Home Again, Home Again

For 19 months the 79th Congress waded neck deep in the muck of problems deposited by war & peace. As a Congress it was no better or worse than most U.S. Congresses. The people might have hoped that its representatives would rise to a unique and critical occasion. That they did no better than they did--or no worse --should have surprised no one. They were, after all, representative of the people, and the people themselves were not yet steadied to the onslaught of peace.

The crops that Congress planted in the muck were both good & bad. The best crops were in the field of foreign affairs. The Congress supported Bretton Woods and the World Bank, U.N. and UNRRA, for whose charitable work it appropriated $2.7 billion. In a flurry of legislation last week before adjournment Congress accepted (with reservations) the jurisdiction of the World Court in international disputes. After seven months' wrangling, it also approved the British loan.

But in the neighboring area of national defense Congress fell short of the mark--and reflected the will of the people in the process. By its clamor to bring the boys home it forced a nervous War Department to pull down its Army: it buried a universal-military-training law under the woodshed; it stripped away the strength of the Draft Act.

World War II veterans, however, got more than indulgent treatment. Congress passed out: additional millions under the G.I. Bill of Rights; $2.6 billion in terminal pay; $30 million to buy automobiles for amputees--after a group of amputees marched into the House gallery and let their metal braces fall to the floor with a soul-withering clank. No one denied the people's debt to the veterans but many wondered whether Congress' treatment of them was always judicious.

Weeds & Seeds. In the reconversion field Congress let things grow pretty much as nature intended. It did lop off some Presidential wartime powers. Just as baffled as most U.S. people, it thrashed around in the undergrowth of price control, came up with a compromise OPA bill; no one has any idea whether it will live and bear fruit. Inexplicably it plowed under all effective housing acts. It also endorsed the silver bloc's raid on the Treasury, which will cost U.S. taxpayers plenty and further demoralize the currencies of China, India and Mexico.

Few long-range solutions to the nation's many problems were offered. Congress did pass the Case antistrike bill, but Harry Truman vetoed it. The Senate saved the country from one piece of ill-advised legislation when it killed the President's plan to draft strikers into the Army. Both houses passed a bill to streamline Congress. After one of their most earnest debates, they also set up an all-civilian commission to control atomic energy. Antilynching, anti-poll tax, fair-employment measures were lost in the weeds of filibuster.

Like old horses trotting for the barn, the two houses held their final sessions last week, adjourned and went home. Almost one third of the Senate and almost all the House members had work to do: they had to try to be reelected.

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