European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - September 5, 1978, Darmstadt, Hesse                                P�9e 2 the stars and stripes Tom Wicker tuesday september 5, 1978 plan shows Senate s contempt for taxpayers just before leaving for its summer recess actually a campaigning breathe House of representatives in a rare show of Independence and common sense refused by 245 to 153 to approve another $54 million for the Senate s grandiose third of fice building now under construction on Constitution Avenue. The common sense was As Plain As the Independence was unusual. The latest senatorial monstrosity was projected to Cost $47.9 million when it was conceived in someone s Coleridge like dream in 1972 by the time the House Rose up in unprecedented Wrath to smite the spendthrift of the other body $85 million had been appropriated $16 million spent and a 9-Story steel Skeleton erected about the right size to House another famous Gas bag the Good year Blimp. The Senate itself casting uneasy glances Over its shoulder at the taxpayers has put a limit of $135 million on its latest erection. To some realists this hedge smacks of the National debt ceiling they predict that something like $200 million will yet go Down the drains of the More than 100 private senatorial bathrooms projected for the new Xanadu. The Senate might Well Ponder the fact that Only in the most extreme Circum stances would the House which Seldom hesitates to indulge itself at taxpayers expense interfere with anybody s assumed congressional prerogatives. But Don t count on the Senate reacting sensibly time Magazine reports that majority Leader Robert Byrd has already delivered an ultimatum couching it in an awesome series of the kind of cliches indigenous to congressional oratory when we get into the business of tit for Tat it could go from bad to  Don t count on the House standing fast either. Suppose the Senate retaliated by re George will reasoning behind Carrier veto president Carter was believable when he said that none of his advisers favored building the Large nuclear aircraft Carrier authorization for which he has vetoed. So narrow is the Range of views rep resented among the advisers who matter it is believable that not one favors the car Rier that Congress favors. The Navy generally and carriers especially have often generated ideological opposition. Thomas Jefferson in weighed against the ruinous Folly of a Navy and there always Are americans who regard a Blue water Navy As an incitement to american mischief. The Carter administration s special savor derives in part from people whose suspicion of american Power translates into dislike of carriers As symbols of the provocative Forward deployment of . Power and As impediments to a policy of Retreat and retrenchment. This suspicion dovetails with another recurring theme of american history interservice rivalry. This dovetailing is illustrated by the fact that the Only senators on the armed services committee who opposed the Carrier were John Culver d Lowa a Mcgover Nite and Barry Goldwa Ter maj. Gen., . Air Force re who is old and fierce enough to remember and continue the air Force s rivalry with the Navy. In 1945 there were 102 carriers and for a while carriers handled the main strike Force targeted against the soviets. The air Force wanted that Mission and won it wit the help of president Truman s Secretary of defense Louis Johnson who Cut the Navy to seven carriers and provoked the admirals  today arguments couched in the Lan Guage of National retrenchment and re treat will not persuade the Public. It Al ready is uneasy about administration opposition to development of the by bomber and deployment of Neutron weapons and is convinced that interservice rivalry often injures the National interest. Perhaps that is Why Carter falsely implied that sen. Henry m. Jackson d wash., did not object to the veto. Next Carter artfully manipulated numbers to suggest falsely that the Bill he vetoed makes serious cuts in other defense pro Grams in order to finance the Carrier. Others have elaborated an argument against big carriers generally. That argument that carriers Are of declining significance and Large carriers Are unacceptably vulnerable is in part the retrenchment and interservice rivalry arguments carried on by other Means. Exhaustive studies demonstrate that Large carriers Are More survivable than the smaller carriers the administration favors and that because of new defense technologies Large carriers will become even More capable of fighting in areas of High est soviet capability. The Utility of carriers was underscored when the United states lost All korean bases in the first five Days of that War. And Henry Kissinger says in the crises in which i was involved the use of naval Power particularly Carrier Power turned out to be almost invariably the crucial ele ment. As the number of bases around the world is diminishing the capacity to move our Power quickly and without political inhibitions to signal our determination is most frequently represented by  some Mcgover Nite opponents of carriers find such a Mission for carriers inherently repugnant. And some representatives of rival services favor a diminished Navy. Each time the administration opposes a major defense undertaking it advances a different technical argument. But the arguments have a common consequence guaranteeing that whoever is president in 1988 will be less favourably equipped than Carter is with military options for counter ing the soviets. And the different arguments Are so compatible with a single Ideo logy of retrenchment that they seem at least in part like rationalizations designed to hide the ideology from an unsympathetic Public. C the Washington Post fusing to vote funds for some of those Sweet election Perks with which House members have virtually built themselves into their seats the same privileges like Mobile office Campaign vans for each congressional District at taxpayers expense mean less to senators who Only have to run for office every six years and Campaign mostly on television anyway. Come to think of it maybe the business of tit for Tat would be a break for the tax payers and would t it be better for All if members of Congress had to pay $4 for a haircut and wait on elevators like the res of us but Back to Xanadu. Since there now Are 100 senators and Only two Mammoth office buildings for them the elephantine new one naturally will have suites for 50 Sena tors each with two of the aforementioned private Johns. This will leave one As Sumes 25 senators for each of the other two buildings just one of which for years was sufficient for All 96 senators then numbered in the world s greatest deliberative body. Apologists for this doubling which is what it amounts to of the senatorial parameters say the new building is Neces sary because the Senate staff has tripled since the Everett Dirksen building an overblown rambler like the late wizard of ooze himself was completed in the fifties under the opulent Aegis of majority Leader Lyndon b. Johnson. This rationale like most of Washington has surface plausibility concealing a hol Low Interior. Was a tripling of the Senate staff needed was it authorized by any general consensus of the american people who Are fondly described in most political speechifying As fed up with bureaucracy even if the answer to the first question is yes and to the second at least by in Ference Are the 16-foot ceilings $1.5 Mil lion teak and Cherry Wood panelling and the special to Anchorman Booths in the hear ing rooms designed for staff who is going to use the new gymnasium which is reputedly twice the size of the gyms already provided in each of the other two sobs Bob Byrd s Secretary the rooftop Tennis court and the rooftop restaurant hardly seem necessary results of staff expansion. And if it s argued that the government ought to build palaces rather than plastic tenements it should be replied that the Capitol the White House and the Cabinet buildings Are enough sen ate staff could get along with lower cos quarters. On the other hand the planned atrium with an Alexander Calder sculpture May show some Advance in congressional Cul Ture which used to be typified by Virginia rep. Howard Smith s description of what he wanted for a Theodore Roosevelt me Morial a statue of a Man carrying a  on the whole however the new Senate pleasure dome is a dubious Honor for the senator after whom it is to be named the late Philip Hart of Michigan a simple and unpretentious Man of unusual moral Force who might now from heaven be reflecting ironically on those caverns measureless to Man through which Coleridge s Kubla heard ancestral voices prophesying War perhaps More to the Point in the Era of much hypocrisy about proposition 13, bloated government and the will of the peo ple the Senate is Here showing its True con tempt for taxpayers Public Thrift and re publican virtue not to mention pious Republican pledges of a 30 percent tax Cut. The House s uncharacteristic demurrer notwithstanding and it probably won t we seem to be seeing As Herb lock put it in a recent cartoon More and More of government of Congress by Congress and  c new York times the opinions expressed in the columns and cartoons on this Page represent those of the authors and Are in no Way to be considered As representing the views of the stars and stripes or the United states government