[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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