The Tennessean from Nashville, Tennessee • Page 21

THE TENNESSON, Sunday, Spfcnlf 1983 Team Spirit of Days Gone By Evades the Senate By ALAN EHRENHALT Congressional Quarterly -WASHINGTON A surprising number of senators can recall a photograph, taken In 1954, of three Senate Democrats In an informal baseball game. Henry M. Jackson is the batter, John F. Kennedy is' catching, and Mike Mansfield is umpiring behind the plate. Jackson and Mansfield are wearing T-shirts; Kennedy is in a sport shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

That picture is relevant to present-day senators because It seems to stand for a Senate that has disappeared In the years since then one whose members knew each other well, worked and played together, and thought of politics as a team game. Some of the most serious consequences of current Senate obstructionism are not apparent in the short run. The filibuster always is broken, often by Baker's decision to force an all-night session, and the legislation almost always seems to get passed. The price is paid in quiet decisions not to take up major issues because time runs out on them at the end of the session, and in changes that are made in response to a filibuster threat before bills even reach the floor. THE INDIVIDUAL rights problem In the Senate goes beyond filibusters.

At the borders, the difference between obstructionism and free expression is hard to define. Dozens of senators who do not consider themselves obstructionists still guard their right to take up large blocks of time on Issues of importance to them. The Senate has always been far less willing than the House to defer to "expert" members on issues. Part of the tradition of free expression has been that any member is competent to debate a measure and to try to amend it IN if a reason party discipline has broken down." The kinds of public scrutiny to which the Senate has been subjected in recent years are familiar. Political action committees, increased roll-call voting and open meetings are only a few of them.

Most senators seem to agree that all these developments have made negotiation and political self-sacrifice infinitely more difficult Open meetings are singled out most often. "There was an enormous give-and-take," Pearson says of the old closed-door committee system. "People could change their minds as a result of hard bargaining and deliberation. But nobody wants to admit in public that he was wrong." THE 97TH Congress may not be the best one from which to draw permanent conclusions about Senate life. The new Republican majority has disrupted a quarter-century of Democratic control, perhaps changing the style of the place as well.

The unusual number of incumbent defeats in 1978 and 1980 has meant an institution dominated by junior members. At the moment 55 senators are in their first term. Some of the current problems are made worse by a transient atmosphere that itself could prove temporary. Still, nearly all of those interviewed see the current institutional situation as an extension of trouble that developed in the 1970s. "When you have this increasing fragmentation," says Boren, "and you add to that rules which allow the individual to exploit that fragmentation, you've got problems." The new obstructionism comes TODAY'S SENATE, many of its; own members complain, Is pothing like that It is seen from within as a place where there is little time to think, close personal relationships are rare, and individual rights, not community feeling, is the most precious com-modity.

Serious policy implications exist for a Senate where the individual Is in control. The more Individuals have to be personally satisfied for a policy to be enacted, the more likely it is that there will be none, or that what emerges will be the lowest common denominator. The more senators insist on entering a debate to offer a parochial point of view, the less chance the institution has to deliberate about what it is doing for the country in the long run. The current Senate has talked almost endlessly about balancing the budget and making the Social Security system solvent But while individual senators have been able to use these issues to keep themselves politically secure at home, the nation is no closer to resolving either question. THE PHRASE "deliberative 'body" is one that Majority Leader Howard Baker has used repeatedly in his search for ways to equip the Senate to deal more effectively with the issues of the 1980s.

As a start, Baker has appointed two recently retired members, Republican James Pearson of Kansas and Democrat Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut, to spend a year looking into the ways the Senate does its business. Pearson is convinced that the most serious problems of the Senate are separate from the question of whether Democrats or Republicans are in control. "Partisanship has very little to do with institution goes on its way no matter who is in charge. We need to find a way for these people to read and study and think and deliberate. The Senate is an absolute squirrel's cage." IT IS NOT entirely clear, however, that the Senate's problems can be solved within the chamber.

Much of what has happened to the Senate simply mirrors the larger changes in American society during the past generation. Most of the senators of the 1950s arrived in Washington each January on the train. Nine months later they left on the train. In between, they stayed in Washington, making no weekend trips home because there were no jet planes to get them there and back that fast if TODAY'S senators do not socialize, it is largely because they are not in Washington a great deal. Warren Rudman, serving his first year in the Senate in 1981, went home 38 weekends out of 52.

