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Still more changes are necessary, however, if the Congress is to achieve coequality with the Executive Branch. Some proposed by last week's speakers sounded relatively simple. "Congress," said Scott, "spends too much time reading the minutes and squandering the hours. It needs the aid of computers and experts to operate them. In many ways we are still marching to the measured beat of another century's drums."
Ultimately, some speakers agreed reluctantly that Congress could not regain power until it demonstrated a greater sense of responsibility. Illinois
Congressman Anderson stressed a recurring criticism that the Legislative Branch still acted too often as a collection of regional blocs. "It is the failure of the Congress to develop a rational approach to the budgetary process that has produced this crisis," he said. Rollings added: "The issue is whether the Congress itself will get off its duff and do its job. The President has posed the issue after we both, on a four-year binge, have expended some $100 billion more than we brought in. We are equally guilty."
Whether or not Congress recovers power also depends in a sense upon the conduct of Congressmen and Senators as individuals. Said Illinois Senator Stevenson: "We must not only have men in the Congress—and in all our institutions of government—of the highest character, integrity, ability, but we must also emancipate them from the pull and haul of special interests. And that, I think, means an end to large campaign contributions, which now are quite capable of buying influence in the Executive and Legislative branches."
Even without new reforms, suggested Rollings, Congress already has the capacity to do all these things. "There is no education in the second kick of a mule," he said. "All we need is to have the House set the limit, and the Senate will follow that discipline, and then we can call the President into line. I have seen that power exercised by the House. I have seen it exercised within the Senate. In the words of Walt Kelly's Pogo, 'We met the enemy and it is us.' "