Stumbling to a Showdown

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Worse was to follow. Stunned by their defeat on the budget, fearful that they would be blamed for obstructing the President's program to rebuild the economy, the Democrats not only gave in on his demands for tax cuts but tried to go him one better. Indeed, both parties embarked on the biggest tax giveaway in U.S. history: $750 billion over five years. "It was wild," says an aide to Howard Baker, recalling the night the tax bill passed. "There must have been 400 lobbyists standing in the Capitol corridors. It was a free-for-all." As Congress added some $150 billion in tax cuts to the $600 billion that Reagan had already proposed, only one Republican Senator—Maryland's Charles Mathias, a liberal—had the courage to vote against the bill. Baker categorized the tax program as a "riverboat gamble," and Congress clearly played the game irresponsibly.

With everything going his way, Reagan also blew a golden chance to place controls on the escalating costs of sacrosanct entitlement programs like Social Security. Without consulting Capitol Hill veterans or trying to prepare the ground, he suddenly sprang on Congress a politically naive scheme to cut off minimum benefits from people about to retire. The uproar that followed, particularly from Democrats, was inevitable, and the Senate squashed the scheme by a mortifying 96-to-0 vote. Each party thus is now jockeying to push the other into taking the lead, and the heat that is sure to follow, on reducing cost of living increases for Social Security recipients. This has significantly complicated the search for compromise.

While Reagan overreached, Congress seemed to lose its nerve. It is failing this year to push on with a basic housekeeping agenda. Such widely praised landmark laws as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Clean Air Act of 1970 are expiring this year. Almost everyone agrees that they must be renewed, yet relatively minor but firmly held partisan and ideological differences have rendered extension uncertain. Because of worries about the deficits and cuts in social programs, Congress may decide to fund foreign aid by a continuing resolution that simply renews the current $7.8 billion package for another year, rather than raising it to the $8.2 billion proposed by Reagan.

Action on new legislation remains highly doubtful, even on bills that will not cost much money. Nearly all legal authorities agree, for example, that the federal criminal code is outdated and needlessly complex. But a revision jointly proposed by two unlikely senatorial partners, Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, will probably fail to pass again this year. Reforms in the immigration law have been repeatedly urged since 1978, but a new act appears dead once again. Says Political Scientist Norman Ornstein of Catholic University in Washington, D.C.: "Across the board, there is less action in Congress this year. There are fewer committees meeting, and there is less action on the floor."

What has gone wrong? Preoccupation with the budget is not the answer. Basic changes in the way Congress operates, as well as in new members' attitudes toward the institution, have made Congress a balky, erratic, negative body.