodino remains the chairman, and California's liberal Don Edwards heads a subcommittee on civil and constitutional rights. The House Judiciary Committee can block any right-wing measure that Thurmond manages to get through the Senate. Says Edwards: "I hope and think those Republicans over in the Senate will have the good judgment to do more important things than push emotionally charged issues that have no chance."

Meanwhile, there were political games aplenty being played last week by both parties in the lameduck Congress. Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd wanted Congress to complete action on a $39 billion package of tax cuts that was pending. So did Republican Dole, who will soon chair the Finance Committee, and Reagan signaled his approval. But Carter threatened to veto any such bill. That effectively killed the legislation and left Reagan free to start anew with his own tax cut ideas in January.

The Democrats intend, however, to give Reagan one thing in the short session that he has said he wanted to impose, but in his own time: a reduction in the federal budget for the current fiscal year. Mischievously, Connecticut Congressman Robert Giaimo, chairman of the House Budget Committee, tacked a 2% across-the-board spending cut onto a final budget resolution. If passed, it will put Reagan in the position of having to decide just where to cut when he comes into office instead of taking his time or perhaps adopting a different budget-cutting tactic. Warned New York Republican Barber Conable, who will probably be a highly influential Congressman in the new House: "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts. If the Democrats want to rush through Ronald Reagan's programs, we should check the fine print."

The lameduck session ending on Dec. 5 was expected to pass no major new programs, although it did push through a bill long wanted by Carter to protect 104.3 million acres of land in Alaska from development. Said Laxalt of the session: "We'd like to hold it in tight and get the hell out of here."

As a portent of battles to be fought in the coming years, the Senate voted 42 to 38 to add an antibusing measure to a $9.8 billion appropriation bill for the Justice Department and other agencies. Already passed by the House, the rider would prevent the Justice Department from asking federal judges to use busing as one means of achieving a better racial balance in public schools. The coalition backing the antibusing move was led by Helms. Asked he: "How long are we going to allow a federal bureaucracy in the Justice Department to torment the little children of America?"

Passage of the measure puts Carter in a quandary: he will either have to veto a money bill that is badly needed or accept the rider that turns back the clock on civil rights. At week's end there was no indication of what he would decide.

In years past the fight against the antibusing rider would have been led in the Senate by liberal Democrats, but this time most stood aside and let a Republican moderate, Connecticut's Lowell Weicker, direct the losing effort. Complained Weicker: "This has been coming on slowly for a number of years. The civil rights groups packed up and went home ten years ago, and the Democrats are running away from their traditional constituencies." Weicker had a point: 20 Democrats voted for the rider, 26 opposed it. Weicker gloomily concluded: "If it is so hard to stop this kind of measure in this Congress, it is going to be twice as difficult in the next. This is going to be a rough, rough time for civil rights."

It is not yet clear whether Democrats in the new Congress will lose their zeal for other issues once dear to their party or unite in a mindless out-party opposition to whatever the incoming Reagan Administration proposes. Either way they could contribute to the widespread reputation of a disorganized and interest-ridden Congress as being part of the nation's problems rather than as a body offering solutions.

For the Republicans, the challenge --and the opportunity -- is greater. They will have the chance to show that the party cast so long in the role of the critic can pull itself together to provide the kind of leadership that will regain respect for Congress and serve the nation well.

--By Ed Magnuson.

Reported by Neil MacNeil and Evan Thomas/Washington

With reporting by Neil MacNeil, Evan Thomas

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