A Lame Duck Takes Wing, Sputtering

Drew Lewis was secretary of Transportation; James Howard (D-N.J.) was chairman of the House Committee on Public Works and Transportation. Lewis and Howard wanted to spend money on roads, bridges, and mass transit, key components of the nation's "infrastructure"—the capital plant used to move our goods, treat our waste, or store our water. The projects involved are the traditional subject of "pork-barrel" politics, the "internal improvements" beloved by Henry Clay, that dated back to the building of canals and roads at the beginning of our history.

House Public Works has long been the prototypical pork-barrel committee. Contrary to an overwhelming deluge of political rhetoric, spending on such projects had not grown but—as a proportion of national product—had been halved during the 1960s and 1970s.^[30] Governments instead shifted resources from public works to transfer payments for the elderly, to health, to education (due to the baby boom and Sputnik), and to antipoverty programs. These new responsibilities crowded out the old ones as government at all levels met resistance to raising taxes.

Spending that could be postponed, therefore, was; that meant less for highways, bridges, sewers, and the like. It was easy neither for Democrats to explain why, when money was more plentiful, these essential services had been neglected nor for Republicans to explain why, when they were in control, they allowed these building blocks of society to decay.

Secretary of Transportation Drew Lewis cared more about highways than sewers. Highway spending had shrunk, in real terms, mainly because the gasoline tax, which financed the Highway Trust Fund, had not been raised since 1959. Lewis felt that after twenty-two years an increase of four or five cents a gallon, from the existing four cents, could be justified. It would be a "user fee"; the people who use the highways pay the gas tax. James Howard and many urban Democrats agreed with the need for higher spending on transportation, but they were less interested in highways. To urban Democrats, cars and highways were middle-class commodities while subways and buses were working-class. Democrats also were uneasy with the gas tax, which was not at all progressive. For years, city representatives had argued that mass transit took pressure off the highway system, that types of transit were fungible, and that cities should be able to choose. Cities had little place to put interstate highways. Many city people bought gasoline, and, perhaps more important, there were lots of urban senators and representatives. By allowing some new gas tax money to go to mass transit, Lewis won liberals' support.

Lewis, Howard, and others worked to bring infrastructure needs to public attention. In 1981 the National Governors Association published a report, "America in Ruins," which claimed that up to two-thirds of the nation's towns and lacked the facilities to accommodate new economic growth.^[31] Then Republican and Democratic legislators injected the need for new capital spending into the budget debate. Transportation Department officials, in the unusual position (for this administration) of having a program advocate as secretary, lobbied for new spending. The media also joined the campaign. Newsweek titled its August 2, 1982, issue, "The Decaying of America," beginning its story with a vision of the chaos that would be caused if a main water tunnel were to crack beneath New York City.^[32] The publicity campaign succeeded.

Now, recognizing a problem did not mean (especially if you were Ronald Reagan or David Stockman) that the federal government should pay to solve it. It might be left to the states and localities, or it might wait for economic recovery. Even if federal action were demanded, spending and tax increases could be avoided by shifting funds from lesser priorities. Therefore, on May 18, a day after Howard had reported the bill out of his committee, the president turned down Lewis's proposal. Lewis worked to reverse Reagan's decision, but on September 28, in

response to a question at a press conference, the president declared that "unless there's a palace coup and I'm overtaken or overthrown, no, I don't see any necessity" for a gas tax increase.^[33]

The election accomplished what the National Journal called "Political Alchemy: 26 fewer Republican seats in the House plus 10.4 percent unemployment transforms an unacceptable gasoline tax into an acceptable user fee."^[34] In another bit of alchemy, the infrastructure bill became a jobs bill. Legislators in both houses and both parties saw Lewis's proposal as a job provider that could not be criticized as "make-work." Dan Rostenkowski endorsed the idea; the Speaker promised to send something over to the Senate during the lame-duck session where, "if they don't do anything, the onus is on them."^[35] On November 18 Howard Baker announced he and Tip O'Neill would work out a bipartisan jobs bill; on November 22 they endorsed the basic outlines of the Lewis and Howard proposal.

