Home Thoughts (Cont'd)

Home Thoughts (Cont'd)

A notably unmelodious voice last week brought cheer to Congressmen sick for home amid the alien corn of Washington.

Except President Roosevelt, no man could predict the magic date of adjournment with more authority than Senate Majority Leader Joseph Taylor Robinson. Last week Senator Robinson clopped out of the President's office, observed: "We want to speed adjournment all we can. Of course, there are several bills still in conference between the Senate and the House for final adjustment, and there are some others that the President would like to see action upon. . . . Under the circumstances I feel we will be fortunate to get through by Aug. 20." Lending weight to the Majority Leader's cautious hint was the fact that President Roosevelt wants to get away to address on Aug. 23 the Young Democrats of America convening in Milwaukee, does not want to leave Congress in session to nip at his fast-flying political heels. It was up to Congress, therefore, to put on its best burst of speed this session if it wanted to be finished by that date. The great bulk of the New Deal program for 1935 last week lay jammed in a bottleneck.

Measures yet to be passed by one or both bodies of Congress: P: The Tax Bill passed the House, got into the Senate Finance Committee (see p. 12).

P: To the House Ways & Means Committee a subcommittee handed, without recommendation, the Coal Stabilization Bill minus the doubtfully constitutional provision for Government purchase of $300,000,000 worth of submarginal coal mines.

P:The Senate Banking & Currency Committee agreed on a "Gold-Clause" Suit Bill rewritten to permit suits filed within six months of the bill's enactment.

P: Already passed by the House, the Federal Alcohol Control Bill was in the hands of the Senate Finance Committee.

P: The Senate bill to put buses & trucks under the Interstate Commerce Commission was passed by the House with minor amendments, sent back to the Senate, which promptly approved the changes, sent the measure to the President for signature.

Measures passed by both houses but still tied up in conference last week:

P: After waiting during the week for the return of South Carolina's "Cotton Ed" Smith, Chairman of the Senate Agriculture & Forestry Committee, from a trip home, conferees on the AAAmendments reached agreement when House members yielded most of the way on two Senate changes.

They consented: to no price fixing except for milk; to recovery suits by processing tax payers who had not passed their taxes back to farmers or along to consumers-- decision as to whether the taxes had been passed along to be left to the Commissioner of Internal Revenue.

P: TVAmendments conferees were reported ''about half through" their work, with no major disagreements in prospect.

P: Having been agreed for some time on a partial report covering all other features of the Social Security Bill, conferees recessed until this week to await completion of a complex compromise aimed at breaking their long deadlock on the Senate's amendment permitting private old-age pension systems.

P: The Banking Bill conference got off to an unpromising start when Senate conferees devoted most of their first session to belaboring House Conferee Thomas Alan Goldsborough. In the House early last week Maryland's Goldsborough blustered that in rewriting the Banking Bill as it passed the House, Senator Glass and his subcommittee had been dominated by sinister "influences"--namely "Wall Street" and "the great New York bankers." Four of the six Senate conferees promptly refused to sit with him until he should retract his slur. Thereupon Representative Goldsborough uprose in the House, crawfished as follows: "Of course I was discussing issues and not personalities. ... I desire to say that I intended no reflection on the high patriotism, absolute integrity and high purpose of any member of the United States Senate."

P: When Congressional committees sit in executive session, no outsiders are supposed to be present. Twice last fortnight Senator Wheeler and Representative Rayburn, nominal authors of the Public Utility Bill and enthusiastic champions of its "death sentence" clause for certain holding companies, took to conference with them PWA Counsel Benjamin Victor Cohen, young Roosevelt legalite and actual co-author of the bill. Twice that fiery little "death sentence" hater, Representative George Huddleston of Alabama, balked at the presence of a Presidential spokesman, broke up the conference by stomping out in the company of two Republican colleagues.

Apparently Representative Huddleston was playing right into the hands of the Administration, generally regarded as stalling for time in the expectation that dirt on the Power lobby turned up by the Senate investigating committee would persuade Representatives to change their minds about the "death sentence." Last week the Administration put its theory to a test when Representative Rayburn moved that the House instruct its conferees to accept the "death sentence." Thereupon the House showed itself totally unimpressed by Senator Black's dirt, gave Administration hopes and prestige a mighty clout. Having originally rejected the "death sentence" on a teller vote by 216-10-146, Representatives now went on record against it by 210-10-155. Swiftly Representative Huddleston clinched his victory by getting the House (183-10-172) to authorize its conferees to exclude all outsiders from the conference. Routed, the Administration faced a clear choice between a utility bill without a "death sentence" or no bill at all.

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