Exit Gyrating

Grey-haired old Charles Plumley, Vermont's lone Congressman, rose up in the House one day last week to make an announcement. Because of "the alleged scarcity of paper pulp," said Congressman Plumley, he was sending out no Christmas cards this year. And he then & there wished everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. He was cheered to the rafters.*

Such a friendly, nonpartisan act was a rarity in the session's frantic final week. Both parties played furious and sometimes shabby politics. There were parries and thrusts--over the listing of grain speculators (see Investigations), over interim aid for Europe and China, and over inflation controls.

Prodding & Patience. At week's start, the Republicans suffered a serious tactical defeat when they tried, under a gag rule, to ram a token anti-inflation bill through the House. But after House Democrats, in an unusual show of solidarity, had smashed the bill (TIME, Dec. 22), Ohio's Bob Taft did a statesmanlike job of picking up the pieces in the Senate.

Taft prodded the Senate Banking and Currency Committee into quickly reporting out an almost identical measure. It provided for extension of export and transportation controls, and empowered the Administration to limit the use of grain in distilling. It ignored all of President Truman's requests for such heavy weapons as rationing, wage and price controls, compulsory allocations. Allocations could be made only through "voluntary" agreements with industry. This meant, cried Minority Leader Alben Barkley, that the President would have "to go out huckstering among business" to get agreements.

Barkley's amendment authorizing compulsory allocations was beaten down.

With unaccustomed patience, Bob Taft waited out two days of Democratic infighting. In the end, even many Democrats approved the bill, which was sent to the House, by a 77-to-10 vote. House Democrats took another futile try at the Barkley amendment. Finally, 102 of them (and New York's Party-line Vito Marcantonio) lined up with 178 Republicans to pass the bill. Triumphantly, Bob Taft declared: "The President has power today to check nearly all of the principal causes of inflation if he really wishes to do so." This was taken by most Washingtonians in the partisan spirit in which it was offered. Even so--and despite cartoonists' jeers--a start had been made.

Thanks to Taft, Republicans could not be accused of having done absolutely nothing on the inflation front.

Sacred Dance. On interim aid, New York's hot-tempered John Taber, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, caused a gnashing of teeth, even among his fellow Republicans. To go with a $597 million authorization, John Taber brought out an appropriation bill providing actual cash of only $509 million. For France, Austria and Italy, this meant $88 million less than the "irreducible minimum" set by the Administration and approved by the G.O.P. foreign-policy leader, Arthur Vandenberg. For China, which the House had insisted on including among the aid recipients, the Taber bill provided not one cent. The State Department, said John Taber, had not "justified" China's need (see Foreign Relations). For good measure, tight-fisted Mr. Taber wanted a 53% cut (fron; $490 million to $230 million) in the funds requested by the Army to meet occupational expenses in Germany, Austria, Japan, the Ryukyus and Korea. There was little doubt that parts, at least, of all these cuts would eventually be restored.* But, against only desultory opposition on the floor, John Taber readily got the House to approve his recommendations.

This stubborn behavior roused the Republican New York Herald Tribune; it urged House leaders to have their heads examined. Snorted the New York Times: "The most one can say is that they were performing a sort of sacred dance before the altar of what they took to be political expedience. . . . Their gyrations were irresponsible, eccentric and foolish."

In the flurried, waning minutes of the session, the Senate Appropriations Committee repaired some of John Taber's ax-work, boosting interim aid to $570 million, occupation expenses to the original $490 million. When the bill went to conference, the Senate committeemen were adamant on providing something for China. Said one House conferee: "They just sat and looked and waited, and if we hadn't agreed to the China money, we wouldn't have had any Christmas." The weary wrangling ended in the usual compromise: $522 million for France, Italy and Austria, a token $18 million for China, $340 million for the Army. Both Houses approved.

*The "temporary" steel rafters which were installed before the war to buttress a weak roof.

*Congressional Republicans restored another economy cut last week. Last spring they had lopped $30 million off Administration-requested funds for Western reclamation projects. Now they voted $32 million to keep four projects from closing down.

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