"Hold Up a Minute"

The crowded Capitol committee room glittered with the brightest U.S. brass as the Senate Appropriations Committee sat down for private hearings on the nation's military needs. Suddenly, the door popped open and Nebraska's Kenneth Wherry, the Republican minority leader, stuck his greying head inside. "Hold up a minute," he shouted. Then Ken Wherry politely stood back while 30 hushed and awed ladies tiptoed in. "These are good Nebraska girls," explained Wherry as the ladies giggled. "I wanted them to see this great committee." One by one Chairman Kenneth McKellar, Defense Secretary Louis Johnson, Admiral Forrest Sherman and Generals Omar Bradley, Hoyt Vandenberg and Lightnin' Joe Collins rose to bow as Wherry introduced them. Then, Wherry led the girls out again, and the committee settled down to talk about the fate of the Western world.

Nagging Conscience. In similar fashion the Senate kept interrupting its urgent business all last week to make bows to the folks back home. Illinois' big, white-shocked Paul Douglas, singularly unbowed after threescore attempts to chop the omnibus appropriations bill, was back like a nagging conscience at the Senate's fat, pampered $700 million program for pet home-town works. The bill, said Douglas, has many features dubious in peacetime, "and even more dubious in wartime." Six eastern Republicans agreed with him, and proposed a flat 50% cut.

Tennessee's aged (81) Kenneth McKellar, who sometimes appears to be dozing at his front-row desk, snapped up like an aroused tomcat. Did the Senate mean to disregard the experience of his committee, which had approved all of these fine projects? By a vote of 47 to 28, the Senators said certainly not. Big Paul Douglas had lost again.

Abandoned Principle. All through the Senate debate there were hints that "economy" would be a much more popular word when the big EGA appropriation came before the Senate. Scenting trouble, ECA quietly abandoned its old first principle, that the Marshall Plan should be used only for peaceful economic recovery of Europe. Henceforth, said Deputy ECAdministrator William Foster, Marshall Plan nations could rearm themselves with their counterpart funds--some $3 billion in their own currencies which they have contributed, and put under U.S. control, to match ECA dollars. With that matter cleared up, the Senate briskly voted ECA its $2.7 billion.

Last week the Senate also:

P: Tentatively approved the pre-Korean $13 billion budget for the armed services. Still to be voted on: the $10.5 billion more urged by the President.

P: Unanimously approved a bill easing the President's pen & ink routine (300 signatures a day), permitting his aides to read and sign for him such housekeeping details as letters, orders and directives to departments.

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