Washington Week In Review

4 3 4 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 4 4 6 4 6 6 7 6 4 7 6 6 6 6 6 5 6 You You President Carter in the Congress approach a compromise on the water projects issue.

One of the stories tonight on Washington Week in review. Here is moderator Paul Duke. Good evening. This has been a week of intensive legislative maneuvering between the White House and Capitol Hill. Most of it has involved bills to finance federal programs and projects, with President Carter trying to hold down democratic attempts to spend more than the White House is recommended. The week also has produced the first major victory for the administration and its attempt to win approval for a comprehensive energy program. But on another front, the foreign front, things have not gone well. There is concern about Moscow's harassment of an American correspondent and the continuing crackdown against Russian dissidents. And the Senate has refused to go on record in support of Mr. Carter's plans to withdraw American troops from South Korea and to ease the trade embargo against Cuba. A full discussion now from Charles Cordray of the Baltimore Sun, Albert Hunt of the Wall Street Journal,

Neil McNeil of Time Magazine, and Jack Nelson of the Los Angeles Times. For all the fire and brimstone that's been coming out of the White House about vetoing various pieces of legislation lately, Jack, it now appears that Mr. Carter is in a more conciliatory frame of mind. Well, I think that's right, Paul. He recently told the cabinet that he was going to engage in more consultation and less notification, and I think that's sort of what he's doing. It was apparent this week, really, on all three of the bills that he had threatened to veto, the Labor H.E.W. Bill, the Farm Bill, and the Dam's Project Bill, all which he thought contained provisions for excessive spending. And, you know, Bert Lance, for example, says he thinks the OMB director, that he thinks that Carter is beginning to learn the ropes, the Carter administration on the hill. And he said, it reminds him of when he was a kid and he played the game May-I.

He said, you know, if you step forward three steps and you didn't say May-I, you had to step back two steps. And I suppose that's sort of what happened. Senator Eugene McArthur had a little different way of explaining it. He said, when you evaluate Carter, you got to think about the cockroal step. And he said, that's when a rooster puts one foot boldly forward like he's going somewhere, and then he puts it down and doesn't go anywhere. And in a sense, I think that's what Carter has done some of the times. I mean, for example, the $50 tax rebate, he said it was absolutely essential, and then he decided it wasn't essential after all. He said he had to have all of the energy package, and now apparently he's willing to settle for last. Tip O'Neill says House Speaker that maybe he can get 75-80%. And Bert Lance indicates that'll be a significant achievement. So I would say that he has learned something about the hill. Jack, he hasn't said he won't veto. He's keeping his options open. He hasn't said he won't, but certainly the House Speaker doesn't expect him to now, if the Labor H.E.W. Bill remains in his present form to veto that, but cause the compromise that they worked out.

But the whole thing is conditional. Well, they have to hold things down. Well, if they hold it the way it is. Because it's still there. Well, that's true. But I think that the mood is more of one of compromise now, both on the hill incidentally, as well as in the White House, because on the dam's project, the Hill actually initiated the compromise where, as you remember, the Senate committee decided they would delete eight of the projects he didn't want or nine of them and leave it. One thing which is confused, a great many people, I think, Jack, is what seems to be an ambivalent attitude on the part of Mr. Carter and the White House staff in dealing with Congress. One day, they're harsh and critical of the Democratic leaders or Democratic rank and file members. And the next day, they display an attitude of tenderness and affection. Well, you know, I think that to begin with, Carter finds it very difficult.

He is not exceptionally well-known for complimenting even his closest age in the White House. And so, he finds it very difficult when he disagrees with somebody not to just say that, you know, I really disagree and to criticize him. One thing that interests me, Jack, do you get the feeling at the White House that they've begun to appreciate the interrelationship between different issues, namely that one reason you compromise and leverage EW is because your energy package may be in trouble down there. Oh, I do think that's true, yeah. Something that earlier this year, it seemed they didn't quite appreciate it. No, I think that's true. And I think that's part of the learning process that they talk about. I will say that, you know, from everything that we have heard recently from Democratic leadership on the Hill, both in the House and the Senate, there is a feeling that Carter finally has decided that he has got to consult with people up there and to take into considerations their feelings on. Jack, are you saying that after this first place, they're going to reconnoiter the ground in the future and find out whether receptivity of something may be, which leads me to the other part of the question. The President defended his lobbying staff as adequate. Is it being beefed up? I speak of his congressional liaison.

