TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/83/83capts.2

Text File | 1992-09-25 | 30KB | 580 lines

                                                                                April 25, l983

NATION

Champion of the Elderly


At 82, Claude Pepper is at the peak of his career


"There are only two Democrats who really bug Reagan," says a
presidential aide. "One is Tip O'Neill, and the other is that
Congressman who keeps talking about Social Security."

That Congressman watches the world through trifocals. He wears
a pacemaker in his chest to quicken his heartbeat when it slows.
One of his heart valves is synthetic; it replaced the natural
one that developed a calcium deposit. He is nearly deaf without
his hearing aids. A bulbous nose dominates his rumpled face,
which looks forever melancholy even when its owner is not. He
is 82 years old.

But Claude Denson Pepper is like a vintage automobile with new
parts: He gets better and more powerful with age. By an odd
convergence of historical trends, Pepper's unshakable of New
Deal liberalism is in phase with the graying of America, even
at a time when conservatism marches forcefully through
Washington's corridors of power. Some 36 million Social
Security recipients, and millions more who are nearing
retirement, count on Claude Pepper to protect their rights and
well- being. And Pepper has doggedly done so.

That should be especially evident this week; President Reagan
is scheduled to sign a historic package of Social Security
reforms designed to save the system from insolvency. The
undisputed champion of the elderly, Pepper has held the fate of
the delicately balanced compromise in his hands. He had fought
against all cuts in benefits, gave ground only grudgingly when
concessions had to be made to keep the legislative alive, and
responsibly withheld the veto many of his more zealous followers
had wanted him to wield. Says Pepper, accurately and with no
false modesty:  "If I had not voted for it, then there would not
have been a package, and there would have been complete chaos."

After 14 years as a U.S. Senator from Florida and 20 years as
a Congressman from the Miami area, Pepper is at the peak of his
astonishingly tireless and durable career. He demonstrated his
political punch in the 1982 congressional elections, stumping
with surprising energy in 26 states. Of the 73 House Democrats
he supported, 54 won. The difference he made varied, of course,
from race to race. But his presence never hurt. "Claude was
the sought- after speaker by Democratic candidates in 982,"
recalls House Majority Leader Jim Wright. "At one rally for
elderly people, we expected 200, but 800 showed up and waited
for an hour and a quarter to hear him."  Adds California
Congressman Tony Coelho, Democratic congressional campaign
committee chairman:  "No single person had more of an impact on
the 1982 elections. His mug was all over this country--on
posters, on banners, on TV and billboards. He was a symbol to
the elderly and the helpless."

While Pepper's critics contend that he exploited the
Administration's hastily prepared and ruefully withdrawn initial
proposals for cutting Social Security benefits, he is liked and
respected by House colleagues of both parties. Last January he
became chairman of the House Rules Committee, which can
determine not only the timing of legislation but sometimes
whether a bill comes to a vote at all. He reluctantly
relinquished his chairmanship of the House Select Committee on
Aging. "It was wrenching," he says. "Like choosing between a
brother and a sister."

"His very person debunks the myths about aging," says Jack
Ossofsky of the National Council on the Aging. "Concern about
the elderly, the poor and the frail has characterized his entire
career."

He intends to do more. A bill sponsored by Pepper and passed
1978 eliminated any mandatory retirement age for most federal
employees and raised it from 65 to 70 for workers in private
industry. He has a new bill in the House hopper to remove any
such age limits at all. "The only mandatory retirement," he
says, "is when you can't do the work any more."

The Senator turned Congressman (everyone still calls him
Senator, even though he has not been one since 1951), has an
urgent interest in cancer research. In 1937 he sponsored a bill
that created the National Cancer Institute. Now he wants the
Government to provide an extra $100 million in each of the next
five years for work on the disease. "You know, I lost my wife
Mildred to cancer in 1979," he says quietly. "Last month I
spoke at a wake for Don Petit of my staff, who died of cancer
in Florida. A woman on my staff is suffering from bone cancer
and was told she'll probably never be able to walk again. Well,
we've got to do more to try to stop this disease."

But will not all such social programs cost too much in an age
of soaring budget deficits?  Others may blend to political
fashion, but Pepper never wavers:  "I would rather live with
$200 billion deficits and have more people living, than the
reverse. And if we don't spend the money fighting cancer and
arthritis and poverty and poor housing and all the rest, they'll
just spend it on the military or something else."  In Pepper's
view, that settles that.

