"They're Not Bomb Throwers"

Surprise! Congress's new members seem willing to be led

TIME Congressional Correspondent Neil MacNeil has been watching members of Congress come and go for 29 years and is a keen observer of their shifting moods. Last week, as the incoming Representatives of the 96th Congress assembled in party caucuses to prepare for their opening session in January, MacNeil reported on the contrasts in recent freshman classes of legislators.

Once upon a time, fully four years ago, a group of young men and some young women were elected to Congress. They were very good, and they were against the bad. They were against bad wars, bad Presidents, bad congressional leaders. They wanted to make the bad things good, and the bad people who did the bad things good.

Fortunately, they had not been stained or corrupted by having experienced the bad things that bad politicians experience when they serve in public office. That made it easier for them to be good and to know they were good.

When they came to the big white building in their nation's capital, they did a lot of good things. They smote the bad rules that encouraged bad politicians to be bad. They smote the bad committee chairmen who for too long had held bad power. They would not listen to the bad leaders who tried to persuade them to be bad. In fact, they raised a lot of heaven.

They raised so much heaven that the leaders could not lead in the old bad way and they bothered the new President so much that he could hardly get to sleep at night. They were so good that a lot of the bad old politicians got tired of being bad; and a lot of them went home and said they would not come back to Congress any more.

That is the story of what the class of 1974 did to the House of Representatives. If their successors in the class of 1976 did not feel quite the same fires of reform, they nevertheless copied much of their predecessors' independent and nonconformist ways. Now the newest class, the class of 1978, has come to town. Its members are a different breed and their arrival has excited the hopes and dreams of the party leaders. The Democratic leaders in particular are delighted by their first look at the new crowd.

"They are solid guys," said House Speaker Tip O'Neill, with relief. "They know the grass roots of America." Echoed Democratic Floor Leader Jim Wright: "They're not bomb throwers out to change things for the sake of change." "The new guys are professionals," said Missouri's Richard Boiling. The House Democratic leaders backed those judgments with a surprising statistic: out of the 42 new Democratic Representatives, 25 had held a major elective office back home. Six others had served as congressional aides.

The new members, in turn, were astonished at the warm welcome they received. Highly accessible, the top Democrats briefed the arrivals on the ways of the House, including how to apply for committee assignments, how to secure office space and how to find new homes for their families. The freshmen even dined with President Carter at the White House, and were invited to bring their wives along.

O'Neill heard some sweet and unusual music. One new member approached him and said, "I'm a party man, Mr. Speaker." Another confided, "I'm interested in seeing the President get re-elected." O'Neill marveled at how "the pendulum has swung back from independence to party responsibility." Wright also detected a shift in the reformers of 1974 and 1976. "A lot of them have matured," he said. "Many now are prone to listen to the leadership, instead of taking pride in being mavericks." Democratic House Whip John Brademas found a related change. "What we are seeing in the caucus," he observed, "is a reflection of the mood of the country--a mood of restraint and moderation." The leaders take that to mean that the 96th Congress is not likely to embark on many new programs, will work hard to make present programs more effective, and will pare even the bare-bones budget that Carter is expected to present.

In this newly unrebellious mood, the Democratic caucus readily re-elected its party leaders O'Neill, Wright and Tom Foley, chairman of the caucus. Those leaders appreciatively took this as a refreshing vote of confidence. The caucus also beat back efforts by some of the older reformist firebrands to slash the remaining powers of committee chairmen even further. There was remarkably little resistance when O'Neill asked that the one sensitive issue facing the caucus be debated and decided in private, rather than with reporters present. It was the question of what to do about four members of the House who had been either prosecuted on criminal charges or censured by their colleagues for accepting cash gifts from lobbyists for South Korea.

In that closed meeting, the Democrats decided that none of the four should be deprived automatically of any subcommittee chairmanship because of the allegations against them. The caucus did rule that Michigan's Charles C. Diggs, convicted and sentenced to three years in prison for taking salary kickbacks from his staff, must face a vote of the entire caucus on whether he can remain as chairman of the Africa Subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee. So, too, must Pennsylvania's Daniel Flood, indicted on bribery and other charges, if he wishes to keep his chairmanship of the Labor, Health, Education and Welfare Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee. Similarly, Californians Edward Roybal and Charles Wilson, censured in the Korea scandal, may be able to keep their subcommittee positions.

Older hands noted that as these and other decisions were being made in the caucus, the newest members took little part. They apparently had come to learn, rather than to upset things. Connecticut's Bob Giaimo, chairman of the influential House Budget Committee, watched with admiration. "The newcomers are learning the ropes, not taking the lead," he noted. "The reform spirit is not in them."

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