The Doubtful Victory

As old Walter George, a Democrat soon to retire from the Senate, stood up behind his desk to speak one day last week, he was set to perform an intricate mission for a Republican Administration -a mission, as he saw it, in the national interest. The Senate was in the mood to go along with the House's deep cut of $1.1 billion in the Administration's $4.9 billion foreign-aid bill. Eloquent Walter George pleaded for the compromise $4.5 billion that his Senate Foreign Relations Committee had approved -and that the Administration had agreed to accept. As he argued, with increasing emotion, that the foreign-aid program is a symbol of U.S. world leadership, the Senate ceased its rustling and rattling to listen to the kind of nonpartisan greatness it hears all too rarely. Said George:

"If we do not hold the torch of leadership and carry it forward, into whose hands will it fall? I cannot think that the Divine Providence . . . has permitted us to become the responsible leaders of the world . . . only to break that hope." Then, with tears in his eyes he moved into a peroration that the Senate knew was colored by the loss of his naval-aviator son in World War II. "If the free people of this globe lose confidence in us, we shall disappoint the best hopes of mankind -and we shall utterly fail to justify the sacrifices of our heroic dead, who have died in nearly all lands and have been swallowed up by the blue waters of nearly all oceans."

A Touch of Blackmail? After George's colleagues had crowded around him to shake his hand, it was the turn of another old man, Rhode Island's 88-year-old Democrat Theodore Francis Green, to add up some of the real reasons why the foreign-aid bill was in trouble.

"It has been my theory in the field of foreign policy," he said, "that, if in doubt, I should support the President. I shall do so this year [but] I cannot let the record rest there . . . The coherence and rationality of the program are so open to question that I am close to the border of opposition ... I hope that the Administration by next year will be able to approach Congress asking authority for foreign aid in positive, rather than negative, terms. Our country will not be able to grasp the initiative until our energies are devoted to promoting freedom . . ."

George and Green were persuasive spokesmen, and from the opposition party. Behind the scenes the Administration was driven to a measure that smacked of blackmail to try to bring its rebellious Republicans into line. From office to office on Capitol Hill went White House aides making the point that the President was again facing a decision whether to run for reelection. If his own Republicans in Congress refused to support him on foreign aid, the argument went, the President would be most discouraged. The implication: if you want Ike, and want to ride his coattails, vote for the foreign-aid bill.

Final Vote. As the Senate took up more than 20 amendments -each one designed to hobble foreign aid -the effect of the double-barreled argument soon showed. The Senate roundly voted down attempts to 1 ) halve the proposed $80 million budget for India, 2) forbid the President to grant aid to nations shipping strategic materials behind the Iron Curtain, 3) cancel aid to Yugoslavia's Tito (although approving an innocuous compromise proposal by Wyoming's Senator Joseph O'Mahoney that the President check back with Congress before sending any more aid to Tito).

At week's end the tired Senate passed Walter George's $4.5 billion authorization bill, 54-25 (for: 27 Republicans, 27 Democrats; against: 12 Republicans, 13 Democrats). But the Administration's fight is far from over. This week Senate and House conferees will thrash out the difference between the Senate's $4.5 billion and the $3.8 billion authorized by the House -and House Democratic leaders show little enthusiasm about compromise. Beyond that hurdle lie the unfriendly House and Senate Appropriations Committees, who must vote the money itself before it can be spent.

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