"He's reversed the aging process," says Florida Senator Lawton
Chiles. "He has more political power than ever."

While Pepper's body has required a few repairs, his mind
remains sharp. His memory is so keen that he can be introduced
to seven people at lunch and thereafter address them unerringly
by name. He recalls conversations with F.D.R. more than four
decades ago in vivid detail. Pepper is more impressive on the
podium. He never reads from a text, rarely uses notes, yet the
words roll out in graceful sentences. The loose skin on his
chin and neck fairly quivers with indignation and a clenched
fist punches the air when he berates "an Administration that
wants to cut $11 billion from Medicare."  When he recounts
stories of poor people hurt by budget trims, Pepper sometimes
gets misty-eyed. So do his listeners. Congressman Coelho was
present on one such occasion during the 1982 campaign.
"Claude's eyes teared over, and by the time he finished
speaking, 70% of the audience were teary-eyed. It was just a
tremendous emotional experience."

Neither exercise nor diet explains Pepper's mental agility and
physical stamina. He loves golf but gets out on the course
only sporadically, recently shooting 48 over nine holes at Coral
Gables Country Club and winning 75 cents from his opponents.
He admits that he does not even walk as much as he would like,
although when he does, he says, "I walk fast."  He eats heartily
and is a bit overweight (5 ft 7 1/2 in., 180 lbs.). His one
dietary idiosyncrasy:  he has soup and crackers with each meal,
even breakfast.

Pepper gave up smoking in 1933. Strangers often view his red,
veiny nose as a sign of heavy drinking, but he denies it.
Except for one or two glasses of white wine with lunch and
dinner, he abstains from alcohol. In the house dining room,
waitresses automatically bring Pepper his soup, crackers and a
carafe of wine. No connoisseur, he never asks for anything
fancier than chablis.

If there is a key to Pepper's vitality, it is that he enjoys
his work and has never lost his passionate concern for people
and issues. His home telephone numbers are listed in both the
Washington and Miami directories, and constituents often call,
seeking help with red tape or support for legislation. He keeps
regular office hours in both cities and meets with anyone who
asks to see him.

After a speech to retirees or other older folks, Pepper lingers
to bask in the affection of his admirers. He moves slowly among
them, sometimes bussing a few of the women who do not kiss him
first. He eagerly grasps the outstretched hands of the men. His
rapport with the elderly is such that his office is inundated
with their messages whenever an issue that concerns them is
pending in Washington. During the Social Security debate last
month, some 3,000 letters and 100 phone calls sought his
attention each week. Says Pepper about the elderly:  "They
deserve much--and need much. I am helping them."

On a typical weekday in Washington Pepper rises by 6:30, reads
the Post and keeps a breakfast appointment at 8. He drives
himself around in a long Lincoln Town Car, carries his own bag
through airports, normally travels alone. A house keeper cares
for his waterfront condominium in Miami, and a staff aide, James
Brennan, 66, shares his northwest Washington apartment. The two
often dine out together. Then Pepper watches the 11 o'clock
news, skims the New York Times and goes to bed by midnight.

His weekends are scarcely less regimented. Not long ago, he
traveled to austin for a Saturday speech, then flew to Miami for
a funeral on Sunday. He took 10 o'clock flight that night to
Boston, getting to bed in Cambridge at 3 a.m. A limousine
picked him up at 7:45 a.m. Monday for breakfast with Harvard
President Derek Bok. (A gentle flirt with women, Pepper
probably would have preferred eggs and bacon with Bo Derek.)
He held a series of press conferences, spoke for an hour to
Harvard Medical School gerontology class, then returned to
washington for an afternoon of House business. That night,
Pepper made another speech.

Often described as a millionaire (he says he would qualify only
if some Florida beach land he owns were sold for his asking
price of $600,000), Pepper has no qualms about drawing some $650
a month in Social Security benefits that he qualified for at the
age of 72. And he says he will not mind paying tax on this
pension, as required under the new law for high income earners.
Says he:  "Social Security is an insurance program to which I
have contributed. It isn't welfare."