Well, he didn't beef it up. He added a couple of people to it who Bill Cable, I believe, is one of the people in the House. But I don't know that it's, you know, one thing about it is that Carter is going to have continuing problems for two reasons. One, he's still hadn't taken hold of the patronage situation. And a lot of members of Congress are very upset about that. No question about it. I mean, Hamilton Jordan and Frank Moore were reamed out at the House Steering Committee, the Democratic Steering Committee this week because, you know, they have left holdovers from the Nixon Ford administration in the key positions. So Carter didn't like to get himself involved in patronage. I think maybe he considers, you know, he's sort of a purist. He considers that a little bit beneath him or something. So that's one of the problems. And the other problem is that he can change his style and be more conciliatory, but I don't think he'll change his philosophy. And he is basically much more conservative than the Democratic Party. And so when he keeps trying to balance the budget, and he doesn't wind up approving excessively what he considers excessive spending programs, he's going to antagonize the liberals.

Let me change the subject on your reporter, the Moscow reporter of your newspaper, Bob Toth, been harassed this week by the Moscow government, the Soviet government. What do you make of that? And is this related to Carter's... Well, I think human rights thing always. I heard a Moscow old Moscow hand tonight say that he thought it was just a warning to the press and a warning to the dissidents and it wasn't related to Carter. What do you think about that? Well, most of the opinions I think you hear in Washington, the State Department, are related to both. It is related to Carter's very outspoken views on human rights. But it's also a warning to the American journalists in Moscow and to the dissidents in Moscow that they're not going to tolerate as they have in the past in the recent past anyway, fairly free exchanges between the dissidents and the journalists. I know that in Moscow, the American journalists were very concerned about this whole situation. And as Peter Osmos of the Washington Post wrote, it's been sort of like a nightmare of charges by the secret police, the KGB, that Toth was involved in collecting secrets and so forth.

So I think it upset a number of the journalists and has put them on notice. But you can say flatly that he was not involved in collecting secrets. Can you as a representative of the Los Angeles Times? Well, I can say that as a representative of the Los Angeles Times, that Toth probably was engaged in collecting all the information you could collect. Any way he could collect it and as a journalist, as nothing more. Let's go back to Congress. Do you subscribe to the Nelson Analysis and the relations now, the more conciliatory mood between the White House and Congress? Well, you know, I'm reminded of the late Everett Ducks and was a member of Congress for many, many years, and leader of the Senate for a Republican leader for many years. And he phrased his philosophy of government one time. He said, I am not a moralist. I am a legislator.

Carter comes on pretty obviously as a moralist. And now I think that's basic to the difficulties here. Beyond that, there's also his attitude towards, you know, spending money. And he's come at this H.E.W. Bill pretty ferociously. And the H.E.W. Bill has within it the goodies and the cookies for the democratic, the basic democratic constituency. Money in there for the poor, the sick, the health, the aged, money to fight cancer and to help them blind. What happened this week, I think the deal they made, the deal they cut on the Labor H.E.W. Bill, which was to hold the bill where it was. They persuaded the White House not to try to cut the bill. And the leaders pledged that they would prevent if they could and increases in it, was based really on the vote earlier in the week on the water projects. But the bill already provides for more money than the White House originally wanting.

Right. And there's a big push coming to increase it, particularly in the Senate. But on the water projects, a Republican, Silvio Coddy of Massachusetts, who was a pretty dynamic fourth-ride guy with lots of Moxie, he volunteered to the White House. He was one of the 72 Congressmen who had written Carter before he did anything on the water projects, asking them to kill some of these things. And he volunteered to join the White House in a coalition with some of his Republicans and get the list down where Carter wanted. He was so successful that they approved conclusively that the House will not override that veto that Carter is threatening. But you didn't say whether you agreed with me or disagreed with me when I did this. I have a different analysis of it. What happened? What happened when that happened? Tip O'Neill, the Speaker of the House, was furious. He doesn't want the White House working with the Republicans. He's a very partisan guy. The White House spoke to work with a Democrats. And he was very upset that Connie took the lead holding up the President's flag, a Republican. Then he cut the deal to prevent Bob Michael, the number two man in the Republican leadership of the House, from cutting the HEW bill $500 million, which was a Michael amendment.

