After Four Months

Republicans were pleased with themselves last week. House Majority Leader Charles Halleck proclaimed over the radio: "We've accomplished a great deal in the four months since January." Congressman Halleck was so pleased that he even wagged a little levity. Why is the Senate called the Upper House? "When we cut an appropriation they up it." Halleck gagged. Everyone was in a jovial mood.

The week marked a climax of accomplishments. Within the week three hotly fought-over bills were wrapped up: aid to Greece and Turkey, which was delivered to the White House; the $350 million appropriation for foreign relief and the labor bill, which were almost ready for delivery (see below). That was not counting routine business, which was being clicked off satisfactorily: a $3.2 billion income-tax cut (as of July 1) for U.S. taxpayers; and an economy drive which continued in full swing.

The House Appropriations Committee sliced $377.5 million off the Navy's $3.84 billion request. Total budget cuts now added up to $1.65 billion. This was a long way from the $6 billion cut which House leaders had predicted and, as Majority Leader Halleck suggested, the Senate would undoubtedly try to put some of the cuts back. But Republicans were at least trying to make good on their promises of economy.

Minding the Baby. They were willing to look back over the past four months and review their record. They felt that record needed no apologies. The start had been slow, not to say a little embarrassing, in view of the early January confidence of such Republican leaders as Senator Robert Taft. G.O.P. leaders probably should have known better. No new Congress could turn out legislation the way Taft and others had indicated that the 80th would. Congress had had no help from President Truman, who, when the 80th had convened, had sat back with the air of a man who has just passed a damp baby to someone else. Congress had had to wrestle with a full-scale reorganization (under the La Follette-Monroney Reorganization Act); changing a lot of old customs took time. All legislation had to be worried over by committees. That also took time.

Brisk, brusque Bob Taft discovered that the best of time schedules might be and often were upset by unpredictable colleagues. The joke that there were 50 other G.O.P. candidates for President in the Senate was not a joke but a fact which made bossing the Senate just about impossible. Freshmen Senators like New York's Irving Ives insisted upon being heard. The Republican majority was so slim that a handful of mavericks could upset schedules and applecarts.

Little Joe. In the house things went more smoothly, largely owing to Speaker Joe Martin, who might not always know how to deal with world problems but certainly knew how to deal with his Congressmen. Day in & day out, little Joe rose at 7, worked all day on Capitol Hill, as often as not lunched on a sandwich and piece of pie in the House cloakroom, and popped back into bed at 9:30 to refresh himself for another day. Unlike Taft, he commanded an overwhelming majority. One henchman chortled: "With our majority we actually told fellows they could vote as seemed best for their district situation."

By mid-May, as it turned out, the Senate had been in session 75 days and had passed 196 public bills and resolutions; the House had been in session 77 days, had passed 157. By the standards of other Congresses this was a fair record.

In Other Fields. During its bumpy, argumentative session the Senate had stopped Mississippi's bigoted Theodore ("The Man") Bilbo from taking his seat in the Senate, had finally confirmed David Lilienthal as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. Taft shared credit for the first job and blame for the long delay in the Lilienthal case. Under the whip of Arthur Vandenberg, the 80th had backed the "bipartisan" foreign policy. Whether that backing would continue would depend somewhat on President Truman, somewhat on domestic politics. There were signs that the honeymoon was going stale.

In other fields, the 80th Congress voted a Constitutional Amendment to limit U.S. Presidents to two terms, ended OPA for good, ended sugar rationing as of Oct. 31, and wiped out portal-to-portal pay. By declining to take any action on reciprocal trade, it gave the Administration a little longer to hack away at barriers to world trade.

Coming Home. With responsibility thrust upon them, a number of names of growing importance emerged from the G.O.P. Among them were Colorado's Eugene Millikin, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee; New York's Ives and Connecticut's Raymond Baldwin, who had also forced the hierarchy into paying attention to freshmen. One man who continued to grow in political stature was Arthur Vandenberg. One man who had learned something was the Senate's boss in domestic matters, Bob Taft. He had learned that warm human beings are not as easy to manipulate as cold figures.

The 68-to-24 vote by which the Senate passed the labor bill last week was a testimonial to Taft's conduct of that debate. Only three Republicans voted against it: Oregon's Wayne Morse, Nevada's George Malone, North Dakota's William Langer. Senator Ives, who had forced Taft into a liberalization of a number of measures, went along in the end. So did Joe Ball, who had fought for a sterner bill but was not too displeased over the outcome. The vote, if it held, would be enough to override a presidential veto.

Impressed by the fact that the Taft bill could be made into law, House conferees studied how to fit their tougher Hartley bill into its smoother outlines. When House and Senate conferees began negotiations, House conferees were in a conciliatory mood. The bill which would finally emerge would be pretty much Taft's.

It would be another of a number of major Republican bills on their way to the White House. Harry Truman's period of sitting back was almost over. The damp babies were being handed back.

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