The Peppers had no children, and he has long referred to his
staff as "my family,"  But he has been  lonely without Mildred.
He sadly recalls the day when he and his wife sat at a small
table in their Miami home after she had begun treatments for
cancer. "Well, Claude," said Mildred, his wife of more than 40
years, "it looks as if we may be coming to the end of the road."
He embraced her and said through tears, "Don't talk like that,
Mildred. I can't think of life without you."  In their
Washington apartment, there is still a note in his wife's
handwriting attached to a shower curtain. It reads:  "After you
shower, please close this curtain."

"He has flair," says Anne Ackerman, 69, a Democratic leader in
Miami's Dade County. "He has style. He epitomizes what a
public servant should be. Claude Pepper represents an America
that is a civilization rather than just a country with borders.
He is what you want life to be."

Part of Pepper's style is his droll humor. Some of his jokes
may be as old as he is, but his deadpan delivery delights his
audiences. Arriving late for a speech, he tells his listeners
about two men in colonial days who were set to duel at dawn.
Only one of the antagonists showed up. The other sent a note
by messenger. It read: "I'm running a little late this morning.
Please go ahead without me."

Another Pepper story, which Reagan has taken to telling on
occasion, involves a bishop and a Congressman who arrive in
heaven together. St. Peter shows the Congressman a lavish suite
of rooms, while assigning the bishop a small one with no view.
When the bishop complains that his lifetime of service to the
church rates something better, St. Peter replies:  "Don't feel
bad, Bishop. You know, we have thousands of bishops up here,
but this is the first Congressman we ever got."

Neatness is another Pepper trademark. He wears a fresh suit,
usually with vest, every day. His sparse white hair (he stopped
wearing a toupee in 1980 after it blew off as he greeted
President Jimmy Carter at the Miami Airport) is carefully
combed. Presiding at a recent House Rules Committee hearing,
he leaned back, motioned to an aide and whispered in his ear.
The aide rushed to straighten a portrait on a side wall.
Pepper nodded his approval.

"In Alabama, we lived in a house that was little more than a
place to sleep," recalls Claude's brother Frank, 65. "We did
not have a car. I can remember hearing him come home late at
night, rehearsing speeches he was going to give when he became
a U.S. Senator."

Pepper cannot really explain how he managed to grow up
uninfected by the redneck racism prevalent in the Alabama farm
country where he was born in 1900. "Why, I was full grown,"
says Pepper, the eldest of four children, "before I ever
traveled on a paved road."  Whatever the reason, he felt the
stir of ambition early on:  at the tender age of ten, he carved
the words Claude Pepper, United States Senator on a tree.

Pepper entered the University of Alabama in the fall of 1918.
To help pay his way, he worked from 4 a.m. to 7 a.m. hauling
coal and ashes at a power plant. He starred on the debating
team, ran on the track squad, made Phi Beta Kappa, but lost his
first election: for student- body president. When his
oratorical skills took him to a contest in Chapel Hill, N.C.,
"it was the farthest north I had ever been."

The North beckoned, however. "Why shouldn't I go to the best
law school there is?" he asked himself. He applied to Harvard,
was admitted and got tuition, books and $100 a month support
money from the Veterans Administration. The reason:  during his
brief Army service, spent training at the university of Alabama,
he suffered an injury that developed into a double hernia.
Pepper's appreciation for both education and the benevolent
Uncle Sam was never to leave him:

"I get so burned up when anybody tries to cut back on the money
available to help needy students."

After Harvard, Pepper taught law for a year at the University
of Arkansas, then set up practice in Perry, Fla. In the next
eleven years, he handled some 30 murder cases, taking one of
them successfully all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Active in Democratic politics, Pepper, at 28, became a member
of the Florida Democratic executive committee. He won at the
polls for the first of 15 times;  he was elected to the Florida
house of representatives. One of his first bills showed his
early concern for the elderly. It would let anyone over 65 fish
without a license.

But his sense of racial fairness may have cost him his seat two
years later. He was defeated after voting against a resolution
that criticized Mrs. Herbert Hoover for inviting the wife of a
black Congressman to the White House. Recalls Pepper:  "I
thought my political career had died aborning."

