The Lawmakers; 109

even more so. The Lawmakers is made possible by grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corporation and Whirlpool Corporation.

Good evening. I'm Paul Duke in Washington. Matters of money again have dominated this week's activities in Congress. House and Senate negotiators have agreed to a resolution calling for a balanced budget at least on paper. The new budget plan calls for a whopping $18 billion increase in defense spending and substantial cuts in social spending. The pro-military mood is angered a number of House liberals. So when the budget resolution comes up for a final vote, they'll try to

defeat it. On the energy front, the White House won one and lost one. House and Senate Conferries reached agreement on another basic part of the administration's revised energy program. This to subsidize a $20 billion program to spur private development of synthetic fuels. But the White House got another jolt in its efforts to impose an import fee on oil that would add 10 cents to the cost of a gallon of gasoline. The House Ways and Means Committee, ignoring Speaker O'Neill and other Democratic leaders, voted to kill the fee if the courts don't hold it unconstitutional. One long and bitter fight finally came to an end this week with Congressional passage of a compromised plan spelling out the authority of the Embattled Federal Trade Commission. The plan does not curtail the agency's powers as much as consumer advocates had feared, but it does make significant cutbacks. And when the bureaucrats run rough shot over our free enterprise system, that agency's wings needs to be clear. If this agency cannot improve its performance,

cannot warm up to some reasonable expectation of common courtesy and human decency that we're going to be in one of these wars every year and some year there isn't going to be an FTC. Those remarks underscored the mood against excessive government regulation now so rampant in Congress with the Federal Trade Commission as the chief target. This week, Congress clamped down on the agency for the first time any new policy proposed by the FTC can be vetoed by a majority vote of both House and Senate. It is the first time that we have put in place a meaningful and effective legislative veto on an independent agency on all of its rule-making activities and returning to the people through their elected representatives control over the laws which affect their lives and livelihood. The FTC was created in 1914 to protect consumers, but the compromise bill with its legislative veto sharply cuts back on the agency's authority. Congressman Richard Ottinger of New York says it's back to the old concept of buyer beware.

We must be sure to tell the American people what happened to the public interest in consideration of this bill in order to seek to prevent similar special interest assaults on future legislation. The conference report puts the American people on notice. It tells them unless they become more diligent and politically active, they will not be protected by the federal government when those with money and influence are determined to buy the direction of public policy. Mr. Speaker, I know 1,500 people in Columbus, Ohio that would be tickled to death if the FTC had a funeral today and carried out be dead forever. It was through action of the Federal Trade Commission through their Bureau of Competition, if you please, that arbitrarily made a decision that did not permit federal glass of Columbus, Ohio to be the subject of acquisition by Lancaster Colony. They said, well, this was stifle competition. Well, it didn't stifle competition. It created more of a monopoly because

it would not change your decision. Federal Glass went out of business 1,500 persons that had been in the company that had been in existence for over 50 years is gone. I can assure you those 1,500 people would love to see FTC and the personnel down there put to bed the same way they were. As a result of intense business lobbying, the compromise bill specifically limits the FTC's authority to regulate children's advertising and the insurance industry. The House originally approved an amendment by Illinois Congressman Marty Russo to prevent new restrictions on the funeral industry as well. But the Senate wouldn't go along, and in the ensuing House Senate conference that drafted the compromise, Russo lost out. An overwhelming majority vote in the House was totally ignored by House conferees. I was a conferee, but I really wasn't. None of this seemed to phase FTC Chairman Michael Perchuck, who claims the lobbying effort against the agency was orchestrated by business interests. I do know, for example, that when members of Congress,

especially the committees that deal with us, went to their home states in August, everywhere they went, they were met with groups of people who protested about the FTC. And they began to get the picture that the entire country was of an arms about the FTC. Now we know, and we know from reading about it, that those that apparently spontaneous uprising was very carefully orchestrated by Washington-based lobbies who are targeting with the computer mailing lists, people back in the state, and making sure that they focused on the key congressman and senators, so that they got the picture of a country up in arms against regulation. The live wire Perchuck is regarded as a strong consumer activist who fired up what had been a sleepy old agency when he took over in 1977. But he's also blamed by his Capitol Hill friends for some of the FTC's problems with the lawmakers. We didn't neglect Congress and I neglected Congress, neglected to go up there and tell people what we were doing and why we were doing it.

