The 97th Congress

At long last, the 97th Congress came to an end. The lame-duck session had passed a major piece of legislation, but few were happy with the experience. An exhausted Howard Baker agreed with defeated Jesse Helms that the session should never have been held.^[56]

Members of Congress had traveled a long way from the dramatic Reagan victories of early 1981; the president's budget had been virtually disregarded; Congress had tied itself in knots. Arguments could be made that each had been successful in 1982. Reagan had won a big military buildup; in the midst of a recession domestic spending had been increased far less than one might expect; and, though forced to raise taxes, he got others to take most of the blame. Democrats at least had stopped the Reagan Revolution; budget balancers had won a major deficit reduction package. Yet no faction was satisfied.

Pragmatic though he could be, Reagan still had to view rejection of his spending cuts as a defeat. From his standpoint TEFRA was a betrayal; his side had been snookered. Preventing new programs was not so great a victory. Even in 1975 facing huge Democratic majorities, Gerald Ford had successfully vetoed a jobs bill in the midst of a recession. Reagan did lock in the military buildup; his high-ball strategy certainly helped. But the final figures had more to do with senatorial than with White House preferences.

Congress had failed to resolve the disjunctions within its own preferences on taxes, spending, and the deficit. The leaders of the Republican Senate had succeeded in pursuing their own version of responsibility: a tax hike, large but scaled-down defense increases, the status quo on poor people's programs. They had failed only on the great

universal entitlements. Still, senatorial preferences, like everyone else's, did not add up to anywhere near a balanced budget.

Outside analysts might call the events of 1982 a reasonable package of compromises, crediting Senate Republicans with the lead role. By their own standards, however, all participants had done poorly. And now the grizzly bear of political animals, social security, was bound to awaken after its election-year hibernation. Soon the government would have to act to ensure the solvency of the giant pension system. Policy would have to be made with a Congress at least as ideologically divided as the 97th had been. Moreover, the deficit would not go away.

Republican Senator Slade Gorton of Washington summarized the situation nicely: "1981 was the Year of the President. 1982 was the Year of the Senate Republicans. 1983," he concluded, referring to a well-publicized film, "is the Year of Living Dangerously."