[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 61 (Monday, May 12, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Page S4324]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          FORTY YEARS OF NOVAK

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise to record and to celebrate Robert 
D. Novak's 40 years of Washington journalism, as he himself records 
this morning in a Washington Post column ``What a Change 40 Years 
Makes.'' Forty years in journalism, as he writes, ``an association with 
Congress that continues today.'' An association of rare civility and, 
too often alas, of deadly accuracy. His access, energy, good spirits, 
and rage for the truth are equaled only by his lifelong friend and 
partner Rowland Evans. Top Drawer and Front Page, there has never been 
the like of them, and I choose to think never will be, for there are 
some national treasures that truly are unique.
  Senators will note Mr. Novak's observation that ``The capital city of 
1957 was at once shabbier and far better governed than today's 
glittering but pothole-scarred Washington.'' A concise way to make the 
point that as American Government has reached for beyond its grasp on 
so many social issues, it has accepted an appalling decline in the 
fundaments of good government, such as street paving. He notes that in 
1957 Congress itself ``was vastly less imperial. Admission to the 
Capitol and office buildings was open, without the need for photo ID 
cards and security checks.'' One might add our buildings were not 
surrounded by concrete barriers and guardposts. One could even go so 
far as to note that one could even drive down Pennsylvania Avenue in 
front of the White House. That thoroughfare having now been blocked 
off. Albeit, ever alert to the need for austerity it has, in its 
eastern reaches at 15th Street, been turned into a parking lot complete 
with parking meters.
  I came to Washington in 1961 with the Kennedy administration. Bob 
Novak was a force for government openness even then. Irresistible as a 
friend and devastating as an analyst. Why only last week he revealed to 
an unwary world that the proposal for a more accurate cost of living 
adjustment in Federal finances was the ``culmination of Senator Daniel 
Patrick Moynihan's masterful campaign to perpetuate big government * * 
* ''
  No matter, just so long as his concern over big Government serves to 
perpetuate Bob Novak. Let us agree for at least a half century. Let 
hope, as indeed we may, that his beloved Geraldine will see to this.
  He fought for his nation as a lieutenant during the Korean war and 
has been fighting for it ever since.
  Mr. President, I ask that Mr. Novak's column from today's Washington 
Post be printed in the Record.
  The column follows:

                [From the Washington Post, May 12, 1997]

                      What a Change 40 Years Makes

                          (By Robert D. Novak)

       On May 13, 1957, I reported to the Associated Press bureau 
     in Washington as a reporter transferred from Indianapolis. I 
     was immediately dispatched to Capitol Hill for Midwestern 
     regional coverage. Within a week, I was detailed to help 
     report the uproarious hearings of the Senate Rackets 
     Committee, which was engaged in a bipartisan assault on Jimmy 
     Hoffa.
       That put me in personal contact with John F. Kennedy, Bobby 
     Kennedy, Barry Goldwater, Edward Bennett Williams and Pierre 
     Salinger--heady stuff for a 26-year-old. So began my 40 years 
     in Washington and association with Congress that continues 
     today. The transformation of the city and the institution 
     over four decades has been breathtaking.
       The capital city of 1957 was at once shabbier and far 
     better governed than today's glittering but pothole-scarred 
     Washington. Neither chic restaurants nor huge lawyer-lobbyist 
     firms had yet appeared (Bob Strauss's arrival was years in 
     the future). The city was a little more Southern and far less 
     New Yorkish than today. The smell of money was not yet 
     redolent. Nobody came to Washington then seeking the 
     equivalent of a 1997 seven-figure income, but they sure do 
     today.
       Congress was not yet consumed with fund raising and was 
     vastly less imperial. Admission to the Capitol and office 
     buildings was open, without the need for photo ID cards and 
     security checks. Members of Congress had not yet adopted 
     Japanese-style boutonnieres, and few employed a press 
     secretary. Nearly all readily responded to telephone calls 
     from a low-level AP reporter without an aide asking what he 
     wanted.
       Accessibility stemmed in part from many fewer staffers on 
     Capitol Hill--4,500 then, compared with 16,000 now (filling 
     three additional big office buildings). In 1957, $117 million 
     was appropriated to run Congress, but only $67 million ($386 
     million adjusted for inflation) was spent. That compares with 
     $2.2 billion in 1997.
       With fewer staffers, lawmakers did much of their own work. 
     At night on his portable typewriter, Sen. Everett McKinley 
     Dirksen wrote summaries of every bill reported by every 
     Senate committee. Unlike today, floor leaders--including the 
     imperious Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson--actually spent hours on the 
     floor.
       Floor debate was spirited--sometimes mean-spirited. It was 
     the summer of 1957 when Democratic Sen. Robert S. Kerr called 
     Republican Sen. Homer Capehart, to his face, ``a rancid 
     tub of ignorance.'' But issues were not polarized along 
     party lines, with a bipartisan conservative coalition 
     often in control. Both congressional parties shared the 
     conviction that the less government the better--an 
     attitude assailed as ``extreme'' today.
       ``Ike Fights to Save Budget,'' said an eight-column front-
     page Post headline my first week in Washington, referring to 
     a nationally televised plea by President Dwight D. Eisenhower 
     for public support against congressional budget-cutting. 
     Eisenhower the previous November had become the first 
     Republican president reelected since 1900 and promptly faced 
     the Democratic-controlled Congress seeking to reduce his 
     $71.8 billion budget substantially--about $449.9 billion in 
     1997 money (less than one-third of President Clinton's $1.7 
     trillion budget).
       The government then was taxing 17.8 percent and spending 17 
     percent of gross domestic product; the comparable figures for 
     1997 are 19.2 percent and 20.8 percent. In 1957, it ran a 
     budget surplus at 0.8 percent of GDP, compared with today's 
     hoped-for deficit of 1.8 percent.
       The government had not grown since New Deal days and would 
     not until Lyndon Johnson's Great Society eight years in the 
     future. In 1957, regulation was but a glimmer of what it 
     would become.
       There was no Education Department, no Energy Department, no 
     Environmental Protection Agency, no Legal Services Corp., no 
     National Endowment for the Arts, no Corporation for Public 
     Broadcasting, no Women, Infants and Children food program. 
     Nor, except for factions on the left in both parties, was 
     there demand for all this.
       Libertarians such as Charles Murray would like to peel back 
     to 1957, but it is hard to find any member of Congress who 
     agrees. Rather, Republicans now acquiesce in Clinton's 
     insistence on still greater expansion of government. 
     Americans unquestionably are less free than they were in 
     1957. Whether, on balance, they in return have been blessed 
     with a better life is doubtful.

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