Frustration

The second session of the Democratic 87th Congress was seven months and four days old. From John F. Kennedy's point of view it had accomplished almost nothing, and was not likely to improve on that record. Frustrated and disappointed, but determined to get political ammunition if not action, the President was still calling on the Congress to get to work.

Of a great spate of Administration-sponsored bills, only one of any substance has been passed so far by both houses--a measure to provide job retraining for unemployed workers. Aside from that, almost all the Administration's highly touted proposals are either dead or dying --medicare, a Cabinet-level Department of Urban Affairs, farm program, tax revision. Realistically, about the best the President can hope for from now on is favorable action on his expanded foreign trade program, and on a foreign aid bill of sorts.

With this state of affairs fairly obvious to all, the President last week met with Democratic congressional leaders and presented them with a list of ten "must" measures to be passed before session's end. Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen allowed that Congress would still be working in October if the must list were really pushed. "Is he kidding?" asked Dirksen. As if to prove that someone is certainly kidding, the main item of congressional business at week's end was the resumption of a filibuster by a group of Senate Democratic liberals against an Administration bill to set up a corporation to develop and operate a space-satellite communications system.

Nowhere was the Democratic Administration's problem with the Democratic Congress more evident than in its continuing hesitation about asking for a quick tax cut this year. All week long, Administration stalwarts testified on the issue before Capitol Hill committees. When the various statements and opinions were compared side by side, they did not seem to agree with one another, but then they did not really seem to disagree either. New York's Republican Senator Jacob Javits, who favors a cut now to pep up the economy, hooted that the President has shown "agonizing indecisiveness."

Frustration is a better word. Relaxing at week's end in Maine, Kennedy could not forget that the 87th has already made a shambles of his program. Astute politician that he is, he knew that the question whether there would be a tax cut was not in his power of decision. That power rested with the stalemated, defiant Congress. And in that Congress it is actually the veteran Democratic leaders who have been most effective in their opposition to the New Frontier's proposals.

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