And one of the things that happened is that while we were down here kind of working at our jobs, there were a lot of very articulate and able lobbyists who were painting a picture of the commission, which was very distorted. The lobbyists for the serial industry, the lobbyists for the broadcasters, for the companies that are involved in standards making. All in the time-honored way went up to visit the congressman and say, hey, this is an agency which is crazy, it's going to, doing all this over-regulation. And it's a form of one-sided advocacy which painted a picture of an agency as you've described it. And it was wrong. It was an inaccurate picture. But we weren't up there telling our side of the story until pretty late in the game. Although Perchuck says he can understand the reasons behind the attack on his agency, he vows to continue the fight to protect consumers. Now, there is some genuine distaste for regulation and over-regulation in the country. But our polls, the polls not that we've taken, but that everyone has taken,

show, overwhelmingly, that people want us to do the kinds of things we're doing. You asked them specifically about funeral home to price disclosures or automobile price disclosures or anti-trust enforcement. They want that. But the picture that many congressmen and senators get is just the opposite. You said the FTC has been a tough agency. After its long or deal, is it still going to be tough? Yes. The FTC is going to continue to be a tough agency? Yes. You don't fear Congress? No. Despite what Chairman Perchuck says, it's expected the agency will go slower in pursuing some of its investigations, less at risk, more controversy. Our guest commentator tonight, former Chairman Otis Pike of New York, says the FTC should pick a new target for its regulations. The Federal Trade Commission has the job of protecting consumers from faults or deceptive advertising, shoddy products, and practices which kill competition. The United States Congress

has the job of providing money for the FTC. So thoroughly has the Federal Trade Commission done its job that the Congress almost stopped doing theirs. For four years, the Congress has refused regular authorizations for the FTC, and the appropriations committees have kept it alive only on a hand-to-mouth basis. When the FTC investigates funeral directors, the latter write their congressman, and the congressman say the FTC is wrong. When the FTC says advertising aimed at children results in too much sugar in the cornflakes. Everyone who manufactures corn or sugar or cornflakes writes the congressman, and the congressman threatened to cut off the FTC's funds. Why doesn't the FTC fight back? The FTC might look into congressional practices, where those campaign brochures deceptive is they're too much corn in the speeches, too much sugar

in the sugar bill, is congressional advertising aimed at children, is Congress dangerous to consumers. If the FTC supervised Congress, would they just clean up the commercials, or would they really cut off the cash? Congress may be in a mood to deregulate some things, but there's one thing it shies away from decontrolling, and that's marijuana, even if it's for medical research or to help the sick. For years, Congress has been holding hearings on drug problems involving young people, but this week the House Committee on Narcotics took a different kind of look into the medical benefits of marijuana. I have two teenage children, and I want to be able to tell them things that make some sense to them, so I hope very much that they will not be inclined to use drugs during their formative years, very most importantly, and then I have another interest, which is that my dad died of cancer, and many years ago, and suffered the most horrible pain for about the last 18 months

of his life. Congressman Stephen Neill, a young Democrat from North Carolina, had some personal reasons for calling the first congressional hearings on the medical uses of marijuana, and he wanted to learn more about the drug's medicinal value, something medical experts have testified to for a long time. In the 19th century, doctors gave their patients marijuana for such common ailments as insomnia, asthma, nervous conditions, and emotional stress. But this use of marijuana for medical reasons ended in 1937, when Congress made the drug illegal. In 1970, the U.S. government ranked marijuana a schedule one drug, meaning it had no acceptable medical use. Now, after two decades of widespread social use, researchers are again testing its therapeutic value. The committee heard testimonials from cancer patients who claim marijuana helps them endure the horrors of one of the basic cancer treatments, chemotherapy. Under the first treatment, I kept praying

and I kept begging them to please let me die, and I am not that kind of a woman. I am a strong woman. I vomited straight for almost 16 hours, and when I say straight, I mean without stopping. There was no break, there was no relief, and there's nothing left to vomit. They tried everything, the only thing that brought me back from the terrible side effects was smoking illegal pot, as they call it, I call it marijuana. Richard Sandal is the director of a drug abuse program in Pennsylvania. He was told two years ago he had cancer and had only six weeks to live. This is Sandal a year and a half ago while he was undergoing chemotherapy. Today, his cancer seems under control, something he attributes in part to marijuana. I think it was the chemotherapy that put me into a remission, and without the chemotherapy, I would never have done chemotherapy without the marijuana.

