Masonry Magazine January 1969 Page. 20
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THIS WILL NOT BE A BIG YEAR FOR LEGISLATION at the Federal level. President Nixon will move cautiously in his dealings with the Congress. His aides make it clear that he will not submit many major requests for action. Rather, he'll focus on perfecting his grip on the machinery of government . . . on reshaping Great Society programs his way . . . on widening his popular base.
Nixon will go to considerable lengths to get along with the majority Democrats on any key question that must be settled. He will be open to compromise at every stage, even to the point of postponing action on some of his campaign pledges.
THE LEGISLATIVE STRATEGY NIXON WILL
USE WILL REFLECT the political reality that rules today. For one thing, he knows he has no big mandate to reform. He did not promise to start and carry through vast new programs, either. He does not want to heighten existing friction with controversy. And he is well aware of the fact that money for big new programs is scarce.
Nixon's Cabinet choices hint the flavor his Administration will have. They are good managers, middle-of-the-roaders-not colorful personalities, theorists or scrappy innovators. Many deem them even more qualified than Johnson's people. They're well-suited for the quiet era people seem to want.
NIXON'S POLICIES CAN'T HELP BUT BE
HEAVILY INFLUENCED by the make-up of the 91st Congress the fact that both chambers are still Democratic-run. Not since 1848 and Zachary Taylor has a new President faced this situation. The Democrats will give him a honeymoon, of course, over much of this year. And the conservative committee chairmen will even have their hearts in it. What's more, the zeal for economy still burns bright, abetted by inflation.
But there is a potential for trouble. The liberals still harbor latent hostility to their old adversary. They will be watching the tack he takes on key questions, waiting to pounce, so as to store up issues for the elections of 1970. Nixon will try not to give them the opportunities they seek.
The new team realizes that ending the war and checking the current dangerous inflation will be its biggest problems. Nixon can handle Viet Nam -and all foreign affairs just about as he pleases, for a time, anyway. But he will have to deal with Congress on the Budget and many other items.
PRESIDENT NIXON HAS ALREADY MOVED
TO SHUN A CLASH on fiscal policy. He intends to avoid the feuds that cost LBJ so much support, unnecessarily. So Nixon has already begun to court the most powerful man on Capitol Hill-Wilbur Mills Chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee. Early last year, Mills showed how he can use his power to get what he wants when he forced the President to slash spending as the price of the surtax. Nixon has told Mills he is ready to work out accommodations on money matters.
Thus, there won't be much quarreling over the Budget or the changes that Nixon will want to make in the draft that is Johnson's parting shot. Nixon will see to it that the White House checks Chairman Mills at every step of the way.
NIXON WILL TRY TO SLICE SOME SPENDING
OUT OF Johnson's last Budget, in an effort to keep his campaign promise to let the surtax die. But the task will be tough. Johnson has already held the total down to achieve the surplus for fiscal 1970-the government accounting year that begins June 30. But staying in the black assumes that the surtax will be retained. Now, if the new Budget Director can pare $5 billion more, the surtax can be reduced.
This is all the new Administration hopes for realistically, anyway. Few Nixon officials think that the present threat of inflation will permit dropping the entire surtax. Keeping, say, half might also satisfy Mills, who has called for its extension on several different occasions in recent months.
SUBSTANTIAL SPENDING CUTS WILL BE
HARD TO COME BY in the new Budget. To the contrary, big increases are set the multi-billion-dollar pay hike for Federal employees, for example and simply can't be dropped in practice. Then, too, fast rising prices will alone add some $3 billion to the total. And it will be tough, politically, to avoid spending more on poverty, etc. So spending could easily run $10 billion ahead of the current year's clip.
Revenue can grow by this much, too even a bit (Continued on page 51)