CONGRESS: Mixed Notices for the Fighting 94th

"Distinguished," said House Majority Leader Thomas P. ("Tip") O'Neill of the 94th Congress that reached mid-point last week. "Futile," declared House Minority Leader John Rhodes, judging the same performance.

Both O'Neill and Rhodes were partially right. The Congress that adjourned in a scramble of legislation just before Christmas was involved in more than a classic confrontation between a liberal Democratic majority and a conservative Republican President. From the rap of the first gavel last January, Congress was striving to regain lost ground in its continuing power struggle with the Executive. Simultaneously, reformers were at work in both chambers—particularly in the House—trying to liberalize and open up congressional procedures.

With top-heavy margins of 291 to 144 in the House and 61 to 38 in the Senate, the Democrats were able to reform some of the musty rules and procedures that had slowed legislation for generations in both chambers. In the House, the drive for change was helped mightily by 75 freshmen members who refused to follow two ancient dicta: newcomers should be seen and not heard, and one gets along by going along. The revolution deposed the aging, baronial chairmen of three key House committees.

New Rules. The spirit of reform also swept through the Senate, where liberal Democrats and Republicans curbed the filibuster. Under the new rules, the Senate can limit debate if 60 of its 100 members vote aye. In the past, two-thirds of all those present and voting had to assent to cloture. Last year no major legislation was talked to death on the floor. Nor did the reformers stop with these important changes. Both the Senate and the House voted to open key committee and conference meetings—heretofore held in private—to press and public.

Bad Marriage. As it streamlined and liberalized its procedures, the Congress also fought to assert its authority as a branch of the Government that is at least equal in weight to the White House. In foreign relations, Congress stubbornly defied the President for months by refusing to lift the arms embargo it had imposed on Turkey for using American arms in its invasion of Cyprus in 1974. Not until October did Congress finally ease the ban, which severely damaged U.S.-Turkish relations and disrupted the NATO alliance in the eastern Mediterranean.

Despite anguished warnings from President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Congress refused last spring to approve a request for $722 million in emergency military aid to prolong the defense of doomed South Viet Nam. Last month, further reasserting Congress's war-powers rights, the Senate prohibited the use of this fiscal year's defense funds for additional U.S. intervention in Angola's civil war. In so doing, however, Congress stirred concern that its new assertiveness in foreign policymaking could hamstring the Executive branch.