The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Natural Gas Filibuster

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. Yesterday`s Senate vote to deregulate the price of natural gas ended the most bizarre drama Washington has seen in a long time. For two weeks the Senate had been locked in a bitter debate, with all-night and weekend sessions. The filibuster used up 127 hours and 6 minutes and produced about one and a half million documents. Yesterday`s vote for deregulation was just the latest, if most crushing, blow the Senate has dealt the President`s energy package. But the administration`s part in breaking the back of the debate on Monday caused hard feelings that may jeopardize other key elements of the energy package. There are some who think the biggest loser is the Senate itself. One senator said, "We`re making a spectacle of ourselves."

The Senate does not permit cameras on its floor, but much of what took place there went to the heart of what government and the political game are all about. Tonight we take you back through that process, or how the absurdities almost obscured the substance. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Robin, the players in this strange episode included many of the stars of the Senate, well-known names like Byrd, Baker, Jackson, Long and so on. But the principal actors were two freshman liberal Democrats, recognizable by name or sight only to the voters of South Dakota or Ohio. James Abourezk, a South Dakotan, was known primarily as a champion of the American Indian; and as the only Arab-American in the Senate, one of its few pro-Arab voices. His Ohio partner, Howard Metzenbaum, gained his previous notoriety as the self-made millionaire who always seemed to be running against former astronaut John Glenn for the Senate.

But what was important to the U.S. Senate a few days ago was that these two men, Metzenbaum and Abourezk, came down in hard agreement on one thing: that the price of natural gas should not be deregulated.

MacNEIL: That issue boils down to this: at the moment there is a federal price ceiling of $1.46 per unit on natural gas sold in the interstate market. There`s no ceiling on the price of gas sold within the state where it`s produced. That gas currently sells for anywhere from $2.00 to $2.25 per unit. The oil and gas industry opposes federal price ceilings. It maintains that deregulation of all gas would produce higher prices, provide incentives for more production and thus ease the energy crisis. President Carter believes deregulation would gouge consumers, fuel inflation and not produce significantly more gas. He wanted to extend federal price controls to the presently unregulated intrastate gas market, raise the present price ceiling to $1.75 by 1978, and let the price continue to rise as oil prices rise.

LEHRER: So nineteen days ago the Carter plan hit the Senate floor. It had already been passed by the House. The pro-deregulation forces moved quickly. Two senators from gas-producing states, Lloyd Bentsen, Democrat of Texas, and James Pearson, Republican of Kansas, introduced a deregulation amendment. It would end price controls on new gas found onshore immediately, and on new offshore gas by 1982.

Administration backers promptly moved to table the Bentsen-Pearson amendment. The tabling move failed by a 52 to 46 vote, and the die was cast. The Senate majority was clearly ready to turn down the President`s plan and go for deregulation. Metzenbaum and Abourezk served notice then and there that their opposition to deregulation was more than majority vote deep, that they were prepared to once again prove true what President Woodrow Wilson said in a fit of anger in 1917: "The Senate of the United States is the only legislative body in the world which cannot act when its majority is ready for action."

It`s called a filibuster, an English-Spanish derivative of a Dutch word for "freebooter."

MacNEIL: In the Hollywood version of Washington, a filibuster usually features silver-tongued orators delivering impassioned speeches which bring down the house. In real life, exhausted Senators drone on and on, talking about anything at all. Senator Huey Long once used his time to immortalize his family`s recipe for fried oysters. The idea is to wear down the majority until the need for sleep prevails. They drop the issue or compromise.

These marathon monologues have usually been the pride of the southern conservatives, such as Strom Thurmond, who set a record in 1957 by speaking nonstop for twenty-four hours and eighteen minutes.

LEHRER: But Senator Metzenbaum argued, there`s no reason why the filibuster should work only for the conservatives. As he told the Senate, "I think it is time that we recognized that this procedure does not belong to just a select few, that the procedure of extended debate should be used for all of the people of this country."

Sen. HOWARD YETZENBAUM, (D) Ohio: It`s delay for the purpose of saving the consumers of America ten billion dollars a year, and that`s what the cost would be. It`s the difference between twenty-three dollars a month extra in natural gas bills for every homeowner, according to the CBO reports. It`s a question of adding 180,000 to 360,000 people to the unemployment rolls of this country. So I think it`s delay for the purpose of serving a very useful purpose, a public purpose.

Sen. JAMES ABOUREZK, (D) South Dakota: I see this natural gas deregulation issue as probably the major economic issue of this century. If you look at the direct cost of deregulating natural gas over and above even the President`s program, it will cost the American consumer $162 billion by 1990.

