Poles Apart

"This bill," said Massachusetts' John Fitzgerald Kennedy one afternoon last week from his outpost in the Senate's rear row, "is little more than a pious admonition of concern." Added Illinois' fatigued and visibly angry Paul Douglas: "The Committee on Finance reported a papier-mache whale." But Democrats Kennedy and Douglas stood virtually alone as they chided the Senate for its low-pressure approach to a watered-down bill for extending unemployment compensation. The bill had already been passed by the House (TIME, May 12) and approved without a comma's change by Harry Flood Byrd's Senate Finance Committee. Last week it was shepherded toward quick passage by Virginia's Byrd himself.

The bill extends unemployment benefits half again as many weeks as each state allows. It requires states to repay within four years such funds advanced by the Federal Government. But it gives the states an option to accept or decline this additional aid. What Kennedy and Douglas were after was a broader measure--mandatory for the states--that revamped basic principles of unemployment compensation by 1) requiring uniform national scales of payment and length of eligibility, and 2) extending benefits to 1,000,000 workers not now covered. Drawled Harry Byrd: "The Senator from Massachusetts is at the North Pole and I am at the South Pole when it comes to the question of concentration of power in the Federal Government."

As the hours went by, the conservative South Pole developed an ever stronger magnetic field. Behind Byrd's bill was a remarkably solid bloc of Republicans and Southern Democrats. Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson pointedly made no effort to use his vote-pulling power on Kennedy's behalf. Moreover, a cluster of liberal Democrats whose votes might have helped were not even in town for the debate, e.g., Tennessee's Albert Gore, who 16 weeks before was lecturing the Senate about the unemployment breadlines back home. And of the liberals on hand, not all sided with Kennedy and Douglas. On the key motion to substitute Kennedy's broad proposals for Harry Byrd's limited aims. Kennedy lost Arizona's Carl Hayden. Alabama's Lister Hill and John Sparkman, Oklahoma Millionaire Robert Kerr and Texas' Ralph Yarborough.

Eventually Kennedy and Douglas lost not only all the skirmishes, but the war itself. After two days' debate, a smiling Harry Byrd accepted handshakes and congratulations as the Senate routinely (80-0) adopted his bill as it had come from committee and sent it off to the White House for signature.

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