For the "Little Fellow"

For months in the Senate, the Republican leadership had known that the Democrats would make a hard try to tack an income-tax-cutting amendment onto the Administration's bulky (875 pages) tax-revision bill. Georgia's Walter George had first proposed a $200 increase in the personal exemption, later cut it to $100 when the Republicans stood firm against it. But tax cuts are always the sweetest of music in an election year; at the last minute the G.O.P. leaders thought they were whipped.

The "Sequence of Things." The day after Senate debate on the bill began last week, the Republican Policy Committee sat down in the Senate Secretary's office and heard the bad news: they were half a dozen votes short of enough to push their bill through; the George amendment would carry. New York's Irving Ives, while he promised to stick with the party, grumbled that the G.O.P. was going to take a licking come November if it did not do something for the "little fellow." A number of other Republicans, especially those up for re-election this year, shared the Ives sentiment.

The task of doing something for the "little fellow" fell to Colorado's Gene Millikin. whose Finance Committee had reported out the revision bill. The next morning Millikin padded into the Senate, got the attention of the chair, asked the clerk to read a spanking new amendment his staff had pieced together overnight. (It would give a $20 tax credit to every individual not benefiting from other provisions of the bill.) Tennessee's Albert Gore wanted to know why Millikin had been so late in introducing his amendment. What was the motivation? Blandly, Millikin made his reply: "The motivation of the sequence of things to come before the Senate is to be found in the decisions that are made leading to these developments." Translated, this means, "We both know damn well what I'm up to, but I deny everything."

Distress & Surprise. The Republican strategy conceived by Millikin was intended simply to head off the George amendment with a more palatable substitute. The George amendment would drain $2.4 billion from the Treasury; the Millikin amendment would cut Government revenue only $960 million. Much to the distress of the Republicans, the Democrats (joined by Maverick Republican Bill Langer) voted down Millikin's amendment 49-46. Then, much to their own surprise, the Republicans, joined by Virginia's Harry Byrd and Willis Robertson, Colorado's Edwin Johnson and Florida's Spessard Holland, defeated the George amendment 49-46.

Neither party could claim it had cut taxes for the "little fellow," but 92 Senators could go home and tell the home folks they had plugged for a tax cut. The Senate action was an Eisenhower victory. After all the marching up and down hill, the Senate had brought out substantially the bill that the Administration had wanted from the beginning.

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