Reagan's policies stalled

For several weeks now I've been talking about various things, terrorism, the (place) of the army in American life today, the gorgeous spring we've been revelling in. I've not talked about Mr Reagan and Washington for the reason that Congress and Mr Reagan's critics have been easy on him in admiration of his plucky convalescence after the attempt on his life.

Last Wednesday, however, for the first time, he worked a full, normal, presidential day. Now I think it's fair enough to say how the administration is doing.

In foreign policy, on which the president has the main say in the foreign policy of any new administration, the shape and bias soon appear or ought to but if you tap the president's advisers, you'll find they're still saying that, 'We are in the process of reviewing our options' – that's in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, in the Middle East – and this is seven months after the election, in the glow of which the president's foreign policy team promised to 'hit the ground running'.

On the domestic front, the president is fighting to fulfil what we all took to be gaudy campaign promises subject to drastic revision in the light of the facts of life. You have to say for him, though, that he has been gutsy, if nothing else, about his determination not to budge on cutting income taxes by ten per cent this year, ten next and ten the year after. He's finally had to budge.

When the Democrats looked at this tax proposal, they found that it would give some relief to the middle class, a hefty break to the rich, even those living on unearned income and a scrap of bread for the poor. It was an issue made for the Democrats who, for 50 years, have called themselves, in this order, the party of social conscience, the party of the little man, the party of the great society and, now, the party of compassion.

But, the Democrats are in worse shape than they've been since 1932. As the party with a once-vast popular following, as the party with the political strength in Congress, the loss of all their committee chairmanships in the Senate has been a devastating blow to their morale. As a party, for the first time, without a national leader. Traditionally, it ought to have been Jimmy Carter but never a peep has been heard out of him and there are people who, if they ever recall him, wonder if he's still in the country.

Not to mention the fact that the Democrats could always count on the big national labour unions. The last November, organised labour didn't vote the way its organisers commanded it to, and the Teamsters, the huge national force of lorry drivers, which carries most of the goods between the states and could paralyse the economy with a show of hands in any strike vote, the Teamsters have just elected, as their new president, a man who is awaiting trial on charges of bribery and conspiracy. This is not a local case. The plaintiff is non other than the federal government, the Department of Justice. The Senate has investigated this man and described him as 'an organised crime mole' – a lackey or powerful associate of the Mafia. To reward his services to the union, the Teamsters have just raised his annual salary from $150,000 to 180,000.

The Teamsters was one of only two of the big unions to endorse Mr Reagan for president and President Reagan – true to the symbol of his party, which is an elephant – has never forgotten. Sure enough, the very evening that the Teamsters were assembled in convention to honour their indicted president in their favourite stamping ground of Las Vegas, the president sent them a video tape which was played to great applause. He declared his admiration of the union which has a horrendous record of corruption and said he wanted to 'team with the Teamsters' to help them get the economy going.

The president is also having a rough time with Senate committees over his appointment of a man in charge of the environment who has close links with the timber industry and with an assistant secretary on human rights who has connections with the corporation that promotes the sales of baby formulas in poor countries.

What I'm trying to say, with a random array of examples, is that Mr Reagan's solid, simple belief in what is called 'free enterprise at all costs' is setting up a series of situations in which some gifted demagogue or even an opposing statesman might well begin to convince the people that the president is, indeed, fighting for a programme which will soak the poor and enrich the rich. Such a statesman is nowhere in sight but it's an interesting thought, which has not yet burst into print, that the one man in the Democratic party who has not changed his tune since last summer's campaign, who has stayed with all his old party convictions and who is yet lying low is Senator Edward Kennedy.

We are, as I say, in a period of watching and waiting to see who will eventually get the sub-Cabinet jobs the Senate committees are concerned about, what part of Mr Reagan's dogged tax programmes, his union reform programmes, his environmental programmes, his social security programme – the lot – what parts of them are going to pass a Congress which, just now, is in the hands or under the leadership of right-wing Republicans and conservative Democrats.