The president wanted private, rather than governmental, spending to lead the way out of the slump. He suggested that the July 1983 tax cut be moved up to January. Howard Baker and Bob Michel immediately told Reagan they did not have the votes.^[36] November 23 the president finally jumped on the infrastructure bandwagon: "There's no question but obviously there will be some employment with it," he declared, "but it is not a jobs bill as such. It is a necessity. It's a problem that we have to meet, and we'd be doing this if there were no recession at all."^[37] (The president did not explain why the infrastructure bill was a necessity in November and heresy in September.) Robert Dole, skeptical of spending but recognizing the politics, was more straightforward: the transportation package was, he commented, "the best possible jobs bill that could be devised.^[38]

In politics, agreement on a proposal may substitute for agreement on purposes. If the objectives of the winning coalition are too diverse, however, they may undermine the initial agreement. With all the major party leaders behind it, the bill seemed likely to pass.^[39] Yet conflict about purposes and shortness of time almost enabled opponents to scuttle it.

By early December, Democrats had developed a $5.4 billion plan for "light" public works. The administration then had to explain why one jobs bill was good and required Republican loyalty, while another, which would create jobs more quickly, was bad and required Republican opposition.

On the transportation bill itself, the administration strongly opposed subsidies for mass transit operations; if the users could not pay at least operating (as distinguished from capital or investment) expenses, then the systems probably should not exist. Mass transit proponents argued that users could not pay and that the consequences of letting big city

transit systems go under were too terrible to contemplate. For their part, some Democrats wanted to replace the gas tax increase by repealing part of the third-year tax cut. If either operating subsidies were removed or the income tax cut scaled down, however, the coalition might fall apart. In addition, the bill had myriad consequences disliked by the trucking industry and, therefore, the Teamsters—two powerful lobbies. And it was almost universally condemned by the economics fraternity. New CEA Chairman Martin Feldstein told the president and everyone else who would listen that the gas tax bill would just siphon jobs from the private sector. Democrats Walter Heller, Charles Schultze, and Otto Eckstein joined the chorus of skeptics.^[40] These objections helped justify the resistance of a small band of conservatives who felt that nearly all domestic government spending was bad and that new taxes were worse. When he jumped on the infrastructure bandwagon, they believed Ronald Reagan had abandoned his principles.

The growing continuing resolution became the second major controversy of the lame-duck session. Disagreements over defense and federal/ congressional pay threatened to torpedo it.

The defense disputes involved not just money but policy. House liberal leaders wanted to kill at least one of two nuclear aircraft carriers, the B-1 bomber and, most of all, the MX missile. If they could not do so, defense savings would have to come out of combat readiness, like spare parts, and there was little support for that.

All these weapons could be attacked on strategic grounds: the carriers were too vulnerable to attack by missiles; the B-1 as adding little to the B-52s, and outmoded as soon as the "Stealth" bomber came on line; the MX as a potential first-strike weapon, vulnerable to Soviet attack, and therefore destabilizing. They could also be defended: the carriers were the core of the Navy's strategy for projecting power around the world; the B-1 was better than the aging B-52s and more likely to be produced than the Stealth; the MX was a counterforce weapon and, within the bizarre world of "arms control" reasoning, necessary so it could be bargained away.

Liberals lost badly in Appropriations on the carriers and B-1, but $988 million for five production-line MX missiles survived only because three MX opponents were unable to attend the vote. The MX was vulnerable: production funds could be reduced without eliminating research, development, and test money; it was possible to send a cautionary message to the president with that vote; but most important, no one knew where to put the missiles once they began producing them.

MX had gone from the "racetrack"—100 missiles shuttled among 1,000 silos in Nevada and Utah, so the Russians wouldn't know where to shoot—to "dense pack"—all the missiles would be placed in silos fairly

close together so the explosion from knocking out one missile would blow up incoming missiles, thereby protecting the ones that remained in the ground. Members of Congress were skeptical. Charlie Wilson's comment that the pro-MX arguments "sound like PAC-Man" struck a responsive chord. Even three of the five members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff opposed what some congressmen called "Dunce Pack."^[41]

When Don H. Clausen (R-Calif.) invoked the memory of Pearl Harbor in a traditional argument for preparedness, Carroll Hubbard, Jr., added that "right or wrong, the words 'Here come the Russians' nowadays do not scare Kentuckians half as much as 'Here come the creditors.'"^[42] The House accepted Addabbo's amendment to delete funds for MX production, 245 to 176. Both Addabbo and occasional MX critic Les Aspin conceded that, if the basing issue were resolved, the administration would get the missile.^[43] For the first time since World War II, however, a house of Congress had even temporarily denied the president a major weapon.

