End of a Dream

A tax cut had become the Democrats' biggest political issue in the 84th Congress. In the House, Speaker Sam Rayburn managed to push through a $20-a-person cut, despite opposition by the Eisenhower Administration. Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson knew that he could not get the flat $20 cut through the Senate, so he designed a tax bill that was a politician's dream: it seemed to help the little fellow, to hurt the bigger fellow, and to help balance the budget. Nevertheless, the Senate last week voted down Johnson's dream.

Byrd on the Floor. Most Democrats had flocked to Johnson's side with enthusiasm. Oklahoma's big Bob Kerr and Illinois' professorial Paul Douglas indulged in a colloquy designed to heap ridicule on the opposition. Douglas asked if Kerr would like to know why a part of the Eisenhower Administration's tax policy "is like the Latin verb aio."* Kerr allowed that he would. Smirked Douglas: "It is present, it is imperfect, and it has no future."

But beneath the Democrats' fun, there was a sobering fact. The party's two finance experts, Virginia's Harry Byrd and Georgia's Walter George, thought that Lyndon Johnson's political dream was a fiscal nightmare. Johnson's plan affected several phases of tax policy, but its heart was a $20 cut for each taxpayer plus a $10 cut for each dependent (except the spouse), balanced against repeal of the Eisenhower Administration's tax credit on stock-dividend income. Johnson maintained that the proposal would add almost $5 billion to U.S. revenue. But Harry Byrd, a better man with tax figures than Lyndon Johnson, said that it would result in a net loss of nearly $600 million. Tax Expert Byrd's conclusion: Johnson's jerry-built plan would dangerously weaken the nation's tax structure.

Bridges in the Rooms. While Byrd effectively operated as the floor manager against the tax cut (and Delaware's Republican Senator John Williams as the G.O.P.'s most persistent orator). New Hampshire's Republican Senator Styles Bridges ran the campaign in the cloakroom. Operator Bridges, an expert in dispensing political favors, collected some of his many I.O.U.s to keep Republicans in line. Some farm Senators, e.g., Idaho's Herman Welker, North Dakota's Milton Young and South Dakota's Francis Case, all up for re-election next year, seemed to be wavering toward a tax cut, until Bridges urged them back. Wisconsin's Joe McCarthy was itching for a chance to plant a dirk in the Administration's side, until he was reminded that Bridges stood by him in the censure episode.

From his position outside the arena, Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey, who wanted only a one-year extension of present corporate-income-tax rates and some excise taxes, fired in a few rounds. Characterizing Johnson's plan as a "political quickie gimmick," he said: "You don't help to increase the purchasing power of the 'little folks' by repealing the laws which are helping to make their jobs."

When the Senate finally voted, the count was 50-44 against the Johnson plan. The Republicans, with the exception of North Dakota's Maverick Bill Langer, voted in a solid bloc. Three other Southern Democrats (Louisiana's Ellender, Florida's Holland. Virginia's Robertson) joined Byrd and George in voting against. Only two of the Senate's 96 members failed to vote: Massachusetts' Democrat John Kennedy, who is ill, and Maine's Republican Margaret Chase Smith, who was abroad doing legwork for an Edward R. Murrow television show.

At President Eisenhower's press conference next day, a reporter asked Ike if he would like to comment on the Senate action. Grinned the President: "Would it be allowable to just say hurrah?"

Last week the Senate also:

P: Confirmed New York Judge John Marshall Harlan as an Associate Supreme Court Justice by a vote of 71 to 11 (nine Southern Democrats, who suspect they will not like Harlan's views on segregation, and Republicans Langer and Welker, who do not like his "internationalism").

P: Confirmed New York Accountant Joseph Campbell, former atomic energy commissioner, as U.S. Comptroller General by voice vote (in which a few loud nays were heard from Democrats who resent Campbell's approval of the Dixon-Yates contract).

P: Confirmed New Jersey Mathematician John Von Neumann as an atomic energy commissioner and Ohio's Republican Lawyer George C. McConnaughey as a federal communications commissioner.

P: Approved expenditure of $125,000 for an investigation of juvenile delinquency, but only after Louisiana Democrat Allen Ellender had charged that Tennessee Democrat Estes Kefauver would waste the money getting himself "plenty of advertising" on television and radio.

Meanwhile, the House:

P: Appropriated $3,282,533,000 for the Treasury and Post Office, $77,697,000 below the request.

P: Passed a bill under which congressional committees could ask federal courts to order balky witnesses to appear, thus subjecting them to contempt-of-court penalties for refusal.

P: Heard New York's Democratic Congressman James J. Delaney attack Hawaiian statehood before the Rules Committee on the ground that Hawaii is a volcanic area. Said he: "Just suppose a whole island was eliminated. They would still have their two U.S. Senators."

*A grammatical monster of defective conjugation meaning I say.

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