The problem, according to Congressman Nioh, is that many patients, like Anne Gutentag and Richard Sandal, have to get their marijuana on the street. The doctors hate this because the dosage is in control, and the government doesn't like it because marijuana is illegal. Federal narcotics officials insist they are still skeptical about the drug's effectiveness. Cancer is a very emotional area too, and people become very desperate. Latural controversy has been going on for many, many years, and there's a great rush to try to take advantage of anything that holds a glimmer of promise, and I think you're hearing that degree of impatience. The history of medicine, I think, is replete with people reporting all in very good faith, and not belittling anyone in any sense of the word, but for an individual anecdotal report of a patient saying, yes, I received drug X, or yes, I received drug Y, and I immediately felt better. Modern clinical medicine does not take that as evidence. Scientists have been able to reproduce marijuana's active ingredient called THC. The Food and Drug Administration says it wants to make THC pills available for cancer

specialists to prescribe, but the slowness of the federal government has prompted 23 states to act on their own. They've legalized marijuana for medical use by setting up state research programs. Georgia Congressman Billy Lee Evans comes from one of those states, but he believes only THC pills should be dispensed, not marijuana cigarettes. Correct me if I'm wrong. I think that's analogous to maybe using breadmode where penicillin is a very good medical use, or has a very good medical use. Breadmode might not do you so well, and I think marijuana might not either. However, some doctors like Stephen Salon of Harvard University disagree with Evans and say patients often throw up the pills. There's no question in my mind that the oral route for an anti-ametic pill is the absolute worst route for the patient who has a lot of anticipatory nausea and vomiting.

The expectation of this treatment engenders nausea and vomiting in people the night before, and what they need is something that gets away from the stomach, a suppository, a good idea. The smoked root is in some ways ideal. Certainly when we want a drug to be absolutely sure, general anesthesia, we put it on the face, they breathe it across their lungs, it's in the bloodstream instantaneously. All this talk about the medical use of marijuana has led some congressman to worry about sending the wrong signals to the American public. Lester Wolf of New York wants to be certain the committee doesn't inadvertently legitimize the social use of marijuana. The important element, however, I think, is that this not lead people to believe that marijuana is a harmless substance that can be used on an overall basis for its therapeutic value as a cure all for everything. While we sort out the issues of use versus abuse, I think what I would like to

see done is that the people for whom use is clearly established don't have to suffer while we work out what might be years of answering those questions. I can't agree with you more. I'm afraid that you are being used by opponents of the legalization of marijuana and other drugs as a tool or an argument for the legalization of marijuana. And that's where I want you to make sure that you are not used as that too because we do have a very active effort to legalize marijuana for just recreational use and I'm very much opposed to that. There's no bill before us and we're certainly not talking about the legalization of marijuana. I mean that's not even a subject of this hearing. Unfortunately, Mr. Chairman, I think that that is the public perception of what we're talking about. The perception of a rescheduling of the cigarette at this point and what the children and the adolescents would do in terms of misreading what the press have to say about that would be detrimental

to our program to impact upon marijuana use in the United States. The doctors claim the Schedule 1 classification which enforcement officials say helps prevent abuse keeps researchers from getting enough marijuana to study and without enough research, no drug can be approved for use to the committee that seemed an endless circle. Then we need more study and to get the study we need to have the substance available for you to study but under as long as it's under Schedule 1 it will not be available because the assumption will be that there's no medical use. It's a real catch 22 situation it seems to me. Is that not correct, Mr. Chairman? Maybe I miss something here. I know it is passing the buck. The Narcotics Committee doesn't have the power to recommend laws but it can provide some political impetus to get the often sluggish federal bureaucracy to move a little faster and that's what Congressman Neil hopes he achieved. What I would hope is that we deal with these problems in a rational way and we have

not done that historically I don't think. I think the policies of our government in this area have not been at all effective. In fact it would be an area that I would say would be characterized by tremendous failure over the years. Congressman Neil's hearings have sparked some interest but it's a long way from a groundswell so any basic change in policy may still be a long way off. Each year members of Congress are required to tell us how much money they're worth. The most recent figures show that Senate Majority Leader Robert Bird made a mere $5,500 playing his fiddle last year which just goes to prove what we suspected all along. The Senator fiddles more for fun than for profit. The Congressional Financial Disclosure Statements also reveal that 50 members of the House and Senate are millionaires. We thought you just worked.

