Nation: Hey, You Hear That Vote?

• Share

Carter takes a stand against spending and wins a surprising victory

A mysterious green button bearing only the initials FCBCD blossomed on the chests of some White House staffers last week. The letters, it was happily explained, meant, "For Carter Before Camp David." And that meant, in turn, that the Carter bandwagon was rolling along faster than ever. At one point, Presidential Aide Hamilton Jordan literally skipped down a White House corridor, chortling, "Hey, you all hear the vote? You hear that vote?"

The vote that so buoyed Ole Boy Jordan was perhaps the most impressive —and unexpected—in Carter's string of recent victories in the once recalcitrant 95th Congress. The House, by a margin of 223 to 190, fell a surprising 53 votes short of overriding Carter's veto of a $10 billion public works bill that would have funded 59 highly varied water projects scattered throughout the legislators' home districts. In a three-day publicity blitz, the President had labeled the bill "wasteful," "inflationary" and an example of "pork barrel" politics.

Carter's assault on the bill, in which he was opposed by all Democratic congressional leaders, was part of a presidential campaign to exploit the anti-inflationary, antitax, anti-Government-spending mood of the voters. Fiscal conservatism appears to be part of Carter's philosophy; although it appeals to many middle-class voters, it also threatens to alienate traditional Democratic supporters: blacks, labor leaders and the poor, who advocate such costly social programs as national health insurance and greater aid to the cities. Trying to keep such groups in line, Vice President Walter Mondale went to Minnesota, Missouri and Pennsylvania last week to assure doubting Democrats that Jimmy Carter will remain true to the traditions of his party by helping "those in American society who without our help will never have a chance for the fullness of American life."

Still, Carter's veto of the bill meant a split with his party allies on Capitol Hill: Speaker Tip O'Neill, House Majority Leader James Wright, Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd and Majority Whip Alan Cranston. When Carter spurned them, they were resentful.

"He won't listen to us," protested Wright. "He's turned his guns on his own congressional leaders. He's campaigning for himself two years before he's up, and 435 Democrats are up now. I don't ever recall a Democratic President making a scapegoat of a Democratic Congress." Snapped another Democratic leader about the veto: "It's the moral equivalent of demagoguery." Added another: "He proposes sacrificing the energy bill on the altar of his own ego."

The warning about the energy bill reflected a widespread feeling on Capitol Hill that Carter had endangered final passage of his energy package by angering some lukewarm supporters of that bill with his public works veto. The natural gas deregulation section of the energy program will be voted upon in the House this week. Some Republicans who supported Carter's veto even conceded that they had done so for the devious purpose of encouraging opposition to the energy bill.