House Speaker Tip O’Neill is cross with Jimmy Carter for making the instant voting registration bill “top priority legislation.” The bill has been temporarily withdrawn by the House leadership because, says O’Neill candidly, “we don’t have the votes.” O’Neill is also urging the President not to overload the congressional circuits by trying to get four years’ work done in one. . . . One reason the instant registration bill is having trouble is that congressmen are hearing from local registration officials that they don’t like it, as don’t the people in general. The latest Gallup shows Americans oppose it 55 to 40 per cent. . . . Some Carter programs being sharply criticized. Common Cause doesn’t like his suggested Hatch Act reforms. . . . Rep. Al Ullman, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, hates his Social Security program. “It violates the general principle of having a contributor system.” . . . President Richard Lesher of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce likes Carter’s energy program not at all. Testifying before the Ullman committee, Lesher said the energy program should be scrapped in favor of an end to price controls on oil and new natural gas, less regulation, and more leasing of federal lands for energy production. . . . But Carter has got a clap on the back from Hubert Humphrey, who thinks the President’s gotten a “bad rap” from George McGovern and the ADA-type liberals. As for fiscal restraint, says Humphrey, “it’s about time.” . . . George Will, incidentally, describes the ADA as “a ginger group of liberals who cultivate disappointment by opposing the nomination of, then laboring for the election of, then lamenting the shortcomings of, Democratic Presidents.”
The Administration just did manage to force through a $100-million authorization for use in Mozambique, Angola (when diplomatic relations are restored), Tanzania, and Zambia to help, the Administration says, enlist the aid of those countries in a peaceful transition to black rule in Rhodesia. Reps. Richard Ichord (D., Mo.) and Bob Bauman (R., Md.) led the fight against the African funding (it passed by 208 to 204), with Ichord commenting, “Are we willing to risk the consequences and have the blood of black and white Rhodesians on our hands?” . . . Meanwhile, refugees returning to Portugal report as many as 100,000 Mozambiquans (most of them black or mulatto) in re-education camps. They say that most skilled jobs in Mozambique are being handled by Bulgarian, Cuban, Chinese, and North Korean technicians. . . . The first fifty of an estimated four to five hundred Cuban military men were flown into Ethiopia last week, presumably to train Col. Mengistu’s “peasant army” in the use of Soviet tanks and arms that are now arriving in Ethiopia by the cargo-plane-load. This move brings Castro for the first time in conflict with the moderate Arab regimes in northern Africa. … In neighboring Somalia, President Barre, alarmed by the Soviet arms, says further shipments could affect Somalia’s currently cordial relations with Moscow.
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