Champion of The Elderly

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While Pepper's critics contend that he exploited the Administration's hastily prepared and ruefully withdrawn initial proposals for cutting Social Security benefits, he is liked and respected by House colleagues of both parties. Last January he became chairman of the House Rules Committee, which can determine not only the timing of legislation but sometimes whether a bill comes to a vote at all. He reluctantly relinquished his chairmanship of the House Select Committee on Aging. "It was wrenching," he says. "Like choosing between a brother and a sister."

"His very person debunks the myths about aging," says Jack Ossofsky of the National Council on the Aging. "Concern about the elderly, the poor and the frail has characterized his entire career."

He intends to do more. A bill sponsored by Pepper and passed in 1978 eliminated any mandatory retirement age for most federal employees and raised it from 65 to 70 for workers in private industry. He has a new bill in the House hopper to remove any such age limits at all. "The only mandatory retirement," he says, "is when you can't do the work any more."

The Senator turned Congressman (everyone still calls him Senator, even though he has not been one since 1951), has an urgent interest in cancer research. In 1937 he sponsored a bill that created the National Cancer Institute. Now he wants the Government to provide an extra $100 million in each of the next five years for work on the disease. "You know, I lost my wife Mildred to cancer in 1979," he says quietly. "Last month I spoke at a wake for Don Petit of my staff, who died of cancer in Florida. A woman on my staff is suffering from bone cancer and was told she'll probably never be able to walk again. Well, we've got to do more to try to stop this disease."

But will not all such social programs cost too much in an age of soaring budget deficits? Others may bend to political fashion, but Pepper never wavers: "I would rather live with $200 billion deficits and have more people living, than the reverse. And if we don't spend the money fighting cancer and arthritis and poverty and poor housing and all the rest, they'll just spend it on the military or something else." In Pepper's view, that settles that.

"He's reversed the aging process," says Florida Senator Lawton Chiles. "He has more political power than ever."