The Struggle to Reform the House

For all of their complaints about the shift of power from Capitol Hill to the White House, most Congressmen realize that the nature of Congress itself, which sometimes resembles a collection of medieval fiefdoms, is largely to blame. Major legislation is frequently blocked by intramural squabbling between competing committees of the House, and some Congressmen hold too many important committee assignments to be effective in any of them. Far more than the Constitution intended, the President initiates--and the Congress, hampered by its unwieldy machinery, merely reacts.

Last year, in an effort to modernize its structure and procedures for the first time since 1946, the House of Representatives created a select committee headed by Missouri's tough-minded Democrat Richard Boiling to produce ideas for reform. Last week, as the House began debate on the Boiling committee's proposals, it was clear that everyone favored reform -- for everyone else -- and that many Congressmen were sorry they had even mentioned the word. Many members, said Michigan Democrat John Dingell, felt like the little boy who had shot a skunk: "After you've shot it, you're not quite sure what to do with it."

With a budget of $1.5 million, a staff of 14, and a membership of ten evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, the Boiling committee labored for more than a year. It listened patiently to committee chairmen, academics, businessmen and labor leaders. It analyzed the 22 standing committees of the House and the 125 subcommittees.

The Boiling group concluded that: some committees have too little to do and others too much (simply because of its overload, for example, Ways and Means is often unable to consider measures that should have top priority); some important fields, like energy or the environment, are split between two or more committees; the House itself has no firm leadership, and the Speaker little real power; though the House is responsible for continuous overseeing of the Executive Branch, it has made little effort to do this job; though committees have expanded their staffs, the House still has no good way of obtaining information independent of the Executive.

In a 90-page package, the reformers offered these solutions:

-- An area of concern--the environment, for example--should be handled by only one committee, and duplication should be avoided.

-- No member should serve on more than one major committee.

-- The powers of the Speaker should be expanded by strengthening his authority to refer legislation to committees.

-- Committees should be formally given the continuous task of overseeing the Executive departments for which they are responsible.

-- An information commission should be set up to recommend ways of giving the House more complete data for drafting laws.

The proposal to reorganize committees was the most controversial. Two of the most powerful committees, Appropriations and Rules, would be left largely alone. But Ways and Means would be stripped of authority over trade legislation, general revenue sharing, major areas of unemployment compensation, manpower and health care (still leaving it in charge of, among other things, taxation, Social Security, Medicare financing and welfare). The Interior and Insular Affairs Committee would be reconstituted into the Committee on Energy and Environment, absorbing jurisdiction in these areas from several other committees and giving up control of Indian affairs, grazing lands and U.S. overseas territories.

The Education and Labor Committee would be split in two. A new Labor Committee would take over nontax aspects of unemployment compensation from Ways and Means and legislation dealing with civil service and postal workers. A new Education Committee would pick up responsibility for the elderly, the arts and humanities and a vast array of federal educational programs.

The Foreign Affairs Committee, which has never held real power, would be enormously strengthened by gaining trade jurisdiction from Ways and Means, as well as special responsibilities for tariffs and customs and foreign intelligence. The Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee would almost disappear, while the Post Office and Civil Service Committee and the Internal Security Committee, once the Un-American Activities Committee and the springboard for Richard Nixon's career, would be abolished altogether.

The committee chairmen realized quickly who stood to lose and who to gain from the package. Potential losers were naturally the most vociferous. "I'll fight to the death," proclaimed Missouri's Leonor Sullivan, the new chairman of the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee. Arkansas' Wilbur Mills, who as chairman of Ways and Means is considered the single most powerful man in the House, kept silent publicly for the moment, but was expected to speak up--loudly--before the voting.

From the outside, the AFL-CIO objected to the breakup of the Education and Labor Committee, fearing that a Labor Committee would focus too narrowly, like some kind of arbitrator, on management-labor disputes. A coalition of environmental groups opposed the marriage of energy and environment in one committee, fearing that their cause would receive short shrift in a group dominated by energy producers.

The dividing line in the reform argument was never liberal v. conservative. Republicans tended to favor the reformers. Indeed, one of the Boiling planks would guarantee the minority control over one-third of a committee's staff (as opposed to one-quarter now on most committees) so that it would have the resources to offer alternatives to the majority's legislative initiatives. Mostly, the Republicans sat back and gleefully watched Democrats fighting Democrats.

Last May the House Democratic Caucus created another committee to study the Boiling committee's recommendations. That committee, headed by Washington's Julia Butler Hansen, watered down or scrapped most of Boiling's plans in its own 86-page proposal. Afraid that reform would be lost altogether if the House opted for the Hansen sugar pills, Nebraska's David Martin, the ranking Republican on the Boiling committee, came up with a 92-page compromise package, halfway between Boiling and Hansen.

When all three massive, highly technical packages hit the House floor last week after four months of hearings, the result was perhaps the most confusing debate in recent memory. "All over the building the members were lobbying each other last week, trying to cut deals and swaps," reported TIME Congressional Correspondent Neil MacNeil. "The confusion was genuine. None of the leaders knew what was what--neither the formal leaders of the House nor the leaders of the various factions involved in the debate."

For all the confusion, there was little doubt that a majority of both parties would not mind a bit if the whole issue just went away. But the trouble was that at least some voters were watching, and in the wake of the Watergate-inspired outcry for reform, it would hardly do to resist a vastly important reform.

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