Thirty Minutes With…; Sen. Ribicoff

People from Washington across the nation and abroad, people of consequence are questioned on the issues of our time by Elizabeth Drew on 30 minutes with. Tonight, Senator Abraham Rybakov, Democrat of Connecticut. Senator Rybakov, you're in the middle of some of the major legislative battles in the Congress, and also you're very close to Senator McGovern. So I want to talk to you about both the Record of Democratic Congress and the situation of the Democratic presidential campaign. First the Congress. President Nixon has proposed a number of major pieces of legislation, welfare, health, revenue sharing, reorganization of the government. Only revenue sharing seems even close to being enacted. What is the, how do you explain this record of the Democratic Congress? It isn't the record of the Democratic Congress, it's a record of the President of the United States, Liz. Unfortunately, the Congress has become a sounding board of the President, and Congress usually reacts to presidential suggestions and leadership.

This is wrong because there's two wins, Pennsylvania Avenue, the White House, and the Congress itself. Now, the President has certainly sounded an uncertain note. You take welfare reform, I've been carrying the ball on that for the President since 1969. And I am positive that as of today, the President couldn't care less. He has abdicated his leadership. In the Finance Committee, not a single Republican, all of whom are outstanding loyalists to President Nixon, voted for the President's own proposals. He has been silent. He said he was for a guaranteed income, the Republican platform, and his Labor Day speech indicates that he is no longer for a guaranteed income. We worked out a compromise between his proposal and mine, which was approved by Secretary Richardson, Hodgson, and Schultz, only to have it undermined and torpedoed by the President of the United States.

We've been wanting, there were reports about this, you mean, you did have a compromise where death at the White House vetoed? That is right. The White House sort of put it in the bottom drawer, and nothing has happened, and nothing has been seen of it since. So the bill that you are, the proposal you're backing, is not the one that you worked out with the White House? No, I would say this, that we came to a pretty good agreement, which was a fair compromise, and embraced many of the suggestions that the President himself had advocated over the course of three years, then apparently backed away from, of course. Why did they do that? Did you get any explanation? My feeling is that he really doesn't want welfare reform, because there are no votes in welfare. It's an issue that everybody is against, it's a good whipping boy to talk about those bombs on welfare, you know, and to take the myths surrounding welfare, and everybody go on the stump and beat over the head of people on welfare. Now the President talks about doing something for people who want to work. Most people on welfare can't work, they are women and children, or the aged and the blind

and the disabled. But you have a tough situation here, Liz, because the welfare roles keep going up, they've gone up six million more people on welfare since the President has been in office. And that is a situation, very, very discouraging, very discouraging. I don't think the President really cares whether we have welfare reform or not. You say they don't care, and they don't, they have an urge to, but they have. And the President, the statements who came out before the Congress came back, and last week, John Erlichman said that the welfare reform bill is very important, and that they want it. So they say they want it. They say they were, but that's the consistent part of the Nixon administration. What they say and what they do are completely the opposite scale. Now you take the President's as his interest in health legislation, yet the President has vetoed four basic health pieces of legislation that the Congress has passed. But not to reform health care. Nobody has, and he hasn't come up with a proposal.

He's made a promise to come up with a health care plan, which he never really has. He's never asked, it's floating around. He has a vague idea. He's never, we've never had any real hearings on it. There's been no push forward. You see, uncomplicated matters such as health care and welfare, they are so esoteric and so complicated that if a President wants a piece of legislation, he has to do an education job to go to the country to urge it, to explain it, and to twist a few arms on Capitol Hill. He hasn't done it. You can't find a Republican advocate of any of these measures. They've gone to sleep. So I think the President would rather have an issue than legislation. And consequently, with everything that Congress has to handle, without any presidential push, nothing really takes place. It may be, as you say, they haven't pushed it to clear up the record. They did introduce a health care plan. But they have never pushed it, never done anything with it, and couldn't care less. Now, what's your prognosis about the welfare bill?

