Welfare in the Senate

The Senate chamber last week rang with a familiar Democratic cry: "Giveaway!" Democratic leaders were struggling to override the Federal Power Commission's decision (TIME, Aug. 15, 1955) to permit the Idaho Power Co. to build three small dams in the Hell's Canyon area of the Snake River. Before the Senate was a Democrat-sponsored bill to 1) order the private development halted (Idaho Power has already begun work at Brownlee, plans to spend $175 million), and 2) build a single, multipurpose, $308 million federal dam in Hell's Canyon. Main reason for the all-out Democratic effort: egged on by National Chairman Paul Butler, the Senate Democrats hoped to pass the bill, draw an Eisenhower veto that would, in the power-conscious Northwest, help the campaigns of Oregon's Senator Wayne Morse and Washington's Senator Warren Magnuson.

The Administration's "giveaway" in Hell's Canyon, cried Senate Democrats, would "reverse 50 years of conservation policy." They complained bitterly of Administration pressures against their bill. "The White House," said Wyoming's Senator Joseph O'Mahoney, "is marshaling all the pressure it can" against the bill on the theory that "if the Hell's Canyon bill can be defeated, Wayne Morse can also be defeated." In the end, an almost solid phalanx of Republicans (exceptions: Wisconsin's Alex Wiley and North Dakota's Bill Langer), joined by eight conservative Southern Democrats, struck a blow for President Eisenhower's partnership policy of power development. They defeated the Democratic bill, 51 to 41. Mourned Oregon's Morse: "A tragic blow to the welfare of the nation"--not to mention to the welfare of Wayne Morse.

Even so, it was a big Senate week for welfare. Said Elder Democrat Walter George in an emotion-packed Senate valedictory: "This is the most important question I have ever presented to the American people." George's question was whether the Senate should, in addition to extending basic social-security coverage to 200,000 self-employed people, follow the House in reducing women's retirement eligibility from 65 to 62 and provide benefits to disabled 50-year-olds. The Administration's answer was an emphatic no.

Against Walter George's oratory, his old friend, Virginia's Harry Byrd, presented statistical arguments; e.g., the new disability benefits would cost $850 million the first year. But the Senate had in mind another set of statistics: the votes of 250,000 disabled persons and 800,000 women (to say nothing of wage-earning relatives) who would benefit by the new program. The Senate approved the Democratic amendments for the disabled (47 to 45) and for the ladies (86 to 7). Final vote on the bill: 90 to 0. Confronted by such unanimity, President Eisenhower would think twice about a veto.

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