Work Done

Speeding up its pace as it headed for possible adjournment by next week, the Senate last week:

P: Authorized by voice vote a full-scale ($300,000) inquiry into the current progress and goals of the foreign-aid program by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee --a sharp rebuke to the Administration for its badly muddled foreign-aid presentation this year.

P: Approved after five minutes' discussion and sent to the House a watered-down version of the Bricker Amendment contained in a bill (sponsored by Minority Leader Bill Knowland) requiring the Secretary of State to show the Senate, besides all regular treaties requiring formal ratification, the full texts of all hitherto secret executive agreements entered into by the President with the heads of other governments. Said Ohio's John W. Bricker: "A step in the right direction."

P: Passed, by a 49-(46 Democrat, 3 Republican) to-40 (all Republican) vote and sent to the House an Administration-opposed bill "authorizing and directing" the Atomic Energy Commission to spend $400 million to speed commercial atom-power development. The Administration's position: the AEC is already doing all it should rightly do.

P: Approved, by unanimous vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee, a general restitution bill requiring the U.S. to return upwards of $500 million worth of enemy property--corporate and individual --seized from Japanese and Germans under World War II legislation. The Administration, vigorously opposed to the bill, wants an overall $100 million ceiling, under which payments would be restricted to individuals and limited to a top of $10,000 on each claim.

P: Approved by voice vote and sent to the House an Administration-backed bill authorizing construction of the $156 million Fryingpan-Arkansas project in Colorado. The project would funnel water from the Colorado River basin through the Continental Divide into the Arkansas River basin, where more water is badly needed for power and irrigation purposes.

The House:

P: Passed, 391-0, and sent to the Senate an election-year special--a bill raising benefits to 2,000,000 veterans with service-connected disabilities.

P: Learned, through a manifesto signed by 83 Southerners (79 Democrats, 4 Republicans), that the Administration's civil-rights program is in for desperate rear-guard treatment when the House debates on it this week. The Southern Congressmen, calling the bill "sinister and iniquitous," declared that it would intensify racial antagonisms, and indicated that they would try to amend it to death. Even if the bill passes the House, it is certain to be filibustered in the Senate.

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