LEHRER: `When the Senate opened the second week of debate on September 26, the chaplain, apparently seeing the writing on the wall, appealed for help. He prayed, "Oh, Lord, watch over us this new week.

Guard our speech, control our lips, sharpen our minds. Protect our hearts from evil that our service may be pure and holy." His appeals would become more urgent as the week wore on.

MacNEIL: Majority leader Robert Byrd had also seen the writing on the wall. A master filibusterer himself, he moved swiftly to head this one off. He implored the senators to limit debate on the issue before it -- the Pearson-Bentsen amendment. He called for cloture, which would restrict each senator to one hour of debate. He told his colleagues, "The time has come for the Senate to halt its deliberations and decide. There is a point beyond which deliberation is fruitless."

Byrd won his point. Seventy-seven senators voted for cloture, seventeen more than necessary.

LEHRER: But the Abourezk-Metzenbaum team was ready. They had already found a way to get around the cloture rule, which would limit further debate totally to one hundred hours. Votes on amendments submitted before the cloture vote are not subject to that one-hundred-hour rule. So on Sunday, September 25, the day before cloture, Metzenbaum`s staff worked for six hours writing up 508 amendments. The difference between this one and the marathon orations of old: instead of talking it to death, the plan was to paper and maneuver it to death.

MacNEIL: The Abourezk-Metzenbaum technique was borrowed from one of the Senate`s master filibusterers, Senator James B. Allen, a Democrat from Alabama. In 1976 Allen prevented a vote on a bill and tied up Senate business for more than a week by numerous quorum calls, demands that the Senate journal be read, and requests for parliamentary rulings on minute points. This tour de force earned Allen the title, "the man who swallowed the rule book."

LEHRER: The rule book Senator Allen swallowed is the law of the Senate, just as the Constitution is the law of the land. Without it the Senate would quickly degenerate into anarchy. But when masters of parliamentary procedure really go at it, the law begins to sound like an Abbot and Costello routine. This is what happened when Senator Abourezk called for a time-consuming reconsideration of a vote and Senator Byrd tried to block him.

MacNEIL: Senator Abourezk: "I move to reconsider the vote by which the motion to lay on the table the amendment of the Senator from Kentucky was agreed to."

LEHRER: Senator Byrd: "I move to lay that motion on the table, and I ask for the yeas and nays on the motion to lay on the table the motion to reconsider the vote by which the motion to lay on the table the amendment of the Senator from Kentucky was agreed to."

MacNEIL: And as the presiding officer summed it up, "The question is on agreeing to the motion to lay on the table the motion to reconsider the vote by which the motion to lay on the table the amendment of the Senator from Kentucky was agreed to."

LEHRER: There were, however, moments of quiet clarity. Senator Edward Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, offered what he called a very simple and straightforward amendment. He explained it this way: what it basically does is that it excludes the outer continental shelf lands from the Pearson-Bentsen amendment. In other words, the price of offshore gas would not be deregulated. The senators acted quickly on Senator Kennedy`s proposal; they tabled it. And this drew an eloquent plea by Senator Dale Bumpers, Democrat of Arkansas, to reconsider.

MacNEIL: Bumpers put it this way: "When the momentum gets going on a bill such as this and there`s a certain mindset, the votes have a tendency to solidify on one side or the other with no real debate. I simply want to say that I hope we will vote, and have an honest-to-God vote, to reconsider this, because it`s much too serious to allow an amendment of this magnitude to go down in that rote fashion that all the rest are going through. Because we`re dealing with public property now. We are talking about gas that actually belongs to the people of the United States, and they`re entitled to know that their interest is not being jeopardized by a routine, formalized vote in the U.S. Senate."

LEHRER: By Tuesday the seriousness of the situation was sinking in. Majority leader Robert Byrd declared, "I am not willing to see the Senate while it is on trial -- and that word has been said so often that it is hackneyed, but it is on trial--I am not willing to see the Senate prevented by dilatory actions from reaching a final decision on the bill." He urged his colleagues to stick around so that quorum calls would go by as quickly as possible. But that raised some questions about senatorial priorities.

MacNEIL: Minority leader Howard Baker said he thought the Panama Canal hearings were more important. Baker declared, "It is imperative, in my view, that we proceed to do the nation`s business, that we dispose of the matters that are before us, and that if we must, we simply meet the challenge of a test of strength." Baker noted that in all his eleven years in office this was the first time the Senate was forced to hold an all- night session.