If he exceeds the average, it probably is not by very much. The personal contact that came of the year, may have been the glue out of which a working institution was made. EVEN WHEN senators are In town, staffs do much of the work that used to be done by the membership. "Very often," says David Boren, "I will call a senator on an issue, and he won't know anything about it He'll ask me to get someone on my staff to call someone on his staff. It shuts off personal contact between senators." Many members believe this semi-stranger quality of Senate life has an unpleasant byproduct an increase in hostility and open confrontation on the floor.

"We have pairs of senators now," jokes Dale Bumpers, who came in 1975, "who have to have bulletproof vests when they deal with each other." VIRTUALLY EVERY major bill considered in the Senate this Congress has brought a new confrontation. When Howard Metzen-baum, DOhio, insisted on filibustering a water rights bill July 16, despite a unanimous consent agreement to vote that afternoon, Republican Whip Ted Stevens of Alaska accused him of "violating one of the basic rules of the Senate, which is to be a gentleman." It is too much to blame all of the perceived isolation and tactics of confrontation on the jet plane. The senators of a generation ago were not just physically separated from their constituents most of the year they were insulated from the public scrutiny that now seems to govern members' lives every day they are in office. And all this constituent pressure, from constituencies with vastly different demands, pulls senators apart "The Senate is on a hair-trigger," says John Danforth, R-Mlss-ouri. "There's an absence of a long view.

People are running for re-election the day they arrive. It's unbelievable." EVERY MEMBER knows the campaign mortality rate of senators in the past few years. Nine incumbents were beaten in 1976, 10 in 1978, and 13 in 1980, when a senator's chance of re-election was only marginally better than 50-50. This year may be different but few of those running want to bet on that There may not have been much more statesmanship 30 years ago, but there was considerably more political freedom of action. The most powerful senators Democrats such as Richard Russell of Georgia and Harry Byrd Sr.

of Virginia and Republicans such as Styles Bridges of New Hampshire had safe seats representing one-party states. "There not only was a social camaraderie in the old days," says Bumpers. "There was a teamwork. Occasionally they could vote to accommodate a 'f Lm1 Dale Bumpers 'We have pairs ot senators' Nearly all senators of both parties interviewed for this story praised Baker's work as majority leader in the 97th Congress. At the same time, they pointed out the severe restrictions on the role that a leader can play.

"A lot of leadership is just housekeeping now," says the Democratic whip, Alan Cranston. "Occasionally you have an opportunity to provide leadership, but not that often. The weapons to keep people in line just aren't there." THE MODERN leader also has a sensitive constituency to protect the members of his party who expect him to schedule the chamber's action around their personal needs. Robert Byrd, who was elected secretary of the Democratic Conference in 1967, turned that once-innocuous Job into a power base by performing endless fa vors for colleagues: keeping them up to date about when a vote was to take place, for example, or postponing the vote if they could not be there. The constituent problem must have flashed through Byrd's mind late one summer night In 1980, his last year as majority leader, as he stood on the floor trying desperately to find a time the following Monday when the Senate could vote on the 1981 budget resolution.

One senator after another announced that a particular time would be inconvenient Byrd was reduced to writing all the preferences on a long yellow legal pad, a process that made him look more like a man sending out for sandwiches than the leader of a deliberative body. Some members insist the real problem is the rules. Much smaller than the House and supposedly more insulated from public pressure, the Senate has always operated on the theory that it can control itself with personal norms of conduct and does not need the kind of strict regulations common in the House. PEARSON IS careful to insist that no quick tinkering with any rule likely to accomplish very much. "The problems of the Senate have to do with its people," he says.

"It's the character and motivation and attitudes of the people there. There aren't any recommendations that will change that" And as the process begins, some are warning that the source of the problem is far beyond the Senate chamber. "It's not the rules or the leadership or even the institution," says David Durenberger, R-Minn. "It's the times we're living In. Everybody is a reflection of his own values." James B.

Pearson Senate a 'squirrel cage' Denl Greene, director of planning and research for California. Elmer Danenberger, North Atlantic supervisor for Interior's Minerals Management Service, said drilling technology is advanced enough that he is "not terribly concerned about deep water." WHILE Danenberger said companies don't want to drill in unacceptable weather, Howard Nickerson, executive director of the New England Fisheries Steering Committee, is skeptical. "The guy on the oil rig is always going to be 'thinking in dollars and cents. He's going to ignore the safety factor." That concern is heard in Alaska, where 557 of the program's 933 million acres are located and severe weather conditions are complicated by ice packs. POTENTIAL trade-offs also are more costly: Extensive drilling would require on-shore support facilities and an Influx of people that could disrupt native cultures.

