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This resurgence has continued under Carter, partly because of his inept handling of the first session. To an extent, says Charles Jones, a University of Pittsburgh political scientist who is an expert on Congress, "a shift of power that started because of Nixon's arrogance has continued because of Carter's artlessness." Yet probably no President, however skilled in working with Congress, could have turned back the tide. Observes Arizona Representative Morris Udall, who was one of Carter's rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination: "Any President inaugurated in 1977 was going to face this giant, which had awakened after slumbering for many years."
The giant this year will take on several major issues. The frayed and jangled members of a House-Senate conference committee next week will plunge back into their three-month-old brawl over energy policy, and they are still widely divided over oil taxes and Government regulation of natural gas prices. They hope to reach a compromise by March. That same month the Senate will begin debating the embattled Panama Canal treaty. Another major fight will begin, possibly this summer, after U.S. negotiators initial a SALT II treaty with the Soviet Union to set new limits on both countries' nuclear arsenals. By early spring, the Senate will have received legislation from the House for a tax cut in the neighborhood of $25 billion, as proposed by President Carter.
Because so much of this action will be dominated by the Senate, its dour and aloof majority leader, Robert Carlyle Byrd of West Virginia, 60, will become the most important power broker in Congress. The last session belonged to bluff Speaker Tip O'Neill, who worked closely with the inexperienced President and his aides, patiently teaching them how to get along with the people on Capitol Hill. O'Neill took charge of Administration measures and pushed many of them through the House, including the energy bill, which whipped through with few changes—only to run out of gas in the Senate. According to a survey by Congressional Quarterly, the House and Senate sided with Carter on 75% of the key votes, a better record than Gerald Ford's 54% in 1976 but a 25-year low for a President whose party also controls Congress.
This year much of what Carter gets from Congress will be largely due to Byrd, a night-school lawyer who is a first-rate legislative technician. His job is to act as the Senate's traffic cop, controlling the flow of legislation and debate. A master of the Senate's rules and precedents, Byrd hustles through an endless round of meetings with committee chairmen, powerful Senate barons and rebellious mavericks, trying to head off trouble. He pleads with recalcitrant Senators for support, does favors to pacify them, like scheduling their pet bills, or tries to put off action on controversial legislation until antagonists compromise on their own. During last year's session, Byrd's first as majority leader, he ran the chamber with a firm and sure hand that had not been seen since the days when Lyndon Johnson was majority leader.