Balance Tipped

By an odd twist of Senate cloakroom politics, two far-apart issues--Negroes' civil rights in the South and federal power policies in the Northwest--got linked together on Capitol Hill last week, with surprising results.

Public-power and private-power advocates have quarreled and quibbled for a decade over whether the Federal Government should 1) build a power dam in mile-deep Hells Canyon on the Northwest's Snake River, or 2) let the privately owned Idaho Power Co. do the job. The issue seemed settled last year when the Senate scotched, 51 to 41, a Democratic bill authorizing a federal Hells Canyon dam costing upwards of $300 million. Idaho Power, which got the required licenses from the Federal Power Commission in 1955, went ahead with plans to build three smaller dams on the Snake at no cost to the nation's taxpayers.

But an Office of Defense Mobilization decision to grant Idaho Power a multimillion-dollar fast write-off tax break on the Snake River project (TIME, May 13) started the issue sizzling again. Encouraged, Northern Democrats in the Senate revived their Hells Canyon bill, although the federal dam it called for would flood Idaho Power's three dam sites.

Southern Democrats, desperate for support against a Republican move to put the House's civil rights bill on the Senate calendar, offered Northern Democrats a swap: vote with us to send the civil rights bill to the Southern-dominated Judiciary Committee, and we'll vote with you on Hells Canyon.

Though the Southerners failed to wangle any commitments, five Northern Democrats known as champions of both civil rights and public power did vote against the plan to bring the civil rights bill directly to the floor, bypassing the Judiciary Committee.*Southerners were grateful for the help--and sore at the Republicans for outmaneuvering them. So five Southern Democrats who voted against the Hells Canyon bill a year ago (Mississippi's Eastland, North Carolina's Ervin, Louisiana's Long, Georgia's Russell, Florida's Smathers) turned around and voted for it. That tipped the balance: the Hells Canyon bill passed, 45 to 38.

As gallery spectators cheered--a rare event in the Senate--Northern Democrats, milled about in handshaking, back-slapping merriment because they believe they have a big issue in public power. But the rejoicing was premature. It was doubtful whether the bill could get by the House. If it did, it would still have to get by the President--and insiders firmly predicted an Eisenhower veto.

Last week the Senate also:

P: Noted with approval Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson's announcement that, in keeping with a White House request, he would help set up a bipartisan senatorial panel to consult with the Administration on the five-nation disarmament talks in London. The Senators appointed, said Texas Democrat Johnson, would go to London "at any time the President deems it essential."

P: Listened quite patiently as Democrat Paul Douglas, whose home state of Illinois ranks No. 1 in corn production, urged a congressional joint resolution "designating the golden corn tassel as the floral emblem of the U.S." In support of his proposal--duly referred to James O. Eastland's Judiciary Committee--Douglas read a sort of poem written by the late Edna Dean Proctor:

The arbutus and the goldenrod The heart of the North may cheer And sunflower, cactus and poppy To sierra and plain be dear, And jasmine and magnolia The crest of the South adorn; But the wide Republic's emblem Is the bounteous, golden Corn.

The House:

P: Extended for one year, by a lopsided vote of 344 to 7, the Administration's authority to sell farm surpluses to friendly foreign countries on easy terms.

P: Voted, in the Appropriations Committee, to give Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield $133 million of the extra $149 million he insisted he needed (over and above the $3.2 billion originally budgeted) to run the Post Office in 1958.

*Oregon's Wayne Morse announced his misgivings about upsetting usual Senate procedure. The other four Democrats: Washington's Warren Magnuson, Montana's James Murray, Montana's Mike Mansfield, and Massachusetts' John Kennedy.

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