So I think that was basically part of the deal. I think from the point of view of the Hill, they think they're given the President nothing. They promised to make a couple of studies and impacted education and on college loan program. But what they think they have done is saved Carter from himself on the HEW bill, from alienating the basic democratic constituency. Well, you're saying Carter then has been conciliatory, but they have conned Carter? There's no question that they think they've conned Carter. And they think if he does veto that bill, they will have been betrayed. But the guy they were dealing with, Jack, was not Lance. He was Joe California, a very savvy Washington character. And one of the ableist manipulators and understanders of the way the levers are pulled, that there is in the Carter cabinet. Neil, I'm fascinated by what the vote on the water project says about Congress, apart from White House relations. 194 members stood up and voted against a traditional pork barrel bill.

It's part of the system to give those dams, to give those waterways, and it's blog rolling pork barrel. Does that suggest something about the Congress with the change turnover in recent years? Well, there is a new independence, a new non-party loyalty. It's very difficult to discipline any of the younger members, particularly the just can't be disciplined. But there's something else here. Water projects, dams, and whatever irrigation things are on, take place someplace in parts of states. But they don't take place in all parts of the states, and therefore quite a few congressmen are immune to them. They don't have any. They don't have to worry about retaliation, but almost no state is without some, and every senator, almost every senator, is affected. So it has a much greater impact on the Senate than it does in the House. There's similar things in other areas.

But there's no question that Carter could override the detail. I think it could sustain the detail. If the extra fatten on the down. There was no doubt of that check before the vote. Is there any question in your mind now if these three bills remain the way they are that he will not veto them? Oh, yes. There is no question in your mind. You had a long talk right after you. If we were lined up to talk to the Speaker of the House this week, could you well know? He has no pledge that the President won't veto them. He doesn't have any pledge, but he says he doesn't believe him. No, I don't understand that. He's been working very hard, and if he does get a veto, he will try to prevent the House from overriding by sending the bill back to committee. But there's no question that the House, for example, would sustain a veto, which requires a two-thirds vote, on the water projects. And also on a farm bill, because there's not that many farms there. And maybe on the legacy debt. No, not on the legacy debt. There's an assumption that that would work. It's been vetoed nine times by Republican presidents. The last three were ever run. But anyway, he's got a deal there now. He's got a deal right.

But the deal is tenuous because of the Senate. The Senate wants to call the upper body a tendency to up things. And they are expecting a major effort to increase that bill in the Senate. You didn't mean to tell us you're against moralists in government, did you? And they only give you a quick question there. You didn't mean to tell us you're against moralizing in the House. It's a slippery business when you come into the nature of negotiating a deal. If you say, I am right, and you were wrong, and we will compromise and do it my way. That is not the way Congress works, as you will know. I've heard tell. Congress also is making some headway now in the effort to draft energy legislation now. And here I gather the president is doing somewhat better, too. To some extent, Paul, as one member noted this week, they're finally starting to get their act together, sort of. They did win a key victory in the Houseways and Means Committee, which approved their proposed tax on crude oil, which will eventually raise about 15 billion dollars a year. It was important not only because it's an essential ingredient to the Carter Plan, but they needed a victory.

They had lost in a number of issues the previous week. And if you look at the entire package right now, you really couldn't argue it's in very good shape. They have lost in the standby gasoline tax. The administration has. The gas guzzler tax has been significantly altered. Right after they won the victory this week, the same committee then went and gutted their proposed tax and industrial use of petroleum. And another committee has voted to deregulate the price of natural gas, something the administration staunchly opposes. Somebody said the vote was Detroit 37, the administration too. Well, on the gas guzzler tax, I think that may be the case. But I think there's something very important to keep in mind. There's kind of a prophetic old saying that two things that you shouldn't watch are being made or sausage and legislation. I think that's particularly pertinent right now. But this is only one part of the process. And the House, especially, there has been, Speaker O'Neill has set up a special umbrella committee where all these issues will be thrashed out again. And I think the prevailing notion is that they're going to either put the pieces back together when that ad hoc committee takes this bill up in late July,