LEHRER: Washington Senator Warren Magnuson was quick to pick up on Baker`s remark. He observed, "The Senator from Tennessee said he had been here eleven years and he had never seen a situation like this before. I have been in the Senate thirty-one years, and I have not seen it. I have seen a filibuster, but that is when somebody stands up and talks about something, not just dilatory actions." Magnuson added, "Sure, we have slept here all night, many a night, but there was someone talking. At least we could come in and get educated once in a while in the course of an evening."

MacNEIL: But history records that wasn`t always the case. Back in 1903 Senator Benjamin Tillman, alias "Pitchfork Ben," threatened to recite Byron`s "Child Harold" and other poems until his colleagues surrendered from boredom. That same year Senator Albert Beveridge skipped town to stop action on a bill. Since the vote couldn`t be taken without the committee chairman present, Beverage disappeared, and the bill he opposed was dropped -- a bill, incidentally, to grant statehood to Arizona and New Mexico.

But perhaps the most dramatic incident occurred in 1908. Senator Robert La Follette filibustered for eighteen hours and twenty-three minutes. For energy he would down eggnogs from the Senate restaurant. But one time he refused a glass because he suspected it had been doped. As the story goes, it turned out that the eggnog had indeed been laced with a fatal dose of ptomaine.

LEHRER: Senator Abourezk summed up his feelings about the filibuster technique itself by saying, "I want to conclude by apologizing to my colleagues for inconveniencing them. It is not very pleasant for me, either physically, emotionally or any other way, to do so. But I hope they understand that someday, I do not know when it will be, they will have an issue that strikes them, that grabs them so hard, about which they feel so strongly that they may want to do the same thing."

MacNEIL: On Tuesday night majority leader Robert Byrd called an all-night session in an apparent attempt to break the spirit of the filibuster. At 9:30 p.m. he told his fellow senators that he would not pull

back the bill and that "if it takes until December, we`ll be here until December." Byrd himself is no stranger to the all-night strategy. The last all-night session took place thirteen years ago, when a senator named Robert Byrd spoke for more than fourteen hours in a vain attempt to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

LEHRER: The 1977 all-night session had the look and the decorum of a teenage slumber party. Cots were set up in rooms adjacent to the Senate chambers so the senators could nap between votes. Your newspaper and everybody else`s newspaper was full of those pictures of senators like Frank Church of Idaho resting on his senatorial couch. The high points included Senator Ernest Hollings of South Carolina showing up in a jogging suit, insisting they made for great pajamas, and Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona going onto the Senate floor in his stocking feet. The official action during the night consisted of droning through an amendment, then a quorum call vote, always going against it, followed by the same routine on another amendment, then another, and so on.

One of the funny men of the Senate, Robert Dole of Kansas, said he ran into a woman in the hall during the night who said she was happy the Senate was open, because the zoo was closed.

But not everyone thought it was so enjoyable. Senator Baker said it was "barbaric." Senator Muskie of Maine termed it "silly." Two other serious critiques of what was happening generally came from Senators Jack son and Bentsen, with a response from Abourezk.

(Courtesy ABC Network)

Sen. HENRY JACKSON, (D) Washington:...Members of the Senate have come to me and said, "I came in here ten days ago to discuss natural gas, and all we`re talking about is a course in parliamentary procedure." We have not been able to get down to substance. And what we were trying to do tonight is an action-forcing device to get an indication from the Senate as to how do the senators feel on the Pearson-Bentsen proposal. The first proposal, the second proposal. How do they feel about the administration proposal? How do they feel about the Jackson compromise? So in one fell swoop, with the motion that Senator Byrd offered, the Senate will have an opportunity to express its will.

Sen. LLOYD BENTSEN, (D) Texas: The Pearson-Bentsen bill is a compromise bill that finally passed the Senate in the fall of `75, after months of debate and many amendments. And then subsequent to that, we`ve modified our bill by putting a cap on it, by protecting the homeowner and seeing that industry pays for the price of new gas. We`ve done a number of things to try to help.

ABOUREZK: When I started this along with Senator Metzenbaum, I was determined to go until I either physically couldn`t stand up any more or until I ran out of procedural delays. Now that determination is what I consider to be very important.

