The Anderson Record

John Anderson claims to have more ideas than the other candidates, and there is a certain perverse justice to this claim. As one commentator has pointed out, Anderson has been on both sides of most issues, and can thus be said to have at least twice as many ideas as most candidates. But such fence-straddling has left a huge gap between Anderson’s image and the reality of his record.

Anderson says he wants to balance the budget. Yet he is strongly opposed to a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution of the sort proposed by the National Taxpayers Union. And when pressed recently to define how he would balance the budget in the absence of drastic tax increases (his 50¢ per gallon gasoline tax is supposed to be offset by an equal reduction in Social Security taxes), Anderson came up with a list of spending cuts which totalled only $11 billion—not enough to balance the budget. Then, within hours, he began to backtrack on some of his proposed cuts. Moreover, though Anderson often brags of his involvement in developing the 1974 legislation which was to “reform” the Congressional budget process by promoting economies and efficiency in government, the fact is that the federal budget has more than doubled over the five years since passage of that legislation. Anderson has said that he is “essentially a believer in the market system,” yet he has chosen as his main economic advisor Felix Rohatyn, a senior executive of the New York investment banking firm of Lazard Freres, and the man who heads New York City’s Municipal Assistance Corporation, the agency responsible for managing the “bailout” of New York City with federal funds. Rohatyn is a prominent advocate of national economic planning, protectionism, wage and price controls, and gasoline rationing. Perhaps as a result of Rohatyn’s influence, Anderson is now calling for presidential power to impose gasoline rationing, has advocated a “temporary wage-price freeze” a la Richard Nixon, and has also, according to the New York Times, “informally suggested a tax surcharge for large corporations of 3 to 4 percent of profits if they grant wage gains above the Federal

rise and fall to and from the graces of the national media. Hadn’t he tried to “lower our expectations” and sell us on the necessity of “sacrifice” just like Representative Anderson? Hadn’t he even taken to tooling about in a 1974 Plymouth? Why has he fallen from the status of a guru to the status of a flake? Jerry’s quandary is understandable. He really did try to lower our expectations. But when he stuck his toe into the Sea of Jarvis and performed his much publicized Prop 13 flipflop off the high board, and when he followed that with his Balanced Budget flying somersault, he got his leg bit off by Jaws IV, the Fourth Estate. He did his famous turnaround and began pushing Jarvis’s tax-revolt on the ground that government and its courtiers should lower their expectations too. But to the media, that was all wrong. “Sacrifice” and “lowered expectations” were the name of the game all right, but only for the taxpayers. How could government sacrifice and still be well enough funded to be able to plan adequately to solve all our social problems? As New West’s Phil Tracy has pointed out, “Anderson’s strongest appeal is to people who think of themselves as smart, who would like to believe that our bungling in Iran, like our failing economy, is mostly the result of poor planning.” And needless to say, our journalists and media people are prominent among those who, in Tracy’s sense, “think of themselves as smart.” Anderson understands all this as Jerry Brown never did. He constantly stresses the need for creative thinking about our problems (journalists love to think of themselves as “creative”), and he is careful to make it clear that the sacrifices he guidelines.” Since these guidelines do not permit increases even large enough to match the inflation rate, Anderson’s proposal amounts to a forced lowering of the standard of living of millions of Americans —or the imposition of penalties on any corporations that are more generous than Anderson deems proper. Perhaps also as a result of Rohatyn’s influence, Anderson has “begun to speak of ‘developing a program that would specifically seek targeted investment incentives.’ That, he said, could be on the model of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.” (New York Times, 5/11/80) The Reconstruction Finance Corporation was created hastily in the closing days of the Hoover Administration, and was empowered to give hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to government-approved banks and businesses to encourage investment in government-approved areas—which meant, in effect, diverting investment away from consumer goods and services and toward government priorities like “defense” industries. (The RFC was, in fact, modeled on the War Finance Corporation created during World War I.) Such diversion of capital away from consumer needs is, of course, an integral part of “the politics of sacrifice.” Whether by reason of Rohatyn’s influence or not, Anderson’s belief in the free market apparently doesn’t apply to agriculture. Though he has defended the “independence” of farmers from government, he has consistently supported increased government control of agriculture. As his own campaign literature points out, he voted in 1970 to force farmers to cut back their production and in 1973 to force them to increase it again. He has invariably voted to force them to do one thing or another. He has never voted to leave them alone.

Anderson has attacked high prices, and especially high food prices. Yet in 1977 he supported the Omnibus Farm Bill which, according to his campaign literature, “extended farm programs for four years and raised price supports for most commodities,” raising prices for agricultural products in the process. He has also backed the Humphrey-Hawkins bill, which, in effect, mandates continuing inflation (and even higher prices) as a way of financing “full employment.” Anderson claims to support a free market in the crucially important area of energy, too. He supports talks about are to be made by taxpayers. “The genius of this country,” he told Robert Scheer at the outset of a lengthy and revealing Playboy interview, “has been its willingness to accept new ideas.” And what were some of his new ideas? “There aren’t too many around,” he shyly admitted, “and the one that I’ve been harping on is the improbable idea that voting for a tax increase under certain conditions could be good for all of us.”

