Word: litmus
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...while it passed the Senate last year, the hospitals applied enough local pressure to get it killed in the House Commerce Committee by one vote. This time the President, Califano and Administration aides are lobbying intensively, something they failed to do in 1978, calling the bill "the litmus test" of whether a legislator is really serious about fighting inflation. The bill, Carter insists, would save the country "some $53 billion" over the next five years the amount by which he estimates medical costs would increase if no limits were enacted. The Congressional Budget Office is less optimistic; it pegs...
Jimmy Carter insisted that the bill had to be passed. Alfred Kahn, the Administration's anti-inflation strategist, declared that it would contribute more to curbing the rising cost of living than any other piece of legislation. HEW Secretary Joseph Califano termed it "the litmus test" for all members of Congress "on whether or not they have the guts to do something about inflation...
Most important, the judges are bound to uphold the Constitution. But that is not an immutable piece of parchment that judges can apply to laws like litmus paper. It is rather a set of principles that have proved enduring partly because they are flexible. When the original Constitution was written in Hamilton's day, the U.S. was mostly a nation of small farmers who would have fallen on their pitchforks at the thought of today's complicated modern society, or of the broad role that Government plays in running it. By giving the Constitution new meaning, the judiciary...
...sort of Nixon Class (some businessmen, blue-collar workers, large portions of Middle America) and the New Class made up of people who deal in symbols and information, not things: people from universities, Government welfare agencies, publishing houses, the communications industry, consumer groups, environmental causes. All kinds of litmus tests can be applied to identify the New Class: What do you think of abortion...
...annual meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the veteran lobbying group for all Jewish organizations, some 600 members fanned out in Washington to besiege members of Congress on the plane package. Generally, their pitches were not the least bit subtle; the Senators' votes would be "a litmus test" of whether they deserved continued Jewish support. "It was very personal lobbying, terribly intense," observed one pro-Administration lobbyist trying to compete with the Jewish campaign...