Enter, Stage Far Right

Congress begins work on busing, abortion and school prayer

Much to the dismay of the cadres of social conservatives and Moral Majoritarians who helped elect Ronald Reagan, the Administration insisted last year that the most prickly proposals on the New Right agenda, such as outlawing abortion and banning busing as a tool to desegregate schools, be put off while the new Government concentrated on the more pressing economic and budgetary concerns. Even now, many top officials, from the White House to Capitol Hill, would like to see these troublesome issues continue to simmer and sputter on a conveniently distant backburner. Conservative leaders, however, are in no mood to wait any longer. "Our patience is wearing a bit thin," says Ronald Godwin of the Moral Majority. So Jesse Helms of North Carolina, the New Right's Senate shepherd, has insisted that Majority Leader Howard Baker keep his pledge to provide Senate time for a full debate on the social agenda early in this session.

School busing is the first issue to come up and the one most likely to be resolved to the liking of the New Right. The Senate last week approved, by a 58 to 38 vote, an amendment to a Justice Department funding bill. It would prohibit federal judges from ordering busing of students more than five miles as a means of eliminating racial segregation. In the Democratic-controlled House, a similar but less radical measure has already passed. The differences will have to be resolved by a conference committee.

Abortion, an even more emotional is sue, will be the focus this week in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is scheduled to vote on a constitutional amendment proposed by Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah. The amendment, if passed by two-thirds of both houses and three-fourths of the states, would allow any state, or Congress, to outlaw abortion. Many conservatives prefer a more radical statute, sponsored by Helms, which declares that human life, as protected under Constitution, begins with conception. any Helms' bill abortion does would not be attempt murder. to the Constitution, it needs only a majority in Congress to pass.

Allowing prayer in public schools, the item on the New Right list, has congressional support that is a mile wide but an inch deep. Most legislators say favor finding a way to reverse the Supreme Court decision that school prayers the constitutional separation of and state, but they have never willing to fight strongly enough to such a proposal into law. Helms has a that would do just that; if it comes to a roll call on the House and Senate a majority will probably be unwill to go on record as being opposed to al children to pray.

All three of these issues, if passed into legislation, are likely to provoke a direct confrontation with the courts. First, many of the bills attempt to circumvent or overturn rulings of the Supreme Court, such as its opinion, delivered in 1973, that laws flatly prohibiting abortions during the first six months of pregnancy were unconstitutional. The courts are likely to reaffirm their past decisions on the disputed issues. Second, the New Right is launching what legal scholars see as a more insidious constitutional challenge to judicial authority. The bills on busing, abortion and school prayer all seek to limit the authority of the federal courts to rule on these issues.

In the House, proponents of these bills will find it difficult to get them approved by the liberal-dominated Judiciary Committee. But if they can get a "discharge petition," signed by a majority of the members, they can force a head-on floor vote. In the Republican Senate, where the New Right claims credit for electing up to a dozen new members in 1980, supporters will find it easier to force floor debates and to cut off the filibusters threatened by liberal Republican Lowell Weicker of Connecticut. But the moral crusaders may discover that many of the freshmen they helped elect are now less anxious to do battle for conservative social causes than they were when they were on the campaign trail. Says Senator James Abdnor of South Dakota, who defeated Democrat George McGovern partly by stressing social issues: "I resent that the New Right says they elected me. I'm not part of their crusade." His attitude on dealing with the proposals: "Let's get them over with."

That feeling, which prevails on Capitol Hill, is shared in the White House. The Administration is still embroiled in a controversy over one of its few major forays into issues on the conservative social agenda: a re-examination of the ban on tax exemptions for racially discriminatory schools. Last week a letter was released by 200 employees of the Justice Department's civil rights division arguing that, contrary to what Reagan claims, the exemptions were barred by existing legislation. A Justice Department spokesman declared that anybody in the department who disagreed with Reagan's approach was "welcome to leave."

As he has in the past, Reagan is likely to give public support to the New Right causes, which he does indeed care deeply about. But the White House political machinery is not expected to crank up a full-fledged campaign for social and moral legislation. Says a disillusioned Paul Weyrich, chief strategist for the New Right: "Like Pontius Pilate, they just want to wash their hands of the whole thing."

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