In case of an oil spiu, not only are valuable salmon and other fish resources at stake, but large populations of mammals that include fur seals, walruses and eight species of threatened or endangered whales. And clean-up operations would be much more difficult if not virtual! impossible in frozen northern Alaska. 'W Individualist. Senate Congressional Quarterly from both right and left, and goes beyond budget issues to virtually anything the Senate takes up that provokes strong feelings. Lowell Weicker held off action on an anti-busing bill for eight months, filing a total of 604 amendments to the legislation, before giving up Feb.

25 with the vow that "this bill will not become law." A few months after Weicker ended his filibuster, John East launched one from the other direction, against renewal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act which he said discriminated against Southern states. EASTS FILIBUSTER raised the level of Senate concern about individual obstruction because, unlike most such efforts, it was waged on a bill that had only a handful of opponents. There was no doubt that the necessary 60 votes existed to call for an end to debate on the issue. The older Southern Democrats, however adamant they may have been about the filibuster, used it almost exclusively on a single issue about which they had the strongest feelings. Some current filibusters are like that but others seem to be waged over issues of a far more transient nature.

IN THE past decade, the Senate developed a militant New Right bloc who felt obstruction was not only a right but a duty. In 1976, his second year in the Senate, Jake Garn, R-Utah, killed an extension of the Clean Air Act by filibustering it on the last day of the session. "If I can slow down a markup or find some tactic to keep a bill off the floor," Garn said afterward, "I'll do it I don't particularly have loyalty to tradition." der lease but not producing. Now, 108 extensions have been granted. "WHATS GOING on here?" asked Sarah Chasis, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council in New York.

"There's an inconsistency between rushing to get all these acres out and then giving the companies so much time to explore." Meanwhile, Watt has decided to rely exclusively on bonus bids up-front cash to determine which company is awarded a lease. If a well is brought in, the company pays the government royalties on the production. If there is no production, the government keeps the bonus money. Rothchild, who said the U.S. is the only country that relies on bonus bids, believes that is a "short-sighted" approach.

Taxpayers would do better if bonus bids were eliminated and companies that bring in producing wells were charged higher royalties, he said. SHELL'S OTTEMAN countered that royalties and taxes consume about 60 of offshore revenues under the U.S. system. Add. bonus bids to that and the United States, compared with other countries, does well, he said.

However, the bonus system which in 1981 produced average bid? (Of $15.6 million for a tract does penal Many Question Environmentally Secretary Watt's Sound' Plans naturally to old-time senators, friend in ways that would be po-tied to Washington nine months litically lethal now. That's one ize small companies, thus giving multinational giants like Shell and Mobil more control of offshore resources. Arnold Burk, president of the privately held Atlantic Sun Oil Co. of Philadelphia, and owners of five other small companies joined Energy Action last fall in suing Interior for not developing alternative bidding systems, such as charging higher royalties but only if a well becomes a producer. Although that was the intention of Congress, the Supreme Court threw out the suit noting that the lawmakers also gave the Interior secretary discretion to develop other bidding systems.

Watt's S33 million acres will be offered in 41 lease sales, an aver-. age of nearly 23 million acres per sale. That compares with seven sales averaging 1.1 million acres last year. LARGER SALE areas are sig-nificent because the public comment period will be before the sale, when it Is not known what specific areas oil companies will bid on. Thus comments whether on the impact of drilling on other industries, the environment or local communities will be superficial, critics charge, and so will environmental impact statements required of Interior.

"There's no way that local and state governments, private citizens, fishermen can get a handle on what's really coming," said (Continued from 1-B) tor of Energy Action, a Washington public interest group. While Watt touts energy independence, Rothchild asks, "Why drain America first?" And he says it is foolish to lease the Outer Continental Shelf when the world oil market is glutted. Rothchild noted that 7.7 million offshore acres were leased last year under a program approved by the Carter administration. Through mid-1987, the average annual offering under Watt's plan will exceed 185 million acres. Against that backdrop, these statistics are significant Interior had predicted 1982 offshore revenues from royalties and the "bonus" bids that determine which company is awarded a lease of $15 billion, up from $10 billion in 1981.

But that estimate now has been cut to $7.9 billion, and some insiders expect it to dip below $5 billion. Meanwhile, the agency is sticking with estimates of $15.3 billion for 1983 and higher, unspecified amounts in later years. Reflecting the eroded oil market companies have bid on only 23 of the tracts put up for sale so far this year, compared with 38 in 1981. Watt is giving companies more time to bring wells into production. At the end of 1980, extensions had been granted on about 85 of the 1,000 tracts that are un a Time of Comaradrie Hie year wcls 1954.

The participant! ytttt Sens. Henry M. Jackton, batter, John Kennedy, catcher, and Mike Mansfield, umpire..