He resumed his law practice, opening an office in Tallahassee
and bringing his parents to live with him in 1931. The
Depression had proved ruinous to his father. Pepper learned
firsthand the problems of the elderly, caring for his father
until he died in 1945 at the age of 72 and his mother until her
death in 1961 at 84.

But Pepper yearned to return to politics. He made a brash bid
in 1934 to unseat U.S. Senator Park Trammell in the Democratic
primary. F.D.R. was in the White House, and Pepper's campaign
slogan was wordy but effective:  "The Welfare of the Common Man
Is the Cornerstone of the New Deal."  Virtually unknown, he
nevertheless forced a run-off and lost by a mere 4,050 votes.
When both of the state's Senators died within weeks of each
other in 1936, Pepper filed for one of the vacancies. His
earlier showing scared off challengers, and at 36, he was
elected to the Senate unopposed. Says Pepper, a Baptist:  "I
realized then that providence can handle my affairs much better
than I can."

Roosevelt sought the freshman Senator's support for his
power-grabbing and ultimately unsuccessful plan to pack the
Supreme Court with additional Justices. Pepper had
reservations, but far from timid, he said he would go along if
F.D.R. would help him win election to his first full six-year
term in 1938. "I will, and that's a commitment," promised the
President, who kept his word.

Pepper, in turn, became one of F.D.R.'s stalwart supporters on
Capitol Hill. When resistance to New Deal economic programs
grew in the Senate, the Florida newcomer rose to scold his
elders:  "We haven't' gone too far, we haven't gone far enough.
This is not eh Promised Land. Are we going to commit the same
folly that the children of Israel did?"  His colleagues rose in
an ovation. Newspaper Columnist Drew Pearson called the speech
"one of the greatest of its kind ever heard in the Senate
chamber."

Pepper easily won re-election in 1938 after defeating a former
Florida Governor in the primary by more than 100,000 votes. but
his liberalism was antagonizing businessmen in the state, who
vowed to turn him out of office. Pepper had been instrumental
in passing the nation's first minimum wage law, which guaranteed
workers 25 cents an hour. "Business never forgave me," he says.
It was the last major piece of New Deal legislation.

His views on foreign affairs also undermined his Florida
support.

He and his wife Mildred visited Berlin after his 1938
re-election, and the Senator was alarmed by what he recalls with
wry understatement as "the mutterings of war."  Pepper joined
the push for a military draft and came up with an innovation of
his own. He was convinced that the only way the U.S. could stay
out of the war in Europe was to help the Allies win it. Since
they were waiting warplanes on order from the U.S., Pepper
reasoned, why not send them aircraft out of the U.S. FAir Force,
replacing these planes later as the order came off production
lines?  This idea,a rejected at first in the Senate, became the
Lend- Lease program, which provided Britain, in particular, with
crucial ships, warplanes and other war materiel.

For his efforts, Pepper was hanged in effigy at the Capitol in
August 1940, by women who opposed his "warmongering."  He still
has the coconut head and stuffed denims that the women had
fashioned to look like him.

Pepper won re-election in 1944 but, mainly because of his
liberal views, speaking invitations in Florida dropped off as
civic clubs and local Chambers of Commerce blackballed him.
Business leaders were building a campaign war chest to beat him
in 1950. He played right into the hands of his foes. Traveling
abroad in 1945, Pepper met Joseph Stalin and naively described
the Soviet dictator as "a man Americans can trust."

The following year, Pepper accepted an invitation to attend a
left- wing political rally in New York's Madison Square Garden.
Waiting backstage with Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace and
others, Pepper was asked to pose for a group photo. As he did
so, Paul Robeson, the opera singer who was widely considered a
Communist, took a position beside him. The resulting photo of
Pepper looking chummy with a black Soviet symphathizer was to
prove a political disaster for him back home.

Pepper also incurred the potent wrath of Harry Truman by
joining a dump-Truman movement at the 1948 Democratic
convention. Pepper felt that Truman had abandoned Roosevelt's
domestic programs. Pepper and others tried to persuade World
War II Hero Dwight Eisenhower to run as a Democrat. They got
word that Ike would not seek the nomination, but would accept
it. Thus Pepper led a Florida delegation pledged largely to
Ike, gaining headlines that made Truman furious. Ike left
Pepper out in the cold by sending him a telegram withdrawing his
name from consideration.

