The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Lame Ducks

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. Congress returned for a 20-day lame duck session today with general agreement that it will pass an increase in the federal gasoline tax, but not much agreement on anything else. The special session is due to adjourn on December 17th. The actual lame ducks are the 79 House members and five senators who won't be returning when the 98th Congress convenes in January. The session was requested by President Reagan before the November election with the principal aim of passing money bills to fund various parts of the government. Only three of the 13 appropriations bills have been passed, although the fiscal year began October 1st. Since then the President has added other issues to the agenda, including his dense-pack basing plan for the MX missile. The Congress has many hot items of its own, but remarks today by leaders of both parties indicated few of them had much chance in the lame duck session. An exception is the proposal to increase the federal gasoline tax by 5" a gallon to create jobs and rebuild the nation's roads and bridges. Since the President himself came out strongly in support, that measure now appears almost inevitable. But what else can the lame ducks accomplish? That's what we examine tonight. Jim Lehrer is off; Charlayne Hunter-Gault is in Washington. Charlayne?

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Robin, the lame duck session opening today will be the seventh since 1948, and so far such sessions have drawn mixed reviews. The overall perception is that they don't accomplish very much, both because of time constraints and because the business is being conducted in part by lame ducks who no longer have anyone to answer to for their actions. Still, some significant moves have been made during past lame duck sessions. In 1954, Senator Joseph McCarthy was censured. In 1974, Nelson Rockefeller was confirmed as Vice President. And in 1980, in perhaps the most productive lame duck session of all, Congress passed a budget resolution, 10 appropriations bills, the Alaska Lands Bill, the Toxic Waste Superfund and the extension of general revenue-sharing funds. An early advocate of calling for this lame duck session is here now to tell us how he thinks this session stacks up. He is Senator Robert Dole, Republican of Kansas and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Senator Dole, how do you think this session is going to stack up?

Sen. ROBERT DOLE: I think Robin may have summarized it pretty well. I think we're going to pass the gas tax -- the 5" gas tax, and maybe four or five appropriations bills, a continuing resolution, so that we can continue to pay our bills until next March, and that's about it. There may be some areas where there is some universal agreement, but I don't see much else happening.

HUNTER-GAULT: You said you think you'd pass some appropriations bills. Which ones? Any significant ones?

Sen. DOLE: Well, we were told today by Senator Hatfield, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, that perhaps the D.C. appropriations, the agriculture appropriations --

HUNTER-GAULT: The District of Columbia --

Sen. DOLE: District of Columbia. A transportation bill and maybe one other, maybe not. Maybe not the defense bill. So they're not that significant; they're very important to the people who are involved, but they're not the big appropriations bills.

HUNTER-GAULT: Why isn't that going to happen?

Sen. DOLE: Well, we don't have that much time, and you look at 10 to 15 legislative days, and if you're going to have some debate on some of the amendments, you just run out of time. Frankly, I advocated bringing up Social Security. That's not going to happen, and as I look at it now, it probably shouldn't happen, with 80-some new members coming into Congress next year. But --

HUNTER-GAULT: In other words, you think they should be given an opportunity to participate in this?

Sen. DOLE: Oh, right. They've been elected; some have taken positions on Social Security and maybe some of the other issues. So with this big a change, I would guess there is going to be a feeling that we ought to do what we should do as quickly as we can, and leave the rest until next January. That's not very far away.

HUNTER-GAULT: How much debate do you expect on those issues? Do you expect much on any of them?

Sen. DOLE: Oh, I think there'll be substantial debate on the gas tax provision, even though I think it has broad support. There could be a number of amendments. But on the appropriations bills there are always a number of amendments on appropriation bills. We have other bills that -- we'd like to amend the Bankruptcy Act, change some of the features in 1978. We have strong support for this. There is also a bill that we have to deal with bankruptcy judges before December 24th of this year -- there's a deadline imposed by the Supreme Court. So there are other things in addition to those specific items I mentioned that are probably minor in nature, but they'll still take some time.

HUNTER-GAULT: The White House said today that it expected the President to announce tomorrow that he was going to move up the tax increase. How do you think that's going to be received if that happens?

Sen. DOLE: Well, he may be able to move up his, but I'm not certain about moving up any of ours --

HUNTER-GAULT: I'm sorry. Move up the tax cut.

Sen. DOLE: You mean to move it up from July to January?

HUNTER-GAULT: That's right.

Sen. DOLE: Well, if in fact that's what the President says, I doubt that will happen. There is just no support for opening up the tax bill in the lame duck session. I can see a big debate on the third year of the tax cut. I know that there'll be some effort in the House to put a cap on the third year of the tax cut -- what, $700? Maybe Congressman Foley will address that. But that isso sensitive and so controversial, I would hope that we would not try to address it in the lame duck session.

HUNTER-GAULT: Do you expect this session to be over, as Robin said, by the 17th? Do you expect to have accomplished the things that you've mentioned so far?

Sen. DOLE: Well, having been here for 22 years, the target dates always seem to slip. But I would hope so. I mean, it would seem to me we can accomplish nearly everything by the 17th or 18th of December, and then come back in January and really get down to work.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right, we'll come back. Robin?

MacNEIL: Now a Democratic view of the lame duck agenda in the Senate. Senator Dale Bumpers of Arkansas is a member of the Appropriations Committee. Senator, do you agree with Senator Dole?

Sen. DALE BUMPERS: Well, Robin, first of all, I want to say I'm having a difficult time hearing you.

MacNEIL: Oh, I beg your pardon. Can you hear me now?

Sen. BUMPERS: A little better, but I heard that question, and my answer is, yes, I basically agree with Senator Dole, and I agree with what you said in your opening statement, and that is that lame duck sessions are very seldom very productive. And Charlayne followed what you said by pointing out some notable exceptions to that to say that yes, indeed, sometimes good things to happen in lame duck session. In this case, I'd make two or three observations. Number one, for all the people in the viewing audience, don't get upset about Congress giving themselves a raise, because I feel sure that'll be shot down. I don't think anybody's going to vote --

MacNEIL: There is a raise scheduled if Congress doesn't shoot it down.

Sen. BUMPERS: There is one indeed that is scheduled if Congress doesn't shoot it down, but I can give you almost 100% assurance that Congress will shoot it down, so that should be no matter of controversy in this session. Secondly, that one of the things that the President is going to insist on that we do during this session first is consider the 5" gas tax. In my opinion -- it's just a philosophical view and it should be a philosophical view of all of us, I think -- we should only deal with those things that literally have to be done, dealt with in the session. The Democratic view is that we need to deal with a jobs bill. The President says that the 5" gas tax -- he wants to call it a user fee or revenue enhancement or whatever you want to call it. It comes out of people's pockets, and while there's considerable bipartisan support for the gasoline tax, a lot of people are going to want to see the formula; they're going to want to know, is the Kemp-Roth tax cut not only going to be moved up or is it going to be implemented at all? And I think there'll be some effort by some Democrats to postpone -- rather, alter the third year of the tax cut now scheduled to take place July 1, 1983, and to alter it along these lines: to say that, for example, in my home state of Arkansas; which happens to have the second-highest per-capita usage of gasoline of any state in the nation, so you can see that I have more than a passing interest in this gasoline tax. But to say we should perhaps forego a part of the tax cut for people who make over $40,000 a year, leave it for those who make less because what they will get out of it is essentially just about enough to pay for the increase in gas taxes.

MacNEIL: Let me ask you this, Senator. There's a lot of talk among observers of Congress that this is the time when people are going to want to decorate the Christmas tree, to bring in a lot of special-interest bills and try and squeeze them through in the lame duck session. What's your view of that?

Sen. BUMPERS: Robin, I wasn't even a candidate this year, and I promised the people of Arkansas that I would bring up at least two things, so -- and I'm duty-bound to do that. And when you multiply that by roughly 100 people in the Senate, you can see that it's going to be a very difficult session. Some things, as I say, have to be dealt with, and it is Christmas-tree time, and as you know, in the Senate, unlike the House, we're unlimited in what we can offer. We can offer almost any kind of a bill we want to, there are no restrictions. And those certainly will be offered.

MacNEIL: I see.

Sen. BUMPERS: I might say one other thing on the defense issue. Senator Dole has said there will not be a defense appropriations bill, and I think he is probably right, but whether we have one or not, we will have to deal with several items on defense on the continuing resolution. Not the least of which will be the MX. So that I think that if we go with the continuing resolution and don't try to pass some of those appropriation bills -- notably defense -- we will still have to deal with some very controversial items on the defense agenda.

MacNEIL: Do you think there should be a lame duck session?

Sen. BUMPERS: If I had had my druthers, I would have said no. Since we're here, we need to make the most of it; we need to give the American people something good out of it. I can tell you that on the Democratic side we feel the strongest imperative, so far as we are concerned, is a jobs bill. Now, whether the House -- I mean, there is some sense of urgency to that. The unemployment rate is probably going to go up to 10 1/2% this month. We feel very strongly about a jobs bill, and that's the reason there is some bipartisan support for the President's gas tax -- because it will produce some jobs. But other than those things, we probably ought to pass those on a continuing resolution -- the bankruptcy bill that Senator Dole alluded to, and quit at the earliest possible time and go hime.

MacNEIL: Well, thank you. Charlayne?

HUNTER-GAULT: From his vantage point on the other side of the aisle, House Speaker Tip O'Neill has promised action on all of the 10 remaining appropriations bills except foreign aid. One who will be working to make good on that promise is the House Whip, Congressman Thomas Foley, Democrat of Washington. Congressman Foley, are you as optimistic as the Speaker?

Rep. THOMAS FOLEY: Well, we're certainly going to try to pass the remaining six bills. We've already passed six of the 13. One, I think, is fairly conceded not to be on the boards for either the House or the Senate. That's foreign operations, you mentioned. That leaves six passed, six to be passed. We're going to pass two this week; hope to take up the defense appropriations bill next week. That will leave three to pass in the remaining time. For the House, that is. Now, the Senate has to act. Senator Dole mentioned that the Senate was going to take up, perhaps, agriculture, District of Columbia and transportation. We've already acted on those bills and some others. So how many will be finally enacted after the Senate and the House together have passed their bills and gone to conference and brought the conference report back remains to be seen, but the House target remains to pass the remaining six that we have not acted on, and to send, in other words, 12 over to the Senate and see where we can go from there.

HUNTER-GAULT: Well, you heard what Senator Bumpers just said about the Democrats on the Senate side, that their interest was in a jobs bill, and House Speaker O'Neill has said that this session's priority ought to be a jobs bill. Do you agree with that, first of all?

Rep. FOLEY: Certainly after the appropriations bill, our priority is jobs, and I think it depends on whether you want to treat the highway tax and the highway bill as a jobs bill or not. For some purposes, both the President and Speaker would rather call it something else. But in fact it does have bipartisan support, that is, the highway bill, in the House, and the President's supporting it, so I see no reason to expect it won't pass and be on the President's desk before the first of the year. Beyond that --

HUNTER-GAULT: Are the Democrats going to be content with the highway bill --

Rep. FOLEY: No, I was going to say. Beyond that there will undoubtedly be another jobs initiative, the precise form of it hasn't yet been agreed on. We've been meeting today and tomorrow. I don't think there's any question that we're going to push in the House, at least, some bills to create additional jobs and to try to spur the economy in a greater way toward recovery. Now, how far that initiative will go in the House, in the Senate and with the President remains to be seen.

HUNTER-GAULT: What's your sense of whether or not the Senate would buy an additional package --

Rep. FOLEY: Well, I hate to speak for the Senate, but let me --

HUNTER-GAULT: Your sense of the Senate.

Rep. FOLEY: My sense of the Senate is that any bill that the Senate doesn't want to pass, it only has eight legislative days or so after next Monday to sit on. And it's an extremely difficult thing to push legislation with the remaining eight days, little more than a week, after we start next Monday -- 14 days if we include this week. So the time is very short. It runs out very quickly, and the defense, if you will, in resisting legislation has the advantage in a session such as this.

HUNTER-GAULT: Is the President putting pressure on Democrats to support the appropriations bills that he wants?

Rep. FOLEY: Well, I don't -- the President's obviously going to press for some of the features in the appropriation bills that he wants, for example, the dense-pack mode of basing of the MX. The President's writing to members on both sides of the aisle in support of that; undoubtedly will be doing other things. I think the principal reason the President wanted a post-election session was to deal with the defense appropriation bill. The particular concern is that he didn't want to leave that with a continuing resolution. Now, it will be an odd situation if the House passes a defense bill and the Senate does not. But I'll leave that to --

HUNTER-GAULT: Well, what is your sense of that? Will the House pass it?

Rep. FOLEY: I think the House will pass the defense appropriation bill. We have plans to take that up next week.

HUNTER-GAULT: Very briefly, do you detect a new spirit of bipartisan cooperation?

Rep. FOLEY: I was personally pleased with the statements that were made by the President, made by the Speaker immediately after the elections. They both focused on the need for bipartisanship and cooperation. Both statements, of course, said that the principles of each party were going to be observed, and you have to -- that's a little bit of a hedging there, always, but the spirit was good, and I think that spirit is continuing, and I think it's going to be especially important, not only in this session, but in the next session when we're going to have to deal with -- Senator Dole, in particular, and Chairman Rostenkowski to begin with -- with the very sensitive issues of any changes in the Social Security system. We need maximum bipartisanship for that.

HUNTER-GAULT: That's Rostenkowski, chairman of House Ways and Mearis.

Rep. FOLEY: House Ways and Means Committee.

HUNTER-GAULT: Right. All right, we'll come back. Robin?

MacNEIL: The lame duck session gives House Republicans a few more weeks before their strength declines as a result of the November election. For a view from the Republican House leadership we have Dick Cheney of Wyoming, chairman of the Republican policy committee. Congressman, are Republicans going to try and force through some difficult things which they think might be harder to get through when, as I said, your strength declines in the House in January?

Rep. DICK CHENEY: Well, Robin, we of course already are faced with the problem that the entire agenda on the House side is controlled by my friend Mr. Foley and by Tip O'Neill and the Democrats. I think there will be cooperation on the appropriations bills. My own preference would be to see us limit the lame duck session to dealing with those appropriations measures because I believe there are sort of a set agenda there and we can agree and fight over dollar amounts, but ultimately resolve those issues and pass them on to the Senate. The thing that concerns me is not a Republican push for additional legislation, because I don't think that'll occur unless, of course, the President comes up with his proposal to accelerate the tax cut next year --

MacNEIL: On that point, do you agree with what was said earlier by Senator Dole, there is really no support for it?

Rep. CHENEY: I think there would be some support for it, but my guess is it's so controversial that we are not likely to find ourselves in the position where you can resolve the enormous differences that exist. I think Senator Dole's basically right in terms of the feasibility of getting it done. But I also worry, Robin, that we hear a lot of talk about jobs, and the place where I would take issue with my friends on the other side of the aisle is the notion that somehow that we've just all of a sudden discovered that there's an unemployment problem in the country, and that there's a magic piece of legislation that we can adopt that will in fact resolve once and for all the problem of unemployment. I think that's hogwash. If there was a bill that we could pass that would in fact to that, we'd have passed it six months ago. I think we're likely to see a bit of partisan wrangling during the lame duck as an effort is made by some of our friends from the Democratic Party to talk about a jobs bill, to create a confrontation, which they know in the end is not likely to pass.

MacNEIL: Where do you think the big battle is going to come in this lame duck session?

Rep. CHENEY: My guess is the continuing resolution in the defense appropriations bill that Tom mentioned earlier. There are some major differences on defense spending -- some specific systems like the MX that are bound to be debated extensively when the bill comes up. And I do believe that the continuing resolution itself could become the source or the focal point of controversy. There's speculation that there may be some jobs initiatives added to that, that there may be an effort, for example, to add some housing bailouts or subsidies. All of these proposals have been shot down in the past in the Congress, were defeated for the most part earlier this year. But I think our Democratic friends may try to bring them up one more time.

MacNEIL: Well, what are your party's priorities in this 20-day session?

Rep. CHENEY: In the lame duck? I think specifically it's going to be the appropriations bills. And the gas tax, obviously, has a lot of support. A lot of us are not enthusiastic about that proposal; I'm not. But there seems to be a big head of steam behind it. But I think the money bills are really the priority item, and of course what's happened here, Robin, is we find ourselves once again well into the fiscal year without having passed many of the appropriations bills to run the government.It's become a pattern. It's no longer the exception, and because of various procedures we've adopted -- and I don't mean to cast partisan aspersions on the issue -- but because of the focus on the budget, we now find ourselves unable to act by the end of the fiscal year to put in place the appropriations measures for the coming year. So what we really ought to do is clean up what's left from the regular session, and then go home and come back and start fresh in January.

MacNEIL: Is that because, as the President implied in calling for the lame buck session, that Congress is dragging its feet over the appropriations bills, or that the new congressional budget system -- relatively new congressional budget system -- just isn't working very well?

Rep. CHENEY: I don't think there's been a lot of foot-dragging, I must say. We do have an active schedule this week, thanks to the Democratic leadership in the House in terms of moving the appropriations bills. The budget process has come to be the focal point of what we do in the Congress, and it literally drives out consideration of all other measures until about July or August. And by then, of course, we're right up against the September end of the fiscal year, and we therefore find ourselves in 1980, again in 1982 with a lame duck session. This may well become the norm for future years.

MacNEIL: Well, thank you. Charlayne?

HUNTER-GAULT: Congressman Foley, no magic piece of legislation on jobs, otherwise you would have done it six months ago. You're just trying to create a confrontation.

Rep. FOLEY: Well, we tried to do it a few months ago and we weren't successful. We had thought that perhaps the message of the election was that the public wanted a little more attention to the problems of unemployment and that the mood might have changed a little bit. The same thing was done with housing, and housing has started to come back but not yet sufficiently strong to really spark a leadership role in moving the economy back. It isn't that we've just discovered this problem; we've been talking about it for the past year and more. We've hoped that the administration would become a little more flexible on the issue than they've been in the past. We'll see. I think, again, the time is very short, but we feel that the issue is important and needs to be raised in the lame duck session, even if we have to raise it only to be disappointed again with the action in the other body and by the administration. We'll see.

HUNTER-GAULT: Is that how you see it, Senator?

Sen. BUMPERS: Well, let me say this. You know, the Democrats are playing with a little hotter hand in the House, or will be after January, than they are right now, Charlayne. And it may be that the leadership will be stymied because of the time constraints. In my opinion, there will be a jobs bill. Now, if the President wants to shoot it down with a veto, of course that's his prerogative. But you know --

HUNTER-GAULT: Coming out of this session.

Sen. BUMPERS: Well, look at the arithmetic. The reason -- I would take exception to what Congressman Cheney just said. It costs us between $25 and $30 billion in this country for every million people unemployed. Now, that is an absolute figure. You can get it from the Congressional Budget Office; you can get it from anybody. Twenty-five to thirty billion dollars for each one million people. Well, you can hire a million people for about a third of that at $10,000 a year. So why wouldn't we try to put at least 500,000 people to work? It would be a wash so far as the cost to the government's concerned.

HUNTER-GAULT: But what about his point that you should have done it six months ago?

Sen. BUMPERS: Well, as Congressman Foley pointed out, the Democrats have been talking about trying to do something about unemployment for six months. The President continues to insist that he is opposed to jobs bills.

Rep. CHENEY: Charlayne, I think the point here is that nobody has devised a "jobs bill" that'll do the job. We had the experience in the '74-'75 recession of public works jobscreating measures being passed by the Congress, and as late as 1979 there was still money at OMB that had never been allocated for that purpose. They simply do not work. The way to put people back to work is to continue to bring interest rates down, to do the best we can to reduce the deficit, and to get the private sector working again. So-called jobs bills simply don't work, and it's obviously an effort to pass an attractive piece of legislation, but it simply doesn't produce the results.

Rep. FOLEY: There isn't any single bill that can solve all the problems of unemployment; nobody's saying that. The main problem, however, the deficit, is the problem that inactivity in the economy is producing the huge amounts of this deficit; and we can try to cut the budget as much as possible -- be careful on the domestic side, cut back on the domestic side and moderate defense spending -- but we're not going to close a $200-billion deficit gap unless the economy comes back. The problem in '78-'79, Dick, was that the funds that were allocated for public works started to compete after the recovery had occurred. If we have a problem with the recovery coming back so strong next year that some of the jobs creation bills are running into it, we can take care of that problem, and I think the administration could find a way to do that.

Rep. CHENEY: Tom, I don't think we can spend it fast enough to have any impact before the recession is over with.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right, Robin?

MacNEIL: Senator --

Rep. FOLEY: I hope that's right.

MacNEIL: Senator Bumpers, what's your view on this? Is it appropriate for a Congress, some 80 of whose members the public has either rejected or who have told the public they don't want to come back, to be addressing very major controversial questions at all, like the MX and defense appropriations and things?

Sen. BUMPERS: Well, that's a very good question, Robin, and I don't know the answer to that. There were a lot of congressmen that got fired November 2nd. I mean, their contract wasn't renewed, and people were saying to them, "We don't want you to be tending to our business anymore." And, on the other hand, you've got about another 55 people who are retiring or got redistricted out whose contract was not terminated. So it's a mixed bag. But we're here -- as I said earlier, if I had my druthers, there'd be no lame duck session. Traditionally they are not productive. Traditionally, they are probably costing the taxpayers more money than they're going to get out of it. And I'd rather not have one. But since we're here, the best we can do is make the best of it.

MacNEIL: Do you feel squeamish, Senator Dole, about a Congress some of whose members have had their contract terminated -- to use Senator Bumpers' phrase -- addressing really important issues like defense that are very controversial and are going to be?

Sen. DOLE: No, not really. I think we're here. I don't care whether you're a lame duck or whether you've just been re-elected, you're still very responsible for the most part. I just think as far as any jobs bill, we're just not going to be able to structure one in two or three weeks that's going to have any real meaning. We've got millions of people out of work, and I haven't heard anybody yet say we're going to put more than a couple hundred thousand people back to work. And that's --

Sen. BUMPERS: You just heard me say 500,000.

Sen. DOLE: Well, 500,000. But that's twice what was advocated last year. We're looking at the tax code to see if we can stimulate job activity in the private sector. It seems to me we have to look at a number of things, come back in January and see if we can get some agreement on a jobs bill. But I think the members are here -- and I would still take up Social Security if we had a chance, but I just think it's so controversial that we're going to have to wait until next year.

MacNEIL: Congressman Cheney, the President is about to go out of town on a long trip to South America. Does his absence mean that his hot breath is not going to be on the necks of the Congress as it has been so effectively in a number of recent sessions, and that's going to make a difference in the session?

Rep. CHENEY: He's been very effective in the past, Robin, with the telephone. Some of our major victories have been won when he was engaged otherwise. He will be active tomorrow. He meets with the Republican leadership in the morning and with the House members of the Appropriations Committee Before he leaves town on major pieces of legislation, including the defense appropriations bill. So he'll be actively involved in the process. He doesn't have to be in Washington in order for that to happen.

MacNEIL: Congressman Foley, do you think it's going to make a difference that he'll be out of town for a good chunk of this?

Rep. FOLEY: No, I don't really think that that's going to make a major difference. As my friend Dick Cheney said, the President is in contact wherever he is in the world, and the influence that he has, he can do pretty well on the phone as well as being in Washington. But I think the main question is going to be how individual members look at these issues, and I don't want to ever say a president isn't enormously effective, particularly this one has proved that he has very great persuasive powers. But on some of these issues, when it comes to Social Security next year or the MX missile this year, the members are going to have to wrestle with their own judgment.

MacNEIL: And we have to wrestle with the clock here. I'd like to thank you all, Senators Dole and Bumpers, Congressman Foley, Congressman Cheney, for joining us. Good night, Charlayne.

HUNTER-GAULT: Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: That's all for tonight. We will be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.