Congress: The Session in Between

IT was like a train station at summer's end. There were the happy arrivals, trying to find a place to put their things. There were departures, some of them happy, some sad, some uncertain. There were comrades reunited. There was one man who arrived early, and there was one who refused to believe that he had to leave at all.

The occasion was the first full lame-duck session of Congress in 20 years, a meeting that will last until just before Christmas or, in Senate Republican Leader Hugh Scott's wry prophecy, until "we reach the end of our mutual patience with each other." Before the week was out, considerable attrition of that patience had already taken place. In a vote that crossed party lines and had an indecipherable mixture of political and philosophical motives, the Senate Finance Committee voted 10 to 6 to reject President Nixon's Family Assistance Plan. The proposal, which would change the underlying philosophy of public assistance and is the Administration's most innovative step in the area of social legislation, aims at the ultimate reduction of welfare rolls by providing a guaranteed minimum income for the poor --including the working poor--and job training for the unemployed.

A central figure in the committee vote was Senator Fred Harris of Oklahoma, a very dark-horse Democratic aspirant for a 1972 presidential nomination. Harris, after steadfastly supporting the measure for months, voted against it. A Health, Education and Welfare Department official saw pure politics in Harris' switch, calling him that "goddamned bastard" who "just couldn't stand the idea of Richard Nixon getting credit for this bill." Liberal Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the White House Counsellor who sold the President on the legislation, was even more bitter about Harris' role. He said: "Two long years, only to have it killed by a man who should be for it more than anybody. Now the kids will go on eating bugs, and the liberals will keep talking abeut how bad everything is. It's a real tragedy; we were so close." Moynihan also warned that if the welfare-reform bill fails this year, it will not become law for ten years. Certainly the chances of reviving it at this session are slim. It could come to the floor next year--perhaps under Democratic sponsorship.

Harris, in reply to his critics, charged that the President had continually altered the bill until "it's not a reform bill, it's regressive." Some originally liberal provisions had indeed been weakened in an effort to win conservative support. The latest version, for instance, disqualifies 450,000 unemployed fathers now eligible for benefits.

Other issues caused far less recrimination. The House passed a trade bill calling for more protectionism than the President sought; it may die in the Senate or be vetoed. Congress sent to Nixon an Administration farm bill, opposed by many farm-state Senators, which for the first time would limit subsidy payments to $55,000 a year to any individual farm for each of three basic crops: cotton, wheat and feed grains.

Flushed Out. The ordinary routine of the Senate resumed. A photographer captured Senator Albert Gore, defeated after 32 years in Congress, sharing the Senate dining room--if not a table --with Vice President Spiro Agnew, who contributed to Gore's political demise. Senator Philip Hart, a diligent liberal Democrat but not a household name, made a bid to become one: 1 showed up with the first beard in the Senate in 31 years--the payoff on an election bet on himself. He had intended to keep his bristles hidden 1 northern Michigan, but the special session flushed him out.

Indiana's conservative Republican Representative Richard Roudebush would seem to be out in another sense. He does not see it that way. When asked what he would be doing now that he has apparently lost his race the Senate against Vance Hartke, Roudebush raised his voice and said: "Nothing, nothing at all. I'm not thinking about anything except for that senatorial seat. I'm still going to pull it out." At latest reports, he had still lost by 4,383 votes, and a recount may be made.

For one new Senator, the trip is short, happy and frustrating. Republican Representative J. Glenn Beall of Maryland, marking time in the House while preparing to take over the Senate seat of Joseph Tydings, complains that "no one moves over there, or over here, until the day of swearing in. The packing cases just pile up in both places. That may seem kind of funny, but actually it makes you want to cry."

For Adlai Stevenson, the household problems were simpler. The Republican he defeated for a Senate seat from Illinois, Ralph Tyler Smith, was in the chamber when Stevenson was sworn in last week ahead of everybody else. The two men established an amicable demilitarized zone as Stevenson took over three of the six rooms in Smith's suite in the old Senate Office Building. On Stevenson's side, people flowed in in a kind of happy chaos while a small boy cheerfully answered the phone; across the DMZ, a Smith aide said that things were pretty dull.

Unlike Stevenson, who got a head start in the seniority race because under Illinois law he could replace Smith immediately, the other new Senators and all new House members will be sworn in on the same day in January. In the Senate, seniority for newcomers is determined by prior political experience, but otherwise all are equal: each gets one unabridged dictionary, a desk, a divan and two chairs. Whatever else a Senator wants must come out of his office and staff allowance.

As in most exclusive clubs, the elders have an edge. About 50 Senators nave small, separate office "hideaways" n the Capitol, where relaxation as well as business can be pursued in privacy, "newcomer" poses a hideaway problem: Hubert Humphrey. Said a Rules Committee staff member: "On the face

of he shouldn't get a hideaway, but

with all that prior service. I don't know what we're going to do." No such problems exist in the House, where newcomers will have their suites assigned by lottery.

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