There are three versions of it in the Senate yours, theirs, and the one that your finance committee came out with. Do you think there's any chance of getting one through by the end of the session? There's no chance of getting either one through unless there's a combination between the President and Senator Long, or the President and a Briba-Coff, or a Briba-Coff and Senator Long. At the present time, I don't see any two legs to that three-legged stool getting together. My proposal is really the President's proposal somewhat liberalized. And we see I-to-I with one another, and we saw I-to-I after months of negotiation with H-E-W, and we thought we had worked out a very satisfactory arrangement that would be consistent with the President's program. But then the platform and the Labor Day speech, the President, abdicated his suggestion of taking the working poor and having a guaranteed allowance to them, the people who work in

or below the poverty line, which would really put 11 more million people on welfare. So the President doesn't want to go into an election year and say, I'm putting 11 more million people on welfare. And you say that Secretary Richardson, Secretary Hodgson, we're ready to. That is right. I'd like to go back to another point you made earlier, which is that about the Congress itself, if the President hasn't come up with proposals that you think are satisfying, and if they don't fight hard enough to push them, why doesn't the Democratic Congress on its own initiate legislation? It did, you know, during a period when Eisenhower was President and Mr. Johnson was running the Senate. What's happened? Well, there's no unified Democratic Party. You have most of the Southern Senators, the I-to-I with the Republican Senators on economic and social issues. And consequently, the Democratic Party, as we know it, represented by George McGauve under a Ted Kennedy and Abe Rivercoff, and I believe the majority of the Democrats are

really not the majority in the Congress. The Congressional majority is a majority of Southern Democrats and Republicans. And also, most chairmanship are under the control of Southern Democrats who work in conjunction with the Republicans on their committee. And consequently, if it's a piece of legislation that they don't want, they can throw roadblocks into it. I've tried, of course, when you have a piece of legislation, like my concept of welfare reform, to write a new welfare reform bill, just as I will have a health program of my own, independently. And I, or the Consumers Bill, for a Consumers Advocacy Agency, which will come before the Senate next week, you slough aside the President's program. But here we had an opportunity with Senator Javits and Senator Percy to work a bill out over the opposition of the White House. But the Congress wasn't all that different in the fifties, when it, again, had an opposition White House.

And it did come up with more legislation. So I wonder if you think there's a different mood or a different attitude on Capitol Hill? No. Or is it just lazy or what? No, it isn't lazy. I think Congress is overwhelmed with minutia, with its day-to-day work, reacting to the President instead of being independent. My feeling is that Congress has abdicated its responsibility of being an independent legislative body. Why? I can't tell you. It's a philosophy in which the executive has come to the ascendancy. And the executive seems to be the important phase of the legislative process. And Congress is a sounding board for the President. I think this is wrong. I have always felt and still feel that we've got enough brains, and if we don't like with the President advocates, we have the obligation to come up with programs of our own. In recent years, Congress has not done that. Now, since you're on the Finance Committee, one of the areas you do deal with is taxes. The White House has said that the President would not raise taxes if he is re-elected.

We had a deficit in this last year of $23 billion, at least a $27 billion deficit coming. It could even go up to $35. Yes, there are those very high. Do you think that they can keep that pledge not to raise taxes? They can only keep the pledge not to raise taxes if they close a sufficient number of loopholes to get the money in. 35 billion dollars worth of a penny proposal. Well, I don't know. I mean, they could propose closing up a substantial number of loopholes, bringing some $22 billion in my opinion. Senator Saxby today, I read in the press, said that he couldn't see how Nixon was playing fair with the American people by saying he couldn't raise taxes. Keep in mind that in the Nixon years, the deficit has gone up 75 billion dollars. He has rolled up a deficit more than President Eisenhower, President Kennedy, and President Johnson put together.

