(4 of 9)
The President wanted an extension the 10% income tax surcharge as an anti-inflationary measure. He was notably less keen on tax reform at this time. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield warned the President that he could not have the surtax without reform—and managed to impose this view on Finance Chairman Russell Long, a Louisiana Democrat to whom 27½% oil-depletion allowance is most precious the reform-bill cuts the allowance to 20%). As Senate Democrats were squabbling, however, Long's House counterpart, Ways and Means Chairmen Wilbur Mills, who cherishes the House's constitutional prerogative to originate revenue measures, felt the public pulse and went ahead with what turned into the bill passed by the House last week (see story, page 19). After his initial hesitation, Nixon talked with Mills and Wisconsin's John Byrnes, the top Ways and Means Republican, and tossed into consideration some reform ideas of his own as well as others suggested by the Treasury Department. They became part of the bill. Says one Ways and Means member: "He found out that we were going to have some tax reform, and he wanted to be part of it."
Two Dozen Welfare Drafts
Nixon's domestic package was hammered out not between Congress and the White House but within the Administration itself. Sharing federal revenues with the states and cities is a Republican idea of long standing. But guaranteeing a minimum annual income for welfare recipients decidedly is not — even with the provision that they must accept any available work or vocational-training opportunity. There was a good deal of tugging and hauling over the welfare proposals, mainly pitting two relatively liberal Nixon men, HEW Secretary Robert Finch and Urbanologist Daniel Patrick Moynihan, against budget-conscious Economist Arthur Burns and other Cabinet-level conservatives.
The result, which Nixon labeled "a new family-assistance system" (see box opposite), is an intriguing mixture of features aimed to please different constituencies. Liberals support the idea of a federal standard for welfare and while some find the level of payments proposed by Nixon inadequate, they are happy to have the principle of federal standards established. New York Mayor John Lindsay called the Nixon proposal Washington's "most important step forward in this field in a generation." To appease conservatives, Republican Nixon spoke of "investment," of "startup costs" to get the engine of social rehabilitation going, of work as "part of the American character." He was almost apologetic about the need to spend more federal funds initially. Failure to act, he said, would be more expensive in the long run in both human and economic terms. He underscored the decentralizing features of his plan. His welfare and revenue-sharing proposals, Nixon said, "represent the first major reversal of the trend toward ever more centralization of government in Washington." Initial congressional reaction was mainly favorable, but there is little chance of action on the Nixon program before next year. Again, Wilbur Mills poses a problem. He opposes revenue-sharing.