New Game

"It's always been easy to kick Mississippi," noted an Administration aide. "But this is a new ball game." Just how new, Northern Congressmen discovered last week as the House began debate on the Johnson Administration's 1966 civil rights bill, the third such measure in as many years and the first to take aim at discrimination against Negroes in the North.

The stumbling block to many Northerners was the bill's Title 4, which was originally intended to outlaw racial discrimination in the sale and rental of all housing. To gain support from hesitant Congressmen, Administration strategists agreed to amendments in the Judiciary Committee that would exclude owner-occupied dwellings of four units or fewer--more than 60% of the nation's residential housing. Though still not enough of a concession for many of the bill's opponents, it was far too much for militant civil rights supporters.

Favorable Atmosphere. The bill nonetheless cleared its first hurdle last week, when the House voted 200 to 180 to pry it out of Howard Smith's Rules Committee. In what may have been his valediction, Smith, 83, who was defeated in a primary upset last month, movingly complained that his colleagues were panicking as a result of Negro riots in the big-city ghettos. Said he: "Now we come here with mobs in the streets, with further mob violence threatened, and no word is spoken of courage to defend the American way of Government." The House gave the venerable Virginian a standing ovation--then voted against him.

Though some opponents fear that open-housing will bring Negroes into the suburbs, none of the 17 states or 34 cities that have open-housing laws--several of them far more stringent than the Judiciary Committee's bill--have experienced a noticeable change in housing patterns as a result. All the same, the Administration believes that even the watered-down bill would create an atmosphere unfavorable to discrimination. More important, the law would be a symbol of progress to ghetto Negroes. Already, warned Roy Wilkins, executive director of the N.A.A.C.P., "a large segment of Negro and white Americans is jeering at the legislative approach to civil rights. A failure by the House to take effective action for fair housing will increase skepticism among more sober citizens as well."

Odd Alliance. As the House began debate on civil rights, the Senate finished debate on foreign aid--all but eviscerating the Administration's program. Assisted by Chairman William Fulbright, who turned against his Foreign Relations Committee's own bill, an assortment of doves, hawks, fiscal conservatives, unreconstructed Lyndon haters and those who simply doubt that aid is what it used to be formed a strange alliance to gut the perennially unpopular economic aid appropriation.

The Administration's request--lowest ($2.4 billion) submitted in any year since the foreign aid program was begun 18 years ago--was cut by $409 million; loan terms were tightened; and authorizations, except for the Alliance for Progress, were kept to one year. The House had given the Administration most of what it asked; the measure will now go to a Senate-House conference committee, which will probably split the differences and give the Administration a bill slightly more to its liking.

In other anti-Administration actions, the Senate:

> Made a similarly hefty dent in the military aid bill, companion measure to the economic bill, cutting by $125 million the Administration's $917 million request. Some $636 million in military aid for South Viet Nam, included in the defense-appropriations bill, was not affected.

>Chided, in bipartisan debate, Richard Helms, the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency, for writing a letter to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat applauding its editorial criticism of Fulbright's stand in last month's Senate hassle over the CIA. Helms promptly apologized to Fulbright by telephone and, as a peace offering, made a personal appearance before Fulbright's committee.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.