Down to Business

With the customary portentous warnings, appeals to reason, calls upon Heaven as a witness, and ceremonious threats, the 81st Congress got down to business last week. Members pitched into the presidential legislative hayload, and guessed that about half of it might be enacted. The program had its own special Congressman's nightmare: the thought of raising taxes*raised the hackles on members' necks and troubled their digestions.

Give Him the Simple Life. Oregon's Republican Wayne Morse was the most overwrought Senator of the week. What brought him to his feet was the bill to give the President a raise. "There is entirely too much high living in Washington," he said. He saw a trend, reflected in the President's increased expense account, "resulting in an overemphasis of the social aspects of government service . . . Cocktail parties that cost from $500 to $1,000 should not be considered as being a necessary expense or social obligation of ... public office in this country . . .What Washington D.C. needs is some simple living."

Indiana's ponderous Republican Homer Capehart sensed a "sinister motive" in the bill. