Jimmy Carter vs. Inflation

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discipline to enact even the modest spending cuts that the President proposes. On the other hand, there is the serious question of whether the President himself will have the discipline to resist the inevitable demands that he make this and that exception. "Discipline," of course, is a word that is most easily applied to other people. The Administration sought to win advance approval for its plan by consulting groups of Representatives and Senators from both parties, but the heaviest burden naturally fell on Carter's fellow Democrats, who control Congress. Meetings with them went on daily for the better part of two weeks.

There were strains on both sides.

Some Senators and Congressmen grumbled that Administration officials, principally Treasury Secretary Miller, Chief Economic Adviser Charles Schultze, and Budget Director James Mclntyre, sought their ideas on what programs to cut rather than venturing proposals of their own. Administration officials, on the other hand, complained that Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd of West Virginia brought ever more Democratic Senators into the meetings, so that budgeteers had to go over the same ground again and again for the benefit of the newcomers.

Byrd, however, ran the meetings with a firm hand. At one point, when a group of Democratic Congressmen were meeting with Miller, the Treasury Secretary was summoned for a consultation with Carter. Byrd politely insisted that Miller would have to conclude his talk with the Congressmen first, and Miller eventually sent word to Carter that the President would just have to wait. Said Connecticut Representative Robert Giaimo admiringly: "Byrd taught me how to wield a gavel."

By midweek the Democrats had agreed on $11 billion in potential budget cuts, and there they got stuck. Liberals began arguing for tax increases—a surcharge on corporate profits, for example—to make up the remainder of the budget gap, but they were overruled. Byrd argued implacably that defense spending should be held to the 3% increase, adjusted for inflation, that would meet commitments to NATO. He won his point, but only over the strenuous objections of congressional hawks.

Conferences with the Republicans, as might be expected, were even more tense. The Republicans insisted again and again that they would not commit themselves to any budget cuts until they saw what the Democrats would agree to. At one session with Carter himself, New York Representative Jack Kemp asked twice that the President specify exactly which programs he proposed to slash and by how much; Carter politely replied that he was seeking the Republicans' ideas. When Kemp asked yet a third time, Senate Minority Leader Howard Baker somewhat testily remarked: "Look, Jack, the President told you twice he's not going to tell you." Only then did Kemp give up.

The presidential plan that finally emerged has congressional agreement only in principle. Given the national fear about inflation, says Giaimo, no Congressman or Senator wants to run for re-election as a proponent of a deficit budget. But veteran observers believe the quarrel over just which programs to cut could rival in bitterness the three-year battle over Carter's energy program. Says Democratic Representative David Obey of Wisconsin: "Everybody wants to cut Ol' Charlie's program. And nobody wants to be