Sunshine & Battle Cloud

Flailing about in the dust and clamor of the great Battle of the Budget last May, the House assaulted the Administration's defense request.with meat axes, lopped off some $2.5 billion. Half that total was made up of mere bookkeeping switches that Dwight Eisenhower was willing to accept, but he argued hard with congressional leaders to get back the other $1.2 billion that cut painfully into the Pentagon's 1958 spending plans. Last week, with economy fervor on Capitol Hill somewhat faded, the Senate undid most of the House's damage. The Senate Appropriations Committee voted out a $34.5 billion defense bill restoring $970 million --85%--of the real meat the House had chopped off. Prospect: passage by the full Senate this week, followed by a compromise measure a lot closer to the Senate's version than to the House's.

The Senate also undid another of the House's heat-of-battle deeds--the vote last May to kill off the Soil Bank's acreage reserve at the end of 1957. A Senate-House conference settled last week on an agriculture appropriations bill that included $500 million to carry the acreage reserve through 1958.

But just as the Administration was basking in this new after-the-battle calm, an ominous cloud of another color scooted across the horizon. Heart of the Eisenhower foreign policy is the foreign aid bill that sets up a long-term economic Development Loan Fund for providing loans to underdeveloped countries. Last month the Senate voted resounding endorsement (57-25) for the plan. Last week the House Foreign Affairs Committee turned thumbs down on the Administration request, insisted on sticking with the year-to-year tradition, and recommended a $400 million slash below the $3.6 billion the Senate had authorized to get the fund going. Congressional leaders expect the full House to go along with the committee.

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