Vote, you guys - Congressional pay raise

THE PROPOSED CLOSING of 91 military bases, recommended by the Pentagon commission, is probably a worthy reform. Too many "defense" projects are really local pork-barrel items, like federally funded dams and highways. True, the estimated savings of $693 million per year falls short of what Everett Dirksen defined as reat money. But it's a good idea in principle.

What's a little less encouraging about this proposal is that it's one more instance of Congress delegating its hard decisions to others. Constitutionally or not, the Gramm-Rudman Act turned Congress's spending authority over to the executive branch. And now, bashful about voting itself a pay raise directly, it has created yet another commission, to schedule raises for all federal officials (including congressmen, just by the way) subject to the President's approval. Congress won't have to vote on this one.

Again, the substance of the measure is highly defensible. Public officials should be paid salaries competitive with what they could earn in the private sector. But appropriating .money is a congressional prerogative, and therefore a congressional duty. By ducking the responsibility, Congress is following a baleful pattern.

Except in the field of foreign policy, where it has tried to muscle in on presidential authority, Congress has shown a decided preference for passing the buck. Many of its powers are routinely delegated to the administrative law of the bureaucracies, which, being less accountable, are less reluctant to exercise them. And Congress has allowed the federal courts to usurp the legislative power on such red-hot social issues as school prayer and abortion, on the flimsy pretext that the courts are merely "interpreting" the Constitution, not rewriting it; by this means the liberal agenda gets enacted without the need for legislative vote or political accountability.

It's one thing to get the government off our backs. It's another thing for our elected representatives to get self-government off their own backs. The buck may stop in the Oval Office, but it should at least pass through the two Houses of Congress.

COPYRIGHT 1989 National Review, Inc.
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