More of Everything

In his protean efforts to quell inflation without raising taxes, Lyndon Johnson is getting no help at all from the Congress his party dominates. Indeed, Capitol Hill's prodigal mood can only intensify the pressure on an already overstrained economy.

When the President complained about the congressional spending spree to Everett Dirksen, the Senate minority leader gave him some blunt advice: "You've lectured the business commu nity, you've lectured the grocers, and you've lectured the housewives. You've lectured everyone but the right crowd --the members of your own party."

Homilies Ignored. Actually, the President has been pressuring and preaching to congressional Democrats for quite a while, but the congregation has largely ignored his homilies. Last week the House passed an Agriculture Department appropriation bill, 366 to 23, that included $141 million more for the school-lunch and milk programs than the President had requested. Then the House Appropriations Committee added an extra $489 million to the bill funding Labor and Health, Education & Welfare programs. The Senate approved a military authorization measure containing $243 million for weapons projects that the Defense Department does not want. And the House Armed Services Committee voted an unrequested military pay increase of $357 million a year.

Congress' recalcitrance is not difficult to fathom. An election year is not the most opportune time to cut such popular programs as school-lunch subsidies. One reduction proposed by the Administration was aid to "impacted areas"--school districts with heavy concentrations of federal employees. Since 317 of the 435 congressional districts benefit from this assistance, it was no surprise that the House Appropriations

White House's $183 million budget item.

Penurious Pockets. Adding to the mutinous mood is the suspicion that Johnson knew very well Congress would not make these cuts, that he cunningly saddled them with the onus of expanding his budget. In addition, the very majorities that gave Johnson his great legislative victories in 1965 have erased the penurious pockets of resistance to federal spending, notably on the House Appropriations Committee.

That committee's only notable cut in the Labor-HEW measure last week was the unkindest: it eliminated $31 million sought by the President for his cherished proposal to create a national Teachers Corps to work in high-poverty areas. The move reflected a widespread sentiment in Congress that economies, if any, should trim the new Great Society ventures rather than successful existing programs. Even the President's major congressional victory of the week, the Senate's grudging passage of a minuscule $12 million appropriation to launch a Great Society rent-subsidy program, was achieved only with herculean effort. Part of a $2.8 billion supplemental appropriations bill for this fiscal year, the rent scheme met determined resistance from Republicans, who argued that it would inevitably require far more than the initial seed money, and from Southern Democrats, who feared it would lead to further racial integration.

Operation Igloo. The rent program has had rocky going right from the very beginning. Intended to help handicapped, low-income and other needy families pay their rent in nonprofit private housing, the scheme was authorized last summer by Congress, which thereupon withheld the appropriations to get it started. This year, House Republicans mounted a bruising floor fight and barely failed to scuttle the rent-subsidy funds; last week, in the Senate Appropriations Committee, Republicans and Southern Democrats succeeded in eliminating them.

When the bill reached the Senate floor, the Democratic leadership had to fight desperately to restore the $12 million. They finally eked out a 46-to-45 victory. The Administration resorted to some arduous logrolling, as with "Operation Igloo" involving Alaska Democrat E. L. ("Bob") Bartlett, who was craftily withholding his support for rent subsidies. Just as he hoped, Bartlett suddenly received promises that the Administration would arrange loans for Eskimos, Aleuts and Indians living in Alaska's remote Arctic regions--a pet project on which he had hitherto received not a scintilla of White House encouragement. After voting for rent subsidies, Bartlett confessed: "I'm not proud of myself. It's not the kind of thing I normally do."

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