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A close call for the jobs bill

On its face, the action of the freshman Republican Senator from Wisconsin was callously opportunistic. He was endangering passage of a bill that would extend unemployment benefits to jobless workers in 27 states and create an estimated 400,000 jobs. In behalf of the nation's well-heeled banking lobby, he hung an amendment on the jobs bill that would cancel the scheduled July 1 start of the withholding of 10% of income from interest and dividends. This is a reform designed to reduce tax cheating and raise nearly $11 billion in revenue in the next three years. Said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Robert Dole: "This pits the truly needy versus the truly greedy."

At first, it looked as if Senator Robert Kasten would succeed, aided by what Dole angrily termed "the most massive campaign in history to intimidate Congress." The bankers had bombarded legislators with more than 1 million anti-withholding letters, most of them prewritten, preaddressed and with stamps supplied by the banks, apparently enlisting a majority of both houses in the cause. In response, Dole resorted to a filibuster to prevent Kasten's rider from passing.

At one point, Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker drew Kasten into his office for a scolding. Kasten began to weaken, but said he would have to talk strategy with Jesse Helms, the ultraconservative North Carolina Republican. There were Senators who suspected Helms was aiding Kasten just as the fox helped the gingerbread man, i.e., Helms was really out to kill the jobs bill. President Reagan had vowed to veto the bill if the rider reached his desk as part of it.

The pressure mounted on Kasten. The bankers' lobbying was assailed by editorialists from coast to coast. Dole indicted the bankers on national television for "using the big-lie technique. They've been telling people that we're going to loot their savings accounts, pick their pockets, take away their savings."

Dole failed by ten votes to kill Kasten's rider; Kasten failed by only one vote to end Dole's filibuster. The impasse was broken when Kasten succumbed to the heat from Senate Republican leaders and agreed to withdraw his rider, in return for a promise that he could attach it to trade legislation due to come up for action next month. The Senate then quickly passed the jobs bill; the $5.1 billion appropriation must now be reconciled with the $4.9 billion House version. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.