Washington By CHARLES J. ABBOTT

Pulling together for Illinois

SOME years ago, I was watching a tractor pull at a county fair in northwestern Illinois when one of the entries abruptly stalled, the victim of a shredded transmission. Tractor pulls were still a novelty then, and the general consensus was that the owner of the tractor was doing well if he had managed, starting with the installation of a more powerful engine, to work his problems back to the transmission, After strengthening the transmission, folks figured, the axle would be the next item to shatter. The owner, of course, had not started with the purpose of gradually replacing the drive train. The mechanical problems were an unintended consequence of trying to boost the power of the tractor. Some of those same unintended consequences, the unplanned side effects, show up in the efforts of Illinois congressmen to work on the projects for the entire state. Sen. Alan J. Dixon (D-Belleville) was a leader in organizing regular meetings of the Illinois congressional delegation to work on projects that will benefit the state. It is a contrast, for example, with the senators from New York, who recently feuded about who "stole" bills from the other. "I think it's clear that we're doing good work. We make an impression," Dixon said of the delegation projects. There is a good-sized list of the projects, among them the "Illinois plan" on natural gas prices, the concerted push to assure the Valley City bridge will qualify for highway funds, the effort to get a Chicago manufacturer a fair break on military contracts, the initiatives for expanding the work at the Joliet Army Ammunition Plant to ease unemployment, the rallying behind the Argonne National Laboratory in a competition for a $100 million particle accelerator and the attempts to find a new use for the Galesburg and Manteno mental health centers that are being closed by the state.

The congressmen also are promoting passage of a bill to create two new pieces of national parkland in Illinois. It snagged in the Senate, where the administration made clear its opposition to an extension of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial National Historic Site, the home of the soaring Gateway Arch in St. Louis, across the river to East St. Louis. The Interior Department considers the expansion to be an economic revitalization project that is not justified on historic grounds. U.S. Rep. Mel Price (D-21, East St. Louis) backs the expansion of the Jefferson site, pointing out that it would complete the original plan of a park on both banks of the Mississippi River. There was wide support for the other half of the bill, to establish a "national heritage corridor" along the old Illinois & Michigan Canal from Chicago to LaSalle-Peru.

The ideas started as separate bills, but were combined by the House Interior Committee. The House later grafted its language onto the Senate bill dealing with the canal corridor, a maneuver that deprived the Senate of the usual procedure of holding hearings to examine a project. That created some problems about protocol.

Delegation cooperation has its advantages. Even during the Republican primary, one staff member said, there was a line of communication about the parks bill between the offices of Sen. Charles H. Percy (R-Wilmette) and his primary opponent, U.S. Rep. Tom Corcoran (R-14, Ottawa).

As another observer phrased it, the delegation projects help set "an atmosphere of bipartisan" behavior. "The word gets around that this is one delegation that on selected topics can work together," he said. One example is the Joliet plant. The secretary of the Army came to a delegation luncheon to listen to arguments about more manufacturing at the site; he later toured the facility. That is a level of attention much higher than is given to most congressional requests.

"I do honestly believe that the competition between members of the delegation has been substantially reduced," Dixon said when asked if there were efforts to upstage each other in claiming credit for successes, "and [there is] a more harmonious feeling to work for the common good."

One example that illustrates the situation came at the close of the Corcoran-Percy primary. The House passed its parks bill the day after the Senate approved its version. Corcoran claimed that showed Percy's "ineffectiveness" and linked it to the unsuccessful pursuit of the accelerator. U.S. Rep. John Erlenborn (R-13, Elmhurst) quickly replied, noting he and Percy had been co-chairs of a delegation effort to get the project. "You will recall that I talked personally to you last summer, telling you how Chuck had knocked himself out on behalf of Argonne," Erlenborn said in a letter to Corcoran. "Yet, despite your position on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, you made very little effort, if any, to join our cause." Erlenborn said in an interview that he had warned Corcoran against raising the accelerator as an issue: "I called Tom at that time and said, 'You know Chuck and I were co-chairs. If you're criticizing Chuck, you're criticizing me.' "

There is yet another side to the unity. While it means congressmen work together, it also means some issues are taken completely out of contention and discussion. That can be a blessing, at least for incumbents, because the praise — or blame — has to be distributed evenly. But it also can make it more difficult to keep track of divergent views on a particular item.

Illinois' delegation, at work on its projects in Congress, is sometimes like an entry in an old-fashioned tractor pull. Every part of the tractor has to mesh with perfect timing to achieve the power needed to pull that weight and win.

June 1984/Iltinois Issues/47