Our national debt has gone up 110 billion dollars under President Nixon. He's supposed to be the great administrator and the man who is holding a tight reign and a tight ship. And when all is said and done in his three years of stewardship, he has done a very mighty poor job on fiscal responsibility. But you're a Democrat, and I'm going to hold you to this Democratic Congress at this point. And what they're also suggesting is that, well, maybe they will, in fact, have to raise taxes. So it's sort of buried under in there. And if so, it'd be because the Democratic Congress didn't hold back on spending. Do you see ways that you could cut spending enough to avoid taxes? General is, in the last three years, the Democrats at Congress, Democrats and Republicans, have actually appropriated 14 and a half billion dollars less than the President had asked for in his expenditure request to the Congress of the United States. So Congress has actually cut in total appropriations the request of the President of the United

States. But now he has done such a bad job because the economy has been so sluggish, not generating the tax revenues that we need it, that we find ourselves in a bad fiscal hole. So it's easy for the President to blame Congress if he had had economic policies that were different. And we were in a period of full employment. We would have generated the revenues not to have the deficits we now have. I'd like to turn now to the presidential campaign and to Senator McGovern to whom you're very close and a very important adviser. Senator McGovern, at least from the indications of the polls, is not doing very well. What do you think are the specific factors that affect his standing right now? I think that post-democratic convention, he got off on a very, very bad foot. The Eagleton affair was tragic in many ways because the momentum was lost while the Eagleton affair was being settled.

I think that his welfare proposals and his tax proposals gave him an impression around the country that he might have been unsound in fiscal problems. These three factors, in my opinion, through George McGovern off-stride. And it was during this confusion that he plummeted in the polls, but having been involved in the John F. Kennedy campaign very closely, I can tell you at this stage in 1960, the John F. Kennedy campaign was just like the campaign of George McGovern. He's ahead of where Kennedy was, not in the polls, not in the polls, but in organization. Really? Yes. The Kennedy thing was not off the ground by now. I was intimately involved, and if there's any question about, you might chat with Larry Bryan, Larry Bryan and I were reminiscing about that period. And then again, you take the problem with Hubert Humphrey.

While Hubert Humphrey wasn't down that badly in the polls, Hubert Humphrey's campaign was floundering at this stage, and Hubert Humphrey almost beat Richard Nixon. My prediction is Liz at George McGovern is going to have a very, very strong comeback. And by October 1st, you will see him very high in the polls, and by October 15th is going to be a horse race, and Nixon will be flushed out of the White House and beyond the campaign trail running scared. At this point in 1968, Humphrey was behind Nixon by about 12 points. Now it's something like 34 points that McGovern is behind Nixon. Can you really equate those situations? Well, I can't equate the situation. I'm unhappy about it, but I'm not discouraged about it. My feeling is that George McGovern is taking issues that take American to the future. There are new ideas and new concepts, and it will take two months to have the people really understand what George McGovern is saying.

But this past week has been a good week for McGovern. I think that since Labor Day, the McGovern campaign has picked up steam and is rolling. My prediction is that within a few weeks you will have thousands upon thousands and even millions of volunteers working for George McGovern in star fronts all over the nation. The McGovern organization will start working. The McGovern campaign will start catching on. The government today is an underdog. But I've been associated with underdogs before. I first ran for Congress with Harry Truman in 1948, and I remember that campaign. And no one gave—and really nobody gave Harry Truman a chance, and Harry Truman won. So in your candid moments with yourself, do you think he does have a chance? I do think he has a chance. I think it's a tough chance, and he's going to fight like hell, and he's going to have to fight hard in order to make it. But the situation was in the primary. I'd like to go to some of the specific things that people have observed to perhaps be

as problems. What do you say? You deal with this area. To people who are concerned or who ask you about the fact that perhaps his tax proposals would slow economic growth? Well, let me play this. I don't agree with everything George McGovern proposes. I think there has to be tax reform, the closing of loopholes. As a member of the Finance Committee, his tax program is at now exists. I wouldn't buy, but neither would I buy Richard Nixon. But at least George McGovern is honest enough to come up with tax proposals that tell the American people where he stands, which Richard Nixon refuses to do. Richard, don't you agree with McGovern's proposal? Well, I think I would want to take another look at the capital gains aspect. My feeling is that the capital gains proposal could discourage investments. And we do have to have new formations of capital to keep industry and business going. I would want to take a closer look at his overall tax policy.

