Carter to slow pace of reform

Press, 29 October 1977, Page 11

Carter to slow pace of reform

NZPA Washington President Carter signalled a change in his Presidency yesterday by declaring that rhe legislative activism of his first year in office would be followed by a period of consolidation, the New York Tinies News Service has reported.

Mr Carter told a news conference that he probably would make few, if any, new important legislative proposals in the next two years in order to give Congress, business. and the public a breathing spell from what he described as a “multiplicity" of complex new programmes. The President has been the target of a wide variety i of criticism recently — thr.cl he has jammed the law-1 making machinery of Con- 1 gress, that he has created, economic uncertainty, and: even, as a questioner at his eighteenth news conference put it yesterday, that “you have not been able to cope" with the Presidency. Patiently and in a subdued

tone, he dealt with the questions. He had been right, he said, to act on a wide range of controversial and difficult questions that had been either ignored or evaded too long. But Mr Carter seemed more conciliatory than combative toward his critics, and he said the pace and volume of his political initiatives would be noticeably more moderate in the coming two years. Commenting on suggestions that he had been “inept,” the President said unemotionally, “I remember in this room last May someone asked me if my Administration was all I image and no substance: or style and no substance. Lately the criticisms have Ibeen that there is too much Lsubstance and not enough stvle.”

In a move that showed he was by no means innocent of political reality and of the need for careful timing, he said that his much heralded “tax reform” bill would be held back until a

nearly exhausted Congress dealt'with his energy policy proposals and with new funding for the depleted social security system. Mr Carter was deliberately vague about whether the tax reform package would come at the end of this Congressional session or early next year, but said it would definitely come.

Then, he clearly indicated, I the country will- be given a sort of breathing spell. “I was thinking the other day,” he said softly, “about what new major innovative proposals might be forthcoming to next year and the year after. 1 can’t think of any. I think we have addressed all of the major problems already ... I think most of the major debates now have already been initiated.” This was not quite as simple as . the . President made it sound. One of his top White House assistants said later that, Mr Carter would probably try to introduce into Congress some

time in the next two years national health insurance legislation and a comprehensive “urban policy,” since they are commitments aiready made bv the President.

Nonetheless, his words may be a relief to critics such as Mr Arthur Burns, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, who on Wednesday criticised Mr Carter’s economic policies and sai<- he strongly suspected “the ability of businessmen to assimilate new policy proposals into their planning framework has now been stretched pretty thin.”

Three different times in the half-hour news conference Mr Carter said that his tax-reform programme would be aimed in part at promoting capital formation and encouraging capital investment, something the reserve board chairman had urged. He also acknowledged that he had recently sat down to la long discussion over lunch

with his wife, and with his personal poll taker, Mr Patrick Caddell, and Mr Jerry Rafshoon, the advertising agency executive who devised his campaign television advertisements. The talk was about what the polls show and to discuss the mood of the country. Although his approval rating had dropped in polls the numbers were “fairly good,” Mr Carter said, “the way I look at them.

“There is a general feeling in this country of optimism about the future,” Mr Carter said. At the same time he said that the political professionals at the White House luncheon had been agreed that “there is a concern about the multiplicity of programmes that we are addressing at this point, and the fact the American people cannot understand all that many proposals at one time.”

So, Mr Carter made clear, the next couple of years will be, a quieter time for the country and for him.