Any senators who happened to be on the floor to hear the debate would have learned that there was substantial controversy among professionals over the child-development section, a fact they would not have discovered from reading the committee report. They would have learned that a number of experts questioned the need for such a vast undertaking and, in fact, warned that permanent harm could be done to younger children placed in the impersonal “warehouse” environment of the kind of day-care facility that was apt to result from the legislation. They would have learned also that the expert opinion heard in committee was entirely one-sided; and that even among the experts who favored the program, one had remarked that its far-reaching provisions would revolutionize the concept of the family in American life.
Unfortunately, almost no one besides the sponsors of the bill and the two or three senators arguing for the elimination or modification of the child-development section was on hand to hear the debate. Thus, when the time came to vote, most senators voted aye on the assumption that nothing significant was involved in the bill beyond a simple two-year extension of existing OEO programs. (This bill was later vetoed by President Nixon.)
This rush to enact legislation with little or no time allowed for pause, thought, or deliberation brings to mind another aspect of the Senate’s current way of conducting its affairs. I speak of the phenomenon of the amendment—printed or unprinted—offered from the floor with little or no notice. Amendments can range from purely technical corrections of the statutory language to the most far-reaching changes in the legislation under consideration.
There is usually little check on the scope of amendments that can be offered from the floor, and no opportunity for the relevant committees and their staffs to study them so that some measure of expert analysis might be brought to bear in arguing their merits for the benefit of the Senate as a whole—always assuming that other senators are on hand to hear the debate. Thus all too often, especially when the Senate is operating under unanimous-consent agreements severely limiting the time for debate, amendments are apt to be adopted or rejected on the basis of their emotional or political appeal. So it was with the amendments that in October 1972 added $4 billion, or more than 27 percent, to the cost of the Welfare/Social Security bill reported out by the Senate Finance Committee; and with the amendments that added, in one day’s time the previous June, almost $2 billion to the HEW/ Labor appropriations bill. Surely there is a better way to conduct the nation’s vital legislative business short of the highly restrictive rules that obtain in the House.
All of which brings me to certain observations about the Senate today.
At the root of most of the problems with the Senate is the enormous expansion of federal activities in recent years. A recent study by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York found that the workload of members of Congress had doubled every five years since 1935. Congress is simply trying to handle more business than it can manage. The results too often are waste, conflicts, inconsistencies, and superficiality.
Once upon a time Congress was in session only six or seven months a year. There is every reason to believe that during those months there was time and opportunity to think, to study, to argue, and to come to educated conclusions. As the volume of work increased, Congress was at first able to cope by extending the length of its sessions. But now, as a result of the explosion of federal activity resulting from the War on Poverty and other programs established in the 1960s, it is conceded that Congress is in session essentially on a year-round basis. And even with the increased length of congressional sessions, senators, as I have outlined above, have more legislation to consider in any given week than they can possibly digest.
One consequence of these increasing demands on senators’ time is that it can no longer be said of the Senate that it is a club, exclusive or otherwise. Not so many years ago, members were able to spend unhurried time together, to get to know one another and develop a sense of fraternity while working towards common goals in a highly civil environment. I do not mean to suggest that all of this has disappeared. Real friendships and a sense of belonging do develop. But the sense of community that must once have existed has certainly been dissipated by the preoccupations that tend to keep senators concentrating on their own separate concerns except as their work requires them to come together. It is difficult, in fact, to come to know members of the opposition party who do not happen to serve on one’s committees.
Whether the situation can be changed, only time and a differently constituted Congress will tell. But even assuming that the volume of business can be held at present levels, there remains the fact that each senator has only so many hours per day to devote to his job. A senator must be able not only to bring effective judgment to bear on his legislative duties, but also to maintain contact with his own constituency so as to find out what are the real problems people are faced with, and what are the real effects of the legislation he has helped enact.
All this, in turn, requires adequate staff and office space. Mundane as these considerations may seem, staffing and space can become important factors in determining just how good a job a senator is going to be able to do.
A new senator from a state like New York quickly learns that the Senate places great emphasis on the equal sovereign dignity of each individual state, which is a polite way of saying that when it comes to allocating rooms and funds, senators from the largest states invariably feel shortchanged. It should be kept in mind that the volume of work that must be handled by a senator’s office depends significantly on the size of his constituency. I speak of answering mail and addressing constituents’ problems (the so-called case work), which have been increasing at an enormous rate as the federal government has intruded more and more into its citizens’ lives.
Case work involves such things as assisting with immigration problems, chasing down Social Security checks, helping municipalities process their applications for this or that program, helping businesses thread their way through red tape—you name it. While the office workload for a senator from New York may not be sixty times as heavy as that for a senator from Alaska, it is significantly more than two or three times as heavy. Yet when I entered the Senate in 1971, the smallest number of rooms assigned to any senator was five and the largest (for California and New York), seven. As I started out with a staff of thirty-five and needed one room for myself, this created a degree of congestion. In like manner, my allowance for hiring staff was less than twice the allowance for the smallest state. It is of course true that each senator bears an equal legislative responsibility and needs equal facilities to keep track of legislative matters and to help him do his individual and committee work. But this doesn’t explain the disparity (or lack thereof) in space and staff allowances. In my own case, for example, staff members directly involved in legislative matters are less than one-fifth of the total.
Committee problems, time problems, space problems ... it would seem from my descriptions that a senator’s lot is not entirely a happy one. There are, of course, compensations, not the least of which is the pervasive air of civility and mutual respect with which the business of the Senate is conducted. But even the extraordinary civility and respect that are the hallmarks of the institution cannot overcome organizational and structural complexities that make a difficult job even more difficult.
I have often been asked whether I find my work in the Senate frustrating, and whether I have had any surprises. I have not found the work particularly frustrating, because I had few illusions as to what a very junior member of the minority party could accomplish on his own. Nor have I experienced any really major surprises, although I was not at all prepared for the enormous demands that would be made on my time, seven days a week, or for my loss of anonymity (the unsurprising result of six hundred or so thousand well-deployed dollars spent on television advertising during my campaign, reinforced by periodic meetings with the press).
Early on, I was struck by the number of extracurricular demands on a senator’s time, especially for one who lives as close to millions of constituents as does a senator from New York: invitations to speak which for one good reason or another cannot be declined; ceremonial visits; people with problems whom one must see oneself and cannot refer to staff; people in the