Congress' Week

Capitol corridors and committee rooms hummed with debate. Harry Truman had presented his program for interim aid to Europe (long-range ERP recommendations were yet to come) and for inflation controls at home. Now it was up to Congress.

In the hot partisan commotion stirred up by the President's message, little action was possible. Republicans and Democrats alike knew that the stands they took on anti-inflationary measures might well decide the 1948 elections. Most Democrats, hoping that the President had been politically smart in suggesting a return to rationing and wage-price ceilings, kept cannily quiet. Many Republicans cried "Foul." Said Senator Robert Taft: "This is the police state condemned by the President himself only a month ago. This is the end of economic freedom." Other Republicans rebuked Candidate Taft for seeming to represent himself as spokesman for the party.

But beneath the partisanship, there was much deep concern. Hard and complex problems had to be faced. Congressmen buckled down to work.

The session was just three days old when Senator Vandenberg's committee reported out the bill authorizing interim aid up to $597 million--exactly what the Administration had asked for.

This week, Arthur Vandenberg stepped down from his seat as the Senate's presiding officer to open floor debate on the bill. In a full-dress speech as the Republican Party's chief spokesman on foreign policy, he urged its swift passage out of a "self interest which knows ... we cannot indefinitely prosper in a broken world." Swift passage was almost certain. On this program, there was little disagreement.

But actual funds would still have to be appropriated through separate legislation. And when it came to appropriations, Republican leaders did not propose to be rushed. Senator Styles Bridges, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said that a thorough study of U.S. supplies would be made before his committee submitted recommendations; the study, starting this week, would take at least a fortnight. "We do not intend," said Bridges,' "to deliberately shortchange our people." The Appropriations Committee of the House, which must originate all such legislation, was not yet sure when its hearings would begin.

At this rate, congressional funds would obviously not be available by Dec. 1, the deadline set by Secretary of State Marshall. But some Congressmen, alarmed by Communist riots in Italy and France, hoped to get the program under way quickly, anyway. They talked about tacking on an amendment permitting the Administration to borrow $100 million immediately from the RFC.

Last week the Senate also:

P: Seated Mississippi's John C. Stennis, elected three weeks ago to fill the unexpired term of the late Theodore G. Bilbo. Thus, for the first time this year, the Senate had its full quota of 96 members.

P: Gave its page boys permission to wear long pants instead of their traditional knickerbockers. Knickerbockers are too difficult to find in the stores these days.

The House:

P: Cited for contempt ten Hollywood writers and producers for refusing to testify during its Un-American Activities Committee hearings on Communism in the movie industry (TIME, Nov. 10).

P: Received a report from an armed services subcommittee urging outright military support for the Chinese government.

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