Nation: TWELVE MONTHS TO DELIVER

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Crisis. Urgent. Desperate.

THESE terms dominated the conversation of ten big-city mayors after they met with Richard Nixon last week. The urban condition is all that they say it is, and their conference with the President left them little hope for dramatic new federal action very soon.

Nixon will not be easily budged from the premise that expensive, far-reaching social welfare efforts are futile if the war continues indefinitely or if the economy goes sour. Nor is Congress in the mood for grandiose programs right now. Viet Nam and inflation, together with crime and unrest, remain the President's first orders of business. As he told a G.O.P. women's conference: "I ask the women in this audience to hold me and all of my Cabinet colleagues responsible on those three great issues. I will make this promise: next year I will be able to report that we have made real progress toward bringing peace in the world, re-establishing law and order at home, and also in stopping the rise in taxes and inflation. This is our goal. We are not overpromising."

Helping Nonsupporiers. This tone of quiet confidence has been a constant in Nixon's makeup lately. His Gallup and Harris readings indicate that he is more popular now than last November, despite the war, despite campus turmoil, despite spurting prices. Even Rex Tugwell, a charter member of the New Deal, conjectured last week that if the election were held today, Nixon would get 10,000,000 more votes than he did in the fall.

Operating from this strength, Nixon has begun, however cautiously, to risk offending some of those who elected him. Negroes are still suspicious, but many Southern whites who voted Republican in November are unhappy about the Administration's school-integration policy. Last week Nixon went against the advice of some senior aides in recommending repeal of the 7% business-investment tax credit as part of his tax package (see BUSINESS). Repeal of the credit is primarily an anti-inflationary measure, but the predominantly Republican business community will pay the bill. The President's other tax proposals—reducing the burden on the poor, halving the surcharge, which weighs most heavily on those of modest means, shrinking loopholes used mainly by the affluent—also tend to benefit Nixon's nonsupporters more than those who elected him.

Congress, led by House Ways and Means Chairman Wilbur Mills, is likely to demand far more extensive tax reforms than those that the Administration is proposing. Whatever the outcome, both parties will doubtless take credit for redressing longstanding inequities. A President dealing with a Congress controlled by the opposition can hardly hope for much more. Last week, however, the Administration won a minor but perhaps trend-setting victory when enough Democrats deserted their party leadership to vote with the Republicans on an education assistance measure.