MacNEIL: Even if Senator Abourezk could stand the strain, the chaplain apparently thought the rest of his flock couldn`t. As Tuesday night turned into Wednesday morning, he fairly begged for relief, intoning, "Oh, Lord, breathe upon us thy renewing power. Take our tired bodies, worn minds, frayed nerves and tested wills and restore them by thy presence." Then, hoping against hope, he concluded, "Grant us grace to speak prudently when we must speak, to remain silent when we have nothing to say, to learn by listening, to be unafraid of the hard decision." He seemed to be implying that the Senate was trying God`s patience.

LEHRER: Spiritual issues aside, a few senators decided that something should be done to keep this kind of thing from happening again. But the Republicans particularly wouldn`t go along with any sweeping changes affecting filibusters. As one explained, "We are a minority. Some day, in self-protection, we may need the same process we would be shutting off."

MacNEIL: From the beginning, Democratic Senator Henry Jackson, the floor manager for the President`s energy plan, said he could accomplish more behind closed doors than on the floor. On Wednesday night he emerged from such a meeting with majority leader Byrd and offered a compromise, not to deregulate natural gas, but to raise the ceiling on newly discovered gas from the President`s proposal of $1.75 to $2.03, and to expand the definition of new gas. Jim Flug, consumer lobbyist, called the compromise "the moral equivalent of deregulation."

LEHRER: Abourezk and Metzenbaum didn`t like it either, but they said they`d buy it. So did the President`s energy chief, James Schlesinger, clearly an unhappy man over the way things were going. But the other side balked. Pearson and Bentsen still wanted a vote on their amendment. Their pro- deregulation ally, Russell Long, Democrat of Louisiana, described Abourezk, Metzenbaum and company as sore losers, and said he was prepared to be a sore loser too.

MacNEIL: Senator Long had decided that he could also join in the filibuster-by-amendment. But since he`d not introduced any amendments before the cloture vote, he resorted to using the opponents` ammunition. He said he would continue to call up the more than four hundred Abourezk- Metzenbaum amendments still at the desk until they decided to meet his terms.

LEHRER: Now President Carter decided it was time for a little heat from above. The administration had never publicly acknowledged any connection between it and the Abourezk-Metzenbaum effort, but they were clearly on the same side. The two senators later reported that White House staffers were waiting in the wings to cheer the filibusterers on whenever they came off the floor. At any rate, the President issued this reminder to the deadlocked senators at a Thursday press conference:

PRESIDENT CARTER: I think the Senate realizes that this is the major domestic legislative product that we expect tFI-s year. And for us to devote a full year of work and come out with an inconsequential or inadequate energy program is something that I don`t believe the Senate will face. They have their own reputations to protect, I think they want to act responsibly, and I think that it`s obvious, in my own experience in the legislative branch in Georgia, that the focusing of the powerful lobby pressure is always on the second legislative body that has to act, the final body that has to act. So there`s a tremendous pressure on the members of the Senate now from the lobbyists, many of whom are well-meaning people -- I`m not criticizing them necessarily. But I think as they hear the voice of the American people, as they realize the consequences of an absence of courageous action, then I think they will move to adopt the major parts of the program....

MacNEIL: The President wasn`t the only one suffering. By Friday morning, after another late-night session, the bleary-eyed chaplain implored: "Oh, thou King of Kings and Lord of Lords, come upon us this day to heal our brokenness, to renew our strength and to save us from self-destruction." However, the chaplain seemed to be catching on. Each day his prayer had been getting longer and longer.

LEHRER: And the filibuster threatened to go on and on. Thursday`s all-day effort to set up a vote on the Byrd-Jackson compromise had petered out by Friday morning. So Senator Long made good on his pledge to launch his own filibuster, using what he called "dilatory amendments" submitted by the Abourezk-Metzenbaum forces. One of the favorites was to call up, one at a time, a series of changes in the date the law would go into effect. Abourezk then joined in by calling up amendments changing non-existent sections of the bill, until finally both filibusters were going full tilt at once. The scene prompted minority leader Howard Baker to make a rare plea for a change in the Senate rules, to prevent at least this from happening again.

The only real development of the day was the administration`s loss of another test vote, this time on a motion to table a modified version of the pro-deregulation amendment. The administration picked up two more votes than they had before, but that was scant consolation; they still lost.

MacNEIL: On Saturday the senators met in an unusual weekend session, and tempers were mounting. By Monday it was clear that everyone was on edge, and Byrd decided he had to put an end to it. The tactic he used required him to stray from conventional Senate rules and customs.

LEHRER: When the end finally came, it came quickly -- so quickly, in fact, that the leaders of the filibuster were caught off guard. In early afternoon Vice President Mondale arrived and assumed his constitutional, but usually ceremonial, role as President -- the presiding officer --of the Senate; then began the playing out of a carefully designed scenario, written by and starring majority leader Byrd.

