Driving toward adjournment by mid-November, the 95th Congress last week was embroiled in the toughest struggle of its ten-month opening session. Contentious, unpredictable and highly independent of the new man in the White House, the lawmakers faced a politically unpleasant task: fashioning an energy bill designed to reduce the nation's dangerous dependence on imported oil—a piece of legislation likely to take money out of just about everybody's pocket. Their situation was aptly described by Indiana's John Brademas, the House Democratic whip: "It is...
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