Quick End

As they had predicted and promised, Republicans gave Harry Truman's massive special session program a quick brush-off. To the surprise of no one, they refused to consider price control or rationing as inflation remedies, gleefully repeated the President's observation of ten months ago that "these are marks of a police state." Their answer to a request for an excess profits tax was a brusque no. Despite Candidate Tom Dewey's personal intervention, they refused to liberalize the provisions of the Displaced Persons bill. The one unarguable gain of the week was approval of the $65 million loan for building U.N.'s Manhattan headquarters.

That done, the only concern of most House members was how soon they could pack up and go home. The Senate was still involved in the leisurely Southern filibuster against the anti-poll tax bill. But on the fifth day there was a break. The G.O.P. leadership tried to invoke cloture. But when Senate President Arthur Vandenberg ruled that cloture could not be applied, no matter how many votes in its favor, the Senate recapitulated. It was a clear victory for the South.

"Damn the Torpedoes." After that, there was only one more hurdle to adjournment. In the face of Bob Taft's disavowal of his own long-range housing program, New Hampshire's Republican Charles Tobey forced the full Taft-Ellender-Wagner Act to the Senate floor. Promptly, Wisconsin's ex-Marine Joe McCarthy offered a substitute bill, which would simply increase loan and mortgage guarantees to private builders.

While recessed House members gathered to watch the battle, McCarthy argued with rising temper: "I have been informed that the House leaders will not take public housing or slum clearance." That was all mild-mannered Charles Tobey needed. Pointing to the visitors, he shouted: "Who is this House leadership . . . this triumvirate in the House which has the power to say 'They shall not pass'?"

Counterarguments that half a loaf was better than none only made Tobey hotter. "I accept this challenge," he cried, "and I'll see them in--you know where . . . Damn the legislative torpedoes. Let's go ahead and give the country what the American people want."

No Gain. But the Senate was looking for no intramural brawl. By a vote of 48 to 36 it accepted the McCarthy substitute, voted down the T-E-W bill by voice vote. Next day, while the House hurried the Senate housing bill to the White House, the Senate rejected, 53 to 33, a Democratic amendment including all of the President's anti-inflation requests. Then, with hardly a change, it whipped through the House bill to check inflation by reinstituting consumer credit controls and tightening the cash reserve requirements of Federal Reserve banks (see BUSINESS).

Five hours later, in a storm of partisan accusations, the Congress adjourned.

From almost every viewpoint, the special "Turnip Day" session had been a failure. Neither side had gained any political advantage, although Republican refusal to act made it easier for Harry Truman to pin a do-nothing label on the 80th Congress. But New York's Senator Irving Ives dropped a loud hint that Tom Dewey would probably disassociate himself from the G.O.P. congressional record in the campaign.

In the net, the session had done little more than prove that a Congress, recalled from a political rostrum and devoted to partisan wrangling, was bound to accomplish little of consequence.

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