He Shouldn't Be There&3151;And He Wasn't

After months of grumbling about his free spending and high living, the U.S. House of Representatives last week got around to doing something about Harlem Democrat Adam Clayton Powell Jr. The House cut Adam's allowance.

The House was not so much interested in the fact that Powell had been a brazen junketeer at public expense, billed the Government for umpteen trips to his beach home in Puerto Rico, put his wife on a $13,000 secretarial salary, and sharply increased the spending of the Education and Labor Committee, of which he is chairman. What really bugged the boys was Powell's defense--he insisted that he had only done "what every Congressman does," and he castigated his critics as being anti-Negro.

Worse Than Flu. This was too much.

The House Administration Committee met to consider Powell's request for $697,000 to run his committee for the next two years. Powell, as usual, was not in Washington. He had last been noted there on Feb. 26, when he bounced into a subcommittee meeting with a complaining quip: "I shouldn't be here. I have the Asian flu--or should I call it the Afro-Asian flu?" With Powell away, the House Administration Committee recommended that Powell should not have a two-year allotment at all. It would give him just $200,000 for the first year--a cut of some 40%. He would have to come back, hopefully chastened, for the second-year funds.

The committee also recommended a rare restriction on how the $200,000 could be used. Normally, House chairmen dispense committee funds pretty much at their own discretion. But Powell was told that $150,000 must be allocated in equal shares to six subcommittees, whose chairmen would supervise its spending. Thus Powell himself could control only a piddling $50,000, which would hardly keep him in swimsuits. If nothing else, the cutback would surely curtail a mysterious "committee investigative task force" that operates out of a downtown federal building in Washington on projects so secret that only Powell seems to know what they are. He had requested $101,000 for this force alone.

Nary a Nay. At midweek the committee's recommendations hit the House floor amid warnings that Powell's friends would arise to defend his reputation--and his funds. California Democrat James Roosevelt, as Powell's defender, had asked for two hours of debate time. But Roosevelt took the floor only to announce that "unfortunately, the chairman of the committee is ill today with influenza and cannot be here." The statement drew hoots of laughter from both sides of the House chamber.

Within 30 minutes the fiscal strings were applied to Powell on a voice vote that brought nary a nay. Roosevelt then rose to add: "In view of the action just taken by the House, there does not seem to be much point in continuing this particular discussion." He merely inserted in the record a mild defense of the Education and Labor Committee, of which he is a member. Neither he nor anyone else in the House had a kind word for Powell.

Whether ill or merely ill at ease, Powell meanwhile was consoling himself in Puerto Rico's sunshine. If he follows past practice, he will turn in a chit for Government reimbursement of his transportation costs.

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