that that'll be the vehicle for doing this. So I don't think there's any cause for great dismay as far as the White House is concerned, but they have their work cut out. There's a great deal of criticism of the administration's energy program now, and it's suggested by a number of people that the program is not as strong as it was touted originally. Senator Bird, for example, the leader in the Senate has been very critical, suggesting the program was poorly conceived and in fact is too complex. Is there a validity to this criticism? I think there is some. I think one of the problems is that they did it so quickly. There was a timetable put on to have it out by April the 20th. People only had a couple months to start working on the package, and it shows if you look at the product. An example is they proposed a tax on gas-gustling cars, and they were going to give a rebate on the fuel efficient automobiles, which sounded fine. The only problem with that was that to do that, you either had to subsidize foreign-made cars, which the unions in this country wouldn't stand for, or you had to violate international trade laws. I think it's something they just hadn't thought through very well.

As far as the toughness of the program is concerned, I think Carter has created some of those problems himself. I think he started off with such a heavy sell. It's the moral equivalent of war. I'm going to ask great sacrifices. He's always been talking about a gradual program that's not going to dislocate the economy. So no, I don't think the short-term effects are severe, but I don't think they were intended to be. Jack said earlier that the administration White House is expecting to get 70-80% of the program. Isn't that figure basically meaningless unless they get the right parts of it? That's right. What are the parts that are not going to go? If they lose on all the important ingredients, they can get 97% and it won't matter. I think the important ingredients are clearly the tax that was approved this week on the well-head tax on oil. I think natural gas pricing is just crucial. The administration claims that if the provision approved by the energy and power subcommittee goes through, that it's going to cost homeowners at least $100 a year and extra heating bills. And they say that would be inflationary and unconscionable.

Proponents disagree with that, but it will be costly. That's an essential part as far as the administration is concerned. And I think the tax on gas goes, there's at least this symbolic gesture is going to be terribly important too. And this is better than swimming 75% of the English channel in another way. It's another way of measuring the percentage. But the send back so far have been at the lower level of the legislative process so that they can be remedied later on. Oh, yes. Particularly in the ad hoc community. Absolutely. We haven't even talked about the Senate and God only knows what will happen when the bill finally gets over there. But in the House itself, I think this special committee that has been set up will probably play the crucial role in determining what possible. And that's really a hand pick committee. It's an O'Neill pick committee and it's a committee with a lot of very strong forceful members. How much the lobby has been pretty tough and it's pretty effective. What's that going to do? That's not going to go away. There are a lot of $300 suits in those committee rooms now to be sure. O'Neill said that it must have been a thousand of the oil company lobbyists on the hill. They were certainly never.

And of course the administration is lobbying too. I mean, the president is effectively at the moment. Not as a bully pulpit. And he can use that. He started to use it last week. I suspect he'll use it more. No, they won't go away. But O'Neill's theory of this ad hoc committee is that it's a temporary committee. It's only there for a short time. They don't have built-in alliances with interest groups. And that that's why they'll better be able to handle the overall situation. There was a joke that was going around in this town which we all heard that you wouldn't buy a used car from Richard Nixon. We heard that joke a long time ago. One I heard the other day out was that if some of the president's taxes affecting automobiles go through, you wouldn't buy a new automobile from Jimmy Carter. Well, still sticking with Congress, Charlie, it does appear that the legislative branch, particularly in the Senate, now is insistent upon a voice in foreign policy decision-making as it applies to South Korea anyway. Oh, I think so. We had this to surface in the House earlier concerning the president's withdrawal plans for our troops in South Korea. And in the Senate this week, what the members of Congress and a few other people know, don't know,

is just what the origins of Mr. Carter's plans for withdrawing from Korea may be, how well it was studied within the executive branch or whether it was something they were told to do and to work out how. So this week, when Senator McGuvern sought to have the Senate and Senator Bird at first sought to have the Senate endorse the plan for withdrawal from Korea, the Senate wound up having none of it. Senator Baker, I think, sees an issue there. The minority later, he said he was appalled at this idea because there hadn't been consultation with the Senate. The memories of 1950 were called up when we had withdrawn and were ensued, although it was quite different. And so when Senator Baker said, we just don't know enough to approve this policy. And in the end, all they could do was to adopt a resolution or an amendment which said that our Korea policy should be arrived at and joint decisions between the president and the Congress. They also did something about Cuban policy, indicating that they didn't want to go as far as the president was willing to go.