The major controversy over the Transportation Act was about its tax provisions. Trucking interests objected to the truck charges; conservatives objected to any taxes at all; liberals, led by Richard L. Ottinger (D-N. Y.) and Henry Reuss (D-Wis.), wanted to replace the gas tax increase with a cap on the third-year tax cut, in effect repealing that cut in the upper brackets. House leaders concluded that the tax section of the bill was too vulnerable, that any change in it might unravel the whole package, and that the tax section therefore should be offered without allowing amendments. Thus, floor conflict centered on the rule, which was upheld by a close (197 to 194) margin. The bill passed by a 262 to 143 margin that belied the pitfalls it had avoided.

House Democratic leaders still wanted to attach extra jobs spending to the continuing resolution. On December 10 House Appropriations reported out a new CR with a $5.4 billion jobs bill attached, including $1 billion in new programs. In debate on the floor, Silvio Conte reported that Reagan had promised to veto the CR if it included jobs spending. Democratic leaders again saw no reason to back down early. They managed to defeat Conte's motion to delete the jobs sections, 215 to 191. The CR passed by an even narrower 204 to 200 that included 13 votes from an assortment of not overwhelmingly liberal Republicans who may have wanted to go home.

In spite of the jobs battle and a narrow deletion of funds for the controversial Clinch River breeder reactor, the CR's greatest controversy was congressional pay. Here we have to go back a bit because we have been skirting the subject.

Because legislators are normally scared to raise their own pay, they sometimes look for less visible ways to increase their compensation; these

in turn are attacked by members looking for a safe issue with which to get some publicity. In 1981 the Senate managed to sneak through a large tax break for congressional living expenses, replacing the old, insufficient provision with a new, more generous one. Senators also eliminated the existing limit on honoraria from speeches and the like, and House members doubled their own limit on honoraria from $9,100 to $18,200.

It could not last; with members of Congress leading the way, the tax break became the subject of maneuvers on the final FY82 CR that continued throughout the battle on the "urgent" supplemental that finally passed in July. Senators pushed to return to the old tax provision as irritated House members tried to blackmail the senators out of that by reimposing the limit on honoraria. In the final version of the July supplemental, the tax deduction limit won out.

In August Senator Stevens, who headed the Senate subcommittee with responsibility for federal pay issues, tried to tack a byzantine pay raise maneuver onto the reconciliation. He wanted raises for not only his colleagues but also the higher civil servants whose pay was held down by members' inability to raise their own salaries. It failed after a revolt in the House. "Obviously we are in an election period, and it is not a good time to talk about these things," commented Vic Fazio (D-Calif.). The "cap" on salaries, however, was due to expire at the end of FY82. Fazio, chairman of the legislative branch subcommittee of appropriations, made sure that battles were postponed by extending the cap to December 17 in the first CR. He then began a quiet campaign to raise the cap during the lame-duck session. The GAO reported that, if the cap lapsed, under the existing comparability system members would be entitled to a 27.2 percent pay increase.

When the second CR came to the floor, Fazio had left out the pay cap. Two amendments—one by Fazio limiting the pay raise to 15 percent and one by Bob Traxler (D-Mich.) reimposing the cap—were in order. The Fazio amendment passed without comment. Then Traxler's amendment was defeated on a tie vote, but it wasn't easy. The vote was allowed to run well beyond the normal fifteen-minute period. Even the Speaker voted against Traxler. The Congressional Quarterly Almanac reported:

Finally, with the amendment ahead 208-207, lame duck Robert K. Dornan, R-Calif., voted no, and the amendment failed on a 208-208 tie. It was the vote of Dornan and the other 70 lame ducks who voted on the Traxler amendment that sealed its fate. Lame ducks opposed the amendment by 2-1, 24-47. While Republicans overall supported Traxler, 121-65, the 48 Republican lame ducks who were voting opposed his amendment, 21-27.^[44]

Lame ducks, of course, did not have to worry about public opprobrium, therefore giving a parting gift to their more "responsive" colleagues.

Any issue that can unite Tip O'Neill and "B-1 Bob" Dornan is bound to have unusual permutations; more were to come. In order to make the raise more palatable—and to create a bargaining chip with the Senate—the House took the precaution of limiting honoraria to 50 percent of pay. Senators had more prestige than representatives and could make more money from speeches. Naturally, when the CR reached Senate appropriations both the pay and honoraria provisions were deleted. Final action would wait for the conference. But there would be no conference until the CR passed the Senate, which, strangely enough, brings us back to the transportation act. Anybody want to be a congressman? The job is so simple! And rewarding!