Truman did not forget. Shortly after upsetting Republican
Thomas Dewey in the election, he summoned George Smathers, then
a Florida Congressman, to the White House. Pepper had helped
Smathers get elected. "I want you to do me a favor," Smathers
recalls Truman's saying. "I want you to beat that
son-of-a-bitch Claude Pepper."

That 1950 senatorial election was one of the dirtiest on
record. The Robeson-Pepper photo was circulated widely. So too
b\was a book called the Red Record of Senator Claude Pepper,
which distorted his attitude toward the Soviet Union. He was
stuck with the Label Red Pepper.

But the campaign is chiefly remembered for remarks attributed
to Smathers--and later denied by him--in TIME. Quoting
Northern newspapers, the magazine said Smathers used fancy
language to convey sinister meanings to benighted rural
listeners:  "Are you aware that Claude Pepper is known all over
Washington as a shameless extravert? Not only that but this man
is reliably reported to practice nepotism with his
sister-in-law, and he has a sister who was once a thespian in
wicked New York. Worst of all, it is an established fact that
Mr. Pepper before his marriage habitually practiced celibacy."

Pepper was defeated by 67,000 votes. "On election night people
came up to our house in cars, shouting obscenities, cheering the
fact that I had been defeated,"  Pepper recalls. "They wanted
to destroy me, and just about did."

(Pepper is not a man to carry a grudge, but it was not until
last year that he fully forgave Smathers. When an aide
suggested asking Smathers' law firm for a campaign contribution,
Pepper reluctantly agreed and was surprised when he got a $350
check in reply. Shortly thereafter, Pepper walked up to
Smathers, who was lunching in the House dining room, and said
without smiling:  "You know that check you sent in for my
campaign?  Well,l it bounced."  It had not, of course, and when
Smathers realized that Pepper was joking, both knew that their
enmity was over.)

Once again, Pepper returned to his law practice. He tried a
senatorial comeback in 1958, but was beaten in the Democratic
primary. By 1962 he was earning more than $150,000 a year,
representing mainly corporate clients. But when a new Miami
congressional district was created that year, he jumped back
into the political swim. He missed politics, and Mildred missed
the capital's social whirl. Says Brother Joe, 73, about
Claude's law practice:  "he was very successful. But he was
miserable, just plain miserable."

Pepper did not consider it demeaning to step down from Senator
to Congressman, although he concedes that "most people go the
other way." If he had somehow stayed in the Senate, he figures
he would have become chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee and might have would up serving longer than anyone
else. "But that committee doesn't save many souls," he adds.
"I know I'm doing more good now."

At a Veterans Administration hospital in Miami, a patient in a
wheelchair watches Pepper greeting the bedridden and says:
"I'm a Republica. But I always vote for Senator Pepper. He
doesn't care if you're an old Republican or an old Democrat.
Just so you're old."

Pepper is far from a one-issue legislator. In 1945 he
sponsored a resolution that led to the creation of the World
Health Organization and, in the late '40's, bills establishing
five of the National Institutes of Health. Not only does he
favor a freeze on nuclear arms now, but he advocated one after
the end of World War II. Still, nothing offends his sense of
justice quite as much as modern society's tendency to view the
elderly as a burden or a stereotyped group. He does not feel
complimented when someone tells him:  "My, you don't look your
age."  Inwardly, he grumps, "How am I expected to look?
Toothless and doddering, a caricature of my younger self?"
Pepper assails "ageism" as "just as wrong as racism or sexism."

At a recent Miami dinner in his honor, Pepper spoke eloquently
about growing older. "The aging process is so slow, so gradual,
that all you notice is a slight diminishing of some of your
faculties,"  he said solemnly. what the elderly want is "to be
thought of as just other people. They need love. They need
compassion."  He concedes that attitudes toward the aging are
improving and predicts that this will get much better when, as
demographers predict, the elderly constitute an even larger
share of the nation's population.

If Pepper could wave "a legislative wand," he says he would
"enact a Medicare bill under which the entire cost would be
borne by the Government instead of just the 45% now."  He would
provide home health care, claiming that it would often save the
Government the higher cost of putting people who need not be
there in hospitals. And he would provide more preventive health
coverage, in hopes of checking illness and prolonging life.
Overall, Pepper is optimistic, even without his wand, because
he feels that pressure is growing on the Administration to stop
cutting social a programs. "The Reagan era will come to an end.
already we're moving toward compassion in Government again."