Well, I'm not quite sure about that interpretation. The Senate took out, or McGuvern on his own volition, took an amendment out of a state department bill that would have lifted the trade embargo to the extent of selling food and medicine to the Cubans. He realized he couldn't get that through. People are worried about the American properties that have been seized in Cuba and about political prisoners and expansion of Cuban enterprises in Africa. So that's not indicated that Congress is not very keen on normalizing relations with Cuba. Letting us have diplomatic recognition of Cuba until something's down about the confiscated properties. But this was talked down because there'd be hardly any room to negotiate if you did that in a trip. From the down town point of view, the Congress is obviously moving into the foreign policy field quite stridently in a lot of areas, including the war power making, war power area.

What is it concerned that Congress can't conduct foreign policy? Is it concerned if they may go too far? Well, in trying to manage the president in the state department in these things. Oh, I suppose inevitably, but both the White House and the state department pointed out today, and I suppose quite rightly, that the president wants to consult with Congress, but he's going to withdraw the troops from Korea. And in kind of the way that the Senate would like him to do. In other words, he has the power to do that. But I was a muse who mentioned the War Powers Act. I think it was Senator Nunn. He says, here, we pass this War Powers Act, which rather puts limits on what the president can do. But we are willing to let him yank troops out of South Korea to which we have a commitment with which we have a treaty without even studying. This isn't inconsistency. Of course, there's another inconsistency that is seemingly the Congress being dead set against Vietnam saying, get out of there, refusing money for Angola, but now being worried about the possible consequences of pulling out of South Korea. What are the congressional fears of South Korea? You would think that with the whole Congress tainted so much by the association allegedly with some South Korean nations that there wouldn't be such enthusiasm.

I think Neal's got a part out there. If the president had gone to Congress first and said, here's what I want to do. Let's have hearings on it and so on and so forth that they might have been much more receptive. But there are real concerns that War could follow a withdrawal from South Korea. And these concerns are not shared, obviously, in the executive branch. They're not even admitted to. I'm going to pick up another subject and Emerson said that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds or a footnote, but the talking of consistency, the Pentagon is called back another general. Tell us what that's all about. Well, I think the first point to make here is that this is so entirely different from the president calling General Shinglao back from Korea for saying his president's policy would mean war. There was a general head to head with his president. This general had made a speech in which he forecast that if the Chinese and the Russians go to war, we'd become involved or if the Middle East war and it came to that, we could be involved. In the context, the speech was a warning or a challenge to kids who were graduating from a high school to realize they're going into a dangerous world.

The secretary of the army has sent for this man, and that's quite a different thing from the president. Shinglao was in hot water. This follows in cool to look warm water. We talked about a lot of things tonight, but one matter we have not talked about is a piece of old business, Watergate. This is the fifth anniversary of that famous episode, which changed the course of history to some extent. I'm wondering what you, gentlemen, feel has been the significant impact of Watergate? Well, I've read a lot of things in order to address the other day. In it, he said that the living do not give up the secrets with the candor of the dead. We still don't know everything. We don't know Nixon's real role. But the impact has been enormous, I think. It's destroyed the imperial presidency. Ford is a very casual, relaxed president. Carter carries his own bags. But in the Congress, the impact has been absolutely enormous. Nothing could have done more for basic reform. Not in a degree, but of kind. The Congress has a different place. It has a sense of itself.

It's coming on in the budget area, in the foreign policy area, we'll discuss. The war partner, as it hasn't done, really in our time. Let me just say on the imperial presidency that while the trappings of the imperial presidency have disappeared, I'm not sure that some of the other imperial attitudes from the White House have disappeared. They're talking about moralizing a little while ago. I'm going to play here with the chief framework. I'm going to say that I think the really big impact has been the openness that it has brought about in government, both in Congress and in the executive department. But one thing that really disturbs me is that despite that fact, there's still a tendency on the part of a great many people in this country to not believe in openness in government. I think the government may even be ahead of the people on that. I think any system in which former Attorney General is a judge guilty and the crime, he's about to go to jail, can't be all that. But one final note of irony, Al, this same system, the man who discovered the burglary, Frank Willes does not have a job tonight. So that too says something about the system, I think.

Thank you all. I'm Paul Duke, good night for Washington Weekend. This program was produced by WETA, which is solely responsible for its content.

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