Volume 143, No. 61 covering the 1st Session of the 105th Congress (1997 - 1998) was published by the Congressional Record.
The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“FORTY YEARS OF NOVAK” mentioning the Environmental Protection Agency was published in the Senate section on pages S4324 on May 12, 1997.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
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:
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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