In a day when government taxes away better than forty percent of our incomes, it is a sign of Mr. Anderson’s awesome courage that he should suggest that a tax increase represents a new idea—though not as sure a sign as it might seem. Like his anti-gun stance in New Hampshire, Anderson’s advocacy of higher taxes for the good of all could only boost his prestige in the eyes of the journalists and media moguls who have made his campaign from the beginning. Such old-line liberals read Anderson’s message quite clearly. That a tax increase would be good for “all of us” is obviously absurd; it might, however, be good for all of us who really count, all of us smart types who know how things ought to be done. But alas, Anderson’s idea for a tax increase (to be achieved by slapping the aforementioned 50 cent per gallon excise on gasoline), though it has proved strategically profitable for him, is no “newer” than any of his other proposals. Like most of them, it is borrowed from Jimmy Carter. Carter called for a gasoline tax increase of up to 50 cents per gallon just two months after sitting down in the Chief’s chair—in April, 1977. And even then the idea was an old one; for years, every the deregulation of oil and natural gas prices, for example. But he also favors a 50¢ per gallon gasoline tax, which would hurt consumers, and Jimmy Carter’s “windfall profits” tax. He proposes, in other words, that we “deregulate” the price of oil, allow it to reach world market levels, and then let government take an average of 70 percent of the expected price increase in new taxes. Such a plan could only give government an incentive to manipulate world events and keep the world price of crude oil rising—thus insuring a steady flow of oil revenue into government coffers. Anderson’s “windfall profits” tax would help to keep oil prices rising, of course, by making domestic production unprofitable and thus reducing world supply. So would his Alaska National Interest Conservation Act, which severely limits drilling rights (not to mention the rights of Alaskans to settle and homestead their own land) in what is potentially one of the prime sources of oil in this country. Anderson’s energy proposals would enrich government, penalize and scapegoat domestic oil producers, increase our reliance on OPEC, impoverish American consumers, reduce the supply of available oil, and (after the addition of a wage-price freeze) lead to petroleum shortages. Once the shortages have been created, Anderson proposes, as has been noted, that we ration what is left. As he puts it in his campaign literature, “we cannot afford the luxury of waiting around for the perfect rationing plan.... Let us not fool the American people into thinking we can somehow postpone this difficult decision until a crisis is on top of us.”

Anderson pretends to oppose nuclear power, saying he supports a “de facto moratorium” on building new nukes. Yet his campaign literature on “Energy” says, “It would be premature to impose a moratorium on existing plant construction. Nuclear fission has a role to play in our energy future.” Anderson has consistently backed extension of the Price-Anderson Act, which limits the liability of nuclear power plants. He has also backed subsidies for fuel enrichment, waste disposal, and research and development. The Village Voice has called him “one of the nuclear industry’s most vocal champions in Congress,” and the League of Conservative Voters, which keeps careful track of such things, says that Anderson has “never voted correctly,” that is, against called for further foolish response in the form of increased military aid to the despotic regime of General Zia of Pakistan. And he has made it clear that he could be counted upon to create crises on his own initiative: he says, for example, that if he had been convinced that the Shah was in need of medical treatment, he “might well have made [the] decision to admit the Shah” into the U.S. (New York Times, 1/21/80). This decision, of course, was the one which set off the hostage crisis. Anderson also opposed the War Powers Act of 1973, which curtailed the power of the President to use American troops abroad without the consent of Congress.

Anderson claims to oppose the draft, but his campaign literature limits that severely: “I am unalterably opposed to the draft during peacetime in the absence of compelling circumstances.” That a man who has changed his mind so many times would call any of his positions “unalterable” is amazing enough; but that aside, what are “compelling circumstances”? Soviet troops in Afghanistan? A civil war in Vietnam? In 1971, Anderson supported Richard Nixon’s call for a two-year extension of the draft, voted against extending authority for the draft for one year instead of two, and opposed repealing authority for conscription altogether.

In the area of civil liberties, there are more contradictions. Anderson bills his as a campaign for “national unity,” yet consistently supports programs which set different groups at each others’ throats. For example, he opposes any government restrictions on abortion, thus backing freedom of choice, but at the same time favors forcing those who are morally opposed to abortion, who even regard it as murder, to pay through their taxes for the abortions of others—thus violating their freedom of choice with respect to what they will and will not support. This is the sort of policymaking which has caused a backlash against the one-sided “freedom of choice” which Anderson supports, fueled the anti-abortion movement, and brought us to the point where reimposition of laws against abortion is a distinct, if repellent, possibility.

Similarly, Anderson supports repeal of laws against homosexuality, which would seem to mean that he supports freedom of association. But he would also impose new laws which deny freedom of association by making it a crime for gays to discriminate against straights, or straights against gays. Under Anderson’s proposals, the owners of a lesbian bar could be forced to hire an anti-lesbian heterosexual male as bartender, just as the owners of a macho country-western bar could be forced to hire a flamboyant gay as its bartender. It is laws which violate people’s freedom of association in such ways that have fueled the backlash against gay people in our society. Far from achieving “national unity,” Anderson’s policies would foment widespread national conflict among groups with different lifestyles.

In the area of education, Anderson has long defended the independence of private schools. Yet he is also a long-time backer of the separate Department of Education, which is busily imposing new rules and regulations on private schools. And he is a firm opponent of tax credits for education, which would allow less affluent parents to send their children to private schools and would promote competition and quality in education.

Perhaps most revealing of all for those who perceive Anderson as “principled,” Anderson has been loudly objecting to the dominance of the Republican and Democratic parties in the American political system. Yet Anderson himself was one of the primary architects of the Federal Election Campaign Act, the law which has made it virtually impossible for any new political party or independent campaign to survive, by shackling third parties with campaign financing restrictions while at the same time offering Republicans and Democrats millions of dollars for their presidential campaigns out of tax revenues. Anderson himself has made use of hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money to gain recognition for his campaign as a Republican. Now that he is an Independent, he is not only challenging the law he worked so hard to put on the books; he is challenging it on the ground that it is unconstitutional. Is this a man of principle?

–Roy A. Childs, Jr.