Things are too complicated. We're going to have to have tax reform. I go along with George McGovern on the closing of many of the loopholes. Oil depletion allowance, especially, is a symbol, in my opinion, of what a bad tax program is. And here we see a tie-up with the oil billionaires, with his former Secretary of Treasury Conley, with all the money pouring in from Texas into the Nixon campaign, Nixon's closeness and Conley. I think this is a big issue. This is a type of loophole we should go after. And the whole tax program should be rejiggered. I like the concept that Congressman Mills and Mike Mansfield proposed that over three-year period, we eliminate all the polls and vote on them affirmatively one at a time. I think this is a way to go at it, and this is what I would have hoped the George McGovern would have stayed with.

Are there other parts of his specific tax proposals you don't agree with? Well, I can't be specific on any of them, but I wouldn't buy any presidential program. But let me say this, Liz, I don't agree with George's welfare proposals. But you see, I think George would have been better advised to take my approach, not that I have the pride of authorship, because I think they were carefully thought out. His original welfare proposals were a disaster, and I told him so. But he has dropped them in a presidential candidate. If he has a proposal that he finds will not hold water, he should leave them. He should look at the facts and look at the reality. But I think we should make this clear that while there may be some of George McGovern's proposals that I don't agree with, I disagree with more President Nixon's, and I disagree with George McGovern.

I would expect you to be a Democrat. But I take no, but I take the man for his character, his personality, his strength, his work, and his commitment of where he is going, and I'm confident that George McGovern would make a much better President Richard Nixon. You are on the finance committee, I've said a few times. Would you expect that his Senate and McGovern's capital gains proposals would not pass the Congress then? If you didn't, you don't like it? You wouldn't have a chance. I don't think that his capital gains proposals could possibly pass the Congress, the United States, whether advocated by McGovern or Nixon. What are your problems with his new welfare proposal? Well I think you can't start with $4,000 that they have an indefiniteness about them, that generally they're not very clear, and I think both McGovern and Nixon have backed away from welfare as an issue.

My feeling is you're not going to hear much about welfare in this campaign. Speaking of this indefiniteness, one thing that some observers have been writing or talking about that has happened to Senator McGovern is that the series of events that you've talked about have given the picture that this is an uncertain leader or someone who isn't all that decisive. How do you deal with that issue? Well I think George is in the period of discovering himself and where he stands on the issues, but that goes with President Nixon too, you can go time and time again to the Nixon proposal, whether it's on the economy, he was against price controls and wage and price freeze and he adopted it. President Nixon came out and said he was for child development and child care and then he vetoed a child development bill. He said that he was for a guaranteed annual income or income maintenance and now he says on Labor Day he's against it. He was a cold warrior and I give him credit for it and he wasn't going to recognize China but yet he's gone ahead and been instrumental in bringing about a thought and our relationship

is with China and I make a plus on that for President Nixon. But if you expect to find consistency and a major political figure or leader, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed and I'm rather surprised that the press hasn't zeroed in on Nixon's inconsistency as much as they have on the governance inconsistency. I was rather surprised out in San Clemente. Excuse me, I have you here really to talk about Senator McGovern and we don't have too much time left. Well, that's the problem, everybody wants to talk about the government, no one wants to talk about Nixon's fault. Well, and his people are here unless I ask them about that. One of the problems that you have tried to help Senator McGovern on very much is reported alienation of Jewish voters and you've even been quoted as saying that to Jews that they should trust Senator McGovern, quote, I will educate him on quote. What is it that you feel that he has had to learn about that?

