Steady as She Goes

The most remarkable and reassuring sound in Washington was the new, statesmanlike voice of the U.S. Congress.

Back in March, the Capitol rang with feverish cries for damn-the-deficits measures to end the recession. Texas' Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson, galloping into the leadership vacuum created by the White House's late-winter indecisions, loomed tall in the saddle at the head of the Democratic antirecession troops. The Capitol's leaderless Republicans milled about restively. Pundits predicted that a tax-cut epidemic would break out on Capitol Hill, and the Administration's foreign aid and reciprocal trade bills seemed doomed to hatcheting.

Lazy Fly. But last week a mood of coolheaded, steady-as-she-goes conservatism prevailed on Capitol Hill. The most striking evidence was the way House Democratic leaders received the tax proposal sent up by President Eisenhower (TIME, June 2). With the recession apparently bottoming out and Budget Director Maurice Stans promising a deep-red budget, the President had adopted Treasury Secretary Robert Anderson's tough-minded case for standing pat on taxes (see box, next page). All that Ike asked Congress to do was extend for another year, at present rates, the corporation and excise taxes now scheduled to shrink back to pre-Korea size on July 1.

House Speaker Sam Rayburn fielded this supposed hot potato with the calm of an old pro outfielder gathering in a lazy fly. Said Mr. Sam, with Ways & Means Committee Chairman Wilbur Mills at his elbow: "We are in accord with the President's suggestion that there be no decrease in existing taxes this year." Mills promptly got Ike's proposal reported out of his committee intact.

Grass-Roots Sentiments. Congress' new mood showed across a whole spectrum of issues. Items:

P: The Senate passed an unemployment compensation bill so tightfisted that Illinois Democrat Paul Douglas dubbed it "the leaning tower of nothingness."

P: The House was in no hurry at all to take up the Senate-passed bill to ladle out $1 billion in easy-term loans for local public works. Nor was there any audible clamor for overriding the President's rivers and harbors pork-barrel veto or for drawing up any new public-works programs.

P: Foreign aid looked like easy sailing; the Administration's $3.9 billion authorization bill had cleared the House and the key Senate committee with surprisingly light nicks. And opposition to the reciprocal trade bill, scheduled for debate in the House this week, eased up. If Congressional outcries against Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson died away, and the President's veto of the Democratic farm bill was almost sure to stand.

P: A measure that only recently seemed an election-year impossibility seemed possible: a meaningful law to clean up corruption and thug rule in labor unions.

What brought on Congress' mood? Partly it was the good sense of Congress. Partly it was the firmed-up leadership lately shown by President Eisenhower. Partly it was the voice of the people: during their Easter recess (TIME, April 21) members of Congress heard unexpected grass-roots sentiments that many a Democratic state Governor had already detected, e.g., wariness toward tax cuts, disgust at the mud dredged up by the McClellan committee's labor investigation, widespread if reluctant acceptance of foreign aid as a cold-war necessity.

And partly it was the sheer weight of fact: farm prosperity, signs that the recession is easing, realization that the Government faces a deficit of $10 billion or more in the fiscal year ahead, overseas rumblings showing that 1958 is no year to retreat toward isolationism by building higher tariff fences and slashing foreign aid. After pondering the facts, plus the sentiments of the voters back home, many a congressional man in motion switched direction to follow his followers.

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