MacNEIL: Senator Byrd immediately jumped up and offered a motion to change the rules so that the presiding officer -- in this case, Mondale -- could decide on his own which amendments and procedures were pure ly dilatory. The weary senators quickly approved the plan by a 79-13 vote. After that it was all over for the Abourezk-Metzenbaum team. One after another their amendments were brought up by Byrd and immediately ruled dilatory by Mondale.

LEHRER: As this process continued, Senator Abourezk, emotionally upset, spoke angrily: "Several people came up to me and said the rumor is out on the street the Vice President is coming up to make specific rulings to end the filibuster. I said, `I do not believe it. I just do not believe it would happen, because the position that we are taking -- those of us on this side of the issue -- happens to agree identically with the position taken publicly by the administration."` He went on to say, "All I know is, I have been told from time beginning -- beginning from the time that I went into politics -- that all governments lie. For a long time I knew that, and I was aware of it. There is one thing I never thought would happen, and that is that Jimmy Carter would lie." But the prearranged dialogue between Byrd and Mondale continued. Several senators, both Democrats and Republicans, began to ally themselves with Abourezk. They yelled for recognition, trying to get the floor to question the process, but no one other than Byrd was recognized. Cries of "Steamroller!" and "Abuse of power!" were heard in the chamber of the Senate of the United States.

MacNEIL: For Senator Byrd, that was the final straw. His face red, his voice screaming and his arms flailing, he said, "What about the abuse of the rules to which every member of the Senate on both sides of the aisle has been subjected for the last thirteen days and one night? What about the abuse of the Senate itself? I have tried in every way possible to me to get the Senate to come down to a resolution of the issue, and my words and pleadings have fallen on deaf ears. I have not abused this leadership`s prerogatives. I am trying to keep senators from abusing the Senate, and I think it is self-evident that the ending of such abuse is long overdue. They have done too much already."

LEHRER: Byrd`s outburst got him a standing ovation from the proderegulation senators. The others sat mute. After it was over Abourezk and Metzenbaum called it quits. They were not happy, particularly with President Carter.

(Courtesy WRC-TV, Washington, D.C.)

ABOUREZK: All we know is that we relied upon the White House and upon the President to support us, since we`re supporting, really, the public`s position, and we`ve seen that support just change today.

METZENBAUM: We`re calling the filibuster off on the basis that if the President and the administration are not supportive of it, we think it would not be appropriate to continue it forward, even though I do believe we have the tools to continue it for a number of days longer. And we think that if the White House has been successful in gaining the necessary votes, great, we couldn`t be more pleased about that fact. But if they don`t, I guess the ball is in their court and they will just have to work it out from there.

LEHRER: With the filibuster dead, all that remained was a vote on that Pearson-Bentsen amendment. But it took all day yesterday to finally get it. There was a last-ditch effort to save the Jackson compromise; it failed. And at 3:30 yesterday afternoon, after fourteen days and one night, 127 hours and six minutes, forty live quorum calls and 132 record votes, the Senate voted to deregulate the price of natural gas. The vote was fifty to forty-six, just about what it would have been if there had been a vote the day it was introduced.

MacNEIL: The story doesn`t end there. That bill now goes to a conference committee between the Senate and the House of Representatives, and the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, Tip O`Neill of Massachusetts, has vowed that deregulation won`t survive there. And of course, deregulation did not survive when the bill went through the House of Representatives.

The whole affair raises some questions that can`t exactly be answered tonight: how much has the President damaged himself, and his energy bill, by helping crush the filibuster -- as you heard, by senators who thought they were fighting on his side? How much has Senator Byrd`s leadership ability suffered? Perhaps most important, how is all this going to affect taxpayers? As we learn the answers to those, we`ll keep you posted.

As for their own image, the Senate leadership lost no time trying to repair that, and how they might better manage business in the future. Senator Byrd today appointed a special panel to think of ways of stream lining Senate rules and trying to prevent recurrence of these long filibusters in the future. Senator Byrd named four Democratic senators. to propose new rules for getting final action on a bill once the Senate has decided to limit debate through cloture, as they had done this time but which didn`t work. Senator Byrd said he was aware of criticisms of his part in ending the filibuster but that was not the primary reason for making new rules.

That`s all from The MacNeil/Lehrer Report. Jim Lehrer and I will be back tomorrow night. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.