In other words, there's nothing much to review by way of legislation. Only to talk about trends and portents and many misgivings about the president's appointments. I abandoned the idea of going into the arguments for and against the president's tax proposals, which is the present big fight on Capitol Hill, the moment we heard the news about the protest rally in Trafalgar Square of a hundred thousand people demanding jobs.

I don't know if the president's advisers have time off in which to ponder that grave bit of news or guess that it might be a cautionary omen because, as I brought up, when Mrs Thatcher came to Washington, Mr Reagan came in, certainly with the country well behind him, on a programme of economic recovery which looked like a bright carbon copy of Mrs Thatcher's own. The main theory, the main gamble, as it's come down to the people anyway, is simple.

It's this: if you cut taxes so as to give middle-class people an extra $500 a year, they won't rush off and buy a new television set or blow it on a 21st birthday party for their daughter, they'll go off and put it in a savings bank and if you cut a corporation's taxes by a million dollars, it will use that money to build new factories and make more jobs. 'Reinvestment' is the magic word and obviously, since Congress is still wrangling about how much of Mr Reagan's programme to allow him, we're a long way from knowing if it's going to work.

In fact we shall have to wait much longer than Britain because of one of the simple, huge differences between parliamentary government and the federal system with its strict division of powers between the presidency, the Congress and the Supreme Court. Whereas a prime minister wins an election, moves in with a majority in parliament and begins at once to enact the election campaign promises, in the American system, the president wins, there are fireworks and glittering balls and the promise of a new age and, for a day or week or two, the headlines blare like trumpets summoning us to battle – 'President will abolish legal aid for poor', 'President to increase defense budget', 'President to do this and that' – there really ought to be a rule for the consumption, at any rate, of the overseas press which says, 'Never print "President will do this or that", say "The president hopes for this and the president would like to do that" ... '.

As a quick example, I seem to recall that Mrs Thatcher promised to cut the maximum cut bite on earned income from 82 per cent to 50 per cent. She was no sooner in, if I remember correctly, than it was done. Now if she'd been an American president, she'd have sent such a bill to parliament, two or three committees would have looked into it and called witnesses for and against. The Labourites on the committee would have resisted and argued, one or two of them might have gone over grudgingly, the most relevant committee, the committee on the budget, say, would have written a compromised bill. It would then go to the floor of the House but the Labour opposition on the left would have none of it. There'd be a long debate. There might even be a filibuster taking the debate beyond its allotted limit and the bill would go back to the budget committee where it would die or go into coma till next year.

Mrs Thatcher, considering her majority, would have got a tax cut in this country but it would have been paired down and modified, say, a reduction to 50 per cent on people earning less than £5,000 and a reduction down to 68 per cent on people earning more than £25,000 a year. Believe me, I don't exaggerate. The budget bill that the president proposed was presented to Congress, which passed a resolution saying it would do something about taxes if the president's bill also did something about spending. Congress specified roughly where spending should be cut. Then, the appropriate finance committees of the Senate and the House called hearings. Then they wrangle and vote on the president's bill, they cut this, they allow that. In the end, they pass their compromise bill on to the authorisation committee of the House and, after similar arguments and discussion, that committee authorises that a lump sum shall be cut, maybe more, maybe less than the president wanted. When that's agreed on, the whole thing goes to the fatal, the vital House Appropriations Committee. It says where and when the money shall be spent, who gets how much for what.

Nobody today expects the president to wind up with a ten per cent income tax cut in the first year and it's already clear that he hasn't a hope of drastically, or maybe even mildly, cutting the social security services about which there's been a firestorm of protest from the poor and the old and the blacks and the sick. So, it will be a long time before we know whether Mr Reagan's daring programme will reduce inflation, invigorate the economy, reduce unemployment.

A thoughtful old Democrat, watching the way things are going, with a vast increase in the defence budget and heavy cuts in services to the poor and the students and the Vietnam veterans, reflected, the other night, 'If 100,000 unemployed ever take to the streets in Washington, it won't be a peaceful rally'.

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

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