No, it isn't a question of educating them. Every President of the United States has had to understand the problem of Israel and its relation to the world's society in America and I make no exception. Keep in mind that when it came to President Nixon, in his first three years, he didn't do anything for the state of Israel. He withhold phantom jets. We had the problem with a Russian missile on the Suez Canal. We had the Rogers plan, all of which were anathema and the Congress of the United States in the Senate time and time again were required and were forced to, in their votes, in their resolutions and round robin letters to try to force Secretary Rogers and President Nixon's hand. Now, the situation with George McGovern a few years ago, he made some speeches indicating he quite did not understand the problem. For instance, that Jerusalem should be internationalized. He understands the meaning of that.

The question of that the phantom jets should not be used outside of Israel territory. But George McGovern's statements and positions on Israel today, in my opinion, are the best and the most definitive positions of what an Israeli-American relationship should be. McGovern understands that. Now, when you say the alienation, the Jewish voter, I would say that the Jewish voter attitude to our George McGovern is about proportion of the other voters with McGovern. McGovern, the polls, have indicated, have had a substantial drop with almost all voting groups as of today. So you say it isn't necessarily the Jewish voter? That is right. I think there has been an overemphasis upon the position of the Jewish voter who, after all, represents about 3 percent of the population in this country. What does everybody pay so much attention to it? Well, because the press keeps going head over heels, talking about the Jewish voter. I don't understand either.

I'd like to talk about just a couple more questions, if you'd indulge me in it, to the extent that it is real and it is a problem. How much do you think it is real or how much do you think it might be other economic and social issues? I think it's basically economic. That is the basic situation as I see it. Many of the large contributors in past democratic causes do not like the original George McGovern economic policy, and they are concerned about his tax programs. But instead of saying so, they blame and position on Israel which is unfair. Now, what I've been trying to do for two months, and I believe the money some of us have succeeded, is to take Israel out of the campaign that doesn't belong there. Because I don't think the Jewish voter votes on the basis of Israeli votes on the basis of all issues in the campaign, and I am very pleased that in recent weeks, all major Jewish organizations have come out to the resolution, specifically stating that Israel has no partners political campaign.

And I have been deeply disturbed by the cynicism of politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, who have tried to make a political football out of the Jewish voter, and I personally will fight any politician, be Democrat or Republican, who tried to do that. What about other Jews who are less well off in the polls tell us that there is an alienation there too? Does that have to do with the shifting attitudes on civil rights or civil liberties, things like that? Well, Liz, I don't think that there is such a thing as a Jewish block of voters. A Jew is an American, and he reacts like all Americans. And if American attitudes are changing, the Jewish attitudes will change, whether as an Italian or Irish or a pole or a Yankee or a black or anybody else. And why the sudden emphasis on the Jewish voter is beyond my comprehension. I think that much too much emphasis has been placed upon 3% of the voters, and they are not going to decide the election, but that Jew is an American, and he votes and reacts

as an American. I'd like to move to some more broad-range, long-range questions of where politics in this country are going. You think about that a lot, and you've often been proved right. Do you think, what do you make of the theory now that some of the writers at least are suggesting that if Senator McGuvern is in the trouble that the polls suggest, that it's because he was nominated by the more left-word group of the Democratic Party at a time when the country is basically moving right, as you have suggested in some of these things you've just said? Well, I don't think he's in trouble for that reason. I think that McGuvern's problems arose out of the primaries. There was defection, the online politicians were very unhappy over the fact that the future of their position of power and strength is being displaced by younger people, and this

is a fact of life. We are probably in an era of the twilight of the bosses. I would say four years from now, there won't be any political bosses left. And the aging, dwindling establishment are very unhappy to see a man like George McGuvern and his young followers take over the control of the Democratic Party. These are these, the presidential nomination, I think this is a card. Sorry, we've run out of time. I wanted to ask you more about what you think might happen four years from now, but we'll have to do that some other time. Thank you for coming. It's a lie to be here, Liz. Three minutes with Democratic Senator Abraham Rybukov of Connecticut, and unedited unrehearsed interview with Elizabeth Drew. Next week, thirty minutes with United States Attorney General Richard Klein-deenst. Justice has been a production of N-Pact, the National Public Affairs Center for Television.