When Pepper's admirers worry about his advancing years and long
he expects to be on Capitol Hill, he sometimes admits that he
has retirement plans. "I've set the year," he drawls. As his
listeners' concern grows, he adds without a smile:  "The year
2000. But I reserve the right to change my mind."

In fact, Pepper has big plans for next year. He intends to
lead a drive to elect some 500 delegates who are at least 65
years old to the 1984 Democratic National Convention. That
would be about 12% of the total, and he wants to use their
leverage to influence the choice of a nominee and the
candidates' stand on issues dear to the elderly.

Already, the contenders for the nomination are seeking Pepper's
support. Senator Alan Cranston  has even listed Pepper as a
possible running mate if the Californian were to succeed in his
long-shot pursuit of the nomination. Such a Democratic ticket,
with a combined age of 154 at election time, would accomplish
the impossible: it would make a Republic team of Reagan and Vice
President  George Bush (combined age 133) look young.

Some of Pepper's most avid fans even urge him to run for
President.

He clearly considers himself just as physically fit as, and
more capable than the present occupant of the Oval Office.
Claims Pepper about 1984:  "I'll be better able to throw my hat
in the ring at 83 than Ronald Reagan will be a 73."  In less
quixotic moments, Pepper admits that he is, at best, suited to
the No. 2 spot. "It's easy to replace a Vice President," he
says, in a rare recognition of his own mortality.

At an age when most people are savoring old memories, Claude
Pepper never looks back. His latest legislative proposal is to
create a House Committee on the Future of the U.S. He, of
course, would like to stick around to help shape its vision, and
to seek that the recommendations are carried out. In the
meantime, he plans to lead his graying army to greater
triumphs--and to keep bugging Ronald Reagan.

An elderly woman spots Pepper on a Miami sidewalk and throws
her arms around his neck. "I just want to thank you," she says,
"for what you are doing for us."

--By Ed Magnuson. Reported by Hays Gorey/Washington

Balancing Act

Everyone agreed that something had to be done. Otherwise,
Social Security's main retirement fund would have slid into the
red by July. But there are few more politically volatile issues
than whether to restore the system to solvency by raising more
revenues or by reducing benefits. After wrestling with the
problem for a year, a bipartisan commission headed by Economist
Alan Greenspan recommended a mixture that leans more heavily on
new revenues than on benefit cuts. Passed overwhelmingly by
congress, the plan represents a victory for Claude Pepper and
others who opposed shrinking the system. It major provisions:

> Increases in the payroll tax will be accelerated, netting
some $39.4 billion in added revenue by 1990. At present,
employers and employees each ante up 6.7% of salary; the figure
for employers will reach 7% next year, 7.05% for both in 1985,
7.15% in 1986, 7.51% in 1988 and 7.65% in 1990. The tax is
currently applied to a maximum pay of $35,700, but his ceiling
will rise as the average national wage increases, as under the
present law.

> Self-employed people will have to pay Social Security tax
equal to 100% of the total pay by employers and employees; they
now pay only 70%.

> Taxes will have to be paid on a portion of the Social
Security benefits of anyone whose income plus one-half of their
pension exceeds $25,000 a year. For married couples filing
jointly, the base amount will be $32,000.

> For the first time, all federal employees who join the
Government after Jan. 1, 1984, will be covered by Social
Security, expanding the system's base and revenues. Employees
of non-profit organizations will also be forced into the system.
Employees of state or local governments now covered can no
longer withdraw.

> Early retirement will still be permitted at 62, but benefits,
currently 80% of the full pension paid at 65, will drop to 75%
in the year 2009 and 70% in 2027.

> The retirement age for full benefits will increase from 65 to
66 between 2003 and 2009 and then to 67 between 2021 and 2027.

> The next cost of living adjustment for those now receiving
benefits will be delayed from July to next January. The change
will  be calculated each January thereafter, based on
fluctuations in the Consumer Price Index.

> The bonus that workers over 65 get for delaying their
retirement, which is now 3% of benefits for each year's delay,
will gradually increase to 8% between 1990 and 2008. The
maximum delay is five years.