Nation: No Get Up and Go

Carter will need more than a carrot to rouse Congress to action

The U.S. Air Force can barely find enough planes to accommodate all the members of Congress heading for distant parts of the world during the Easter recess. House Speaker Tip O'Neill is leading one group to Ireland; House Whip John Brademas is taking another to the Soviet Union. Members of the House Narcotics Committee are on their way to sunny Colombia. So many Congressmen are traveling to China that a quorum call might just succeed in Peking. The Easter recess, in fact, is turning out to be considerably more lively than the session, which so far has set a record unmatched in two decades for legislative inactivity. Critics have already dubbed the 96th the "do nothing" Congress, the same fighting words used by President Harry Truman in his famous "Give 'em hell" assault on the 80th Congress when he was running for election in 1948.

Since the session started on Jan. 15, a grand total of nine bills has passed. Only two were of any consequence, and circumstances forced both of them on Congress: one readjusted U.S. relations with Taiwan, the other raised the ceiling on the national debt at the eleventh hour, allowing the Treasury to pay its bills. "This is the slowest Congress I can remember," says Illinois Congressman John Anderson, an 18-year Republican veteran. "The activity on the floor has been almost nil." Says Nevada's G.O.P. Senator Paul Laxalt: "It's just been eerie around here."

Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd has kept things quiet by refusing to schedule votes on Fridays, thus inviting Senators to leave town Thursday night for weekend politicking back home. While floor action often runs beyond dinnertime in busier periods, the Senate has been adjourning around 5:30 p.m. Minority Leader Howard Baker jokes wryly that new members may get the wrong idea and think these hours are normal. Says he: "I have to remind them not to get used to it."

Capitol Hill has not been suddenly afflicted with laziness; the slow pace is calculated. Congress has received the message from the voters back home that they have had a surfeit of experiment and spending. They need a breather. Explains Byrd: "Congress this year is reflecting a general feeling on the part of the American people that there have been enough new programs." Echoes O'Neill, among the stoutest of liberals: "The public wants to cut the bloat out of Government." Montana's newly elected Democratic Senator Max Baucus sums up: "The country is tired of rules, regulations, statutes and everything else that has to do with Government. None of it seems to be able to solve today's problems."