As it turns out, the wealth has fairly equally distributed along party lines, 23-yard Democrats, 26 Republicans, and one is an independent who sits with the Democrats. Which not so rich are even poor among members of Congress, one of the hottest topics of conversation these days, is religion and its influence on politics. Of growing concern is the rise of the born-again fundamentalist Christian movement. There are now an estimated 40 million evangelical Christians in the U.S. and some groups have even started rating congressmen on how moral they are. An evangelical Christian who is concerned about all this is Mark Hatfield, the Republican

Senator from Oregon, a Baptist who does some lay preaching on the side. Well, I of course support anything that brings more people into the electoral process and gets more people involved. I think that's healthy for a democracy. I am always a little concerned about people who have had revelation from God and especially on political issues and try to establish the simplistic idea that the Bible or God has come out for one side of this controversial issue or another side. That makes me a little uneasy. For Christians or any other group for that matter to come into the political process, that's fine. I think we have to realize that our Constitution provides just as much right to the non-believer as to the believer, to the atheist, to the agnostic, to the Christian, to the Jew, to the Eastern mystic, to the cult, to whatever person desires may be to follow up a particular religious

teaching. I believe that we have to recognize that this country is a pluralistic country. That it is not a Christian country per se politically. We are all influenced by our Judeo-Christian heritage, of course. But I must point out that anyone who tries to set up a Christian political party, a Christian political platform, a Christian political movement, I think is running basically contrary to the concept of pluralism in this country under our Constitution. Does it strike you, Senator, that some of these evangelical groups have just become too arrogant in their attempts to influence politics? Well, as arrogance, when it's determining for other people, now if they want to make their own judgments, every American has that privilege and right, but when they try to set themselves up as the judging committee to set the godly quotient to be applied to all the members of Congress, and they determine what votes shall be incorporated in that

ranking. For instance, as they did in the Christian voice ranking of including the sanctions on Rhodesia, the question of the establishment of the Department of Education, the confirmation of Patricia Wall for the U.S. court, I don't understand the relationship between those votes and biblical truth or our Judeo-Christian doctrine. It seems to me that when this happens, they deny the right of even Christians within this country to have a pluralism of viewpoint. I am very concerned when someone says, this is God's position. Any other position is not God's position. To me that is arrogance, and I think it is not in keeping with the constitutional system we have. It's suggested by some that this movement is aimed more at propagating conservative principles than religious principles.

Well, when someone asks me, and I want to put it just as bluntly as I can, what my view of Jesus Christ is and who I think He was and what importance He was in my faith, I can accept that as a legitimate question to make some kind of a judgment on my Christian commitment. But when someone asks me what my position is on the Panama Canal Treaty, and they're going to take that position and apply it as a measurement of my spiritual commitment, I think that is precisely then what is happening is that political issues are becoming the criteria to judge a person's spiritual commitment. There is nothing biblical about that, and I think it's the height of arrogance. Again, I have no problem with people getting active in politics, taking opposite positions in myself, but let them judge my positions on the merits of the politics of it or the economic of it.

But to make a judgment is to my relationship to God on the basis of how I vote in the Congress I think is carrying it too far. Senator, you're a born again Christian yourself, do you feel betrayed by some of these groups? No, because what I see is a lot of this part of the Christian community, the so-called Evangelical Wing of the Christian community, which I am a part, has been politically in hibernation for many years. Now we find a new awareness, an interest to become involved, and out of it has come a certain example of naivete, of lack of interest, a background or knowledge, a certain degree of ignorance, and as a consequence we get to some of these extremities expressed. We get some of these way out positions. I think that there's going to be a maturation. I think they'll mature into this political role and make a very fine contribution in time. Now I'm just as concerned about some of my liberal theological friends who have been involved in politics all these years, who have passed resolutions for the United Nations

for hunger problems and other such things, who are so concerned about the evangelicals coming into politics. I think that both sides need to grow and mature and understand each other, and then also their respect to your role in politics. I just think it's healthy to have people in the political process, but hopefully that will be a mature role and an understanding role and not a judgemental role where they're going to demand that all politics conform to their particular viewpoint. Some 20 years ago, Senator, your wife was quoted as saying, everything Mark Hatfield does is for the Lord. Is that still true? That's my goal, and I'm sure in retrospect that I could have done much better on a number of things. I don't want to blame God for my political decisions or my political positions, because in effect that's hiding behind, I think, false pretenses. By the same token, I strive to make my life total, my total life, put it into that kind

of a mainstream of biblical faith, but I fail many times. Senator Hatfield also has some strong feelings about the military draft, so strong in fact that he's threatening to filibuster a Senate bill to revive registration for young men. We'll be covering that story and other activities of the lawmakers next week. I'm Paul Duke, goodnight from Washington. Thank you. The Lawmakers was made possible by grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,

Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corporation, and Whirlpool Corporation. This program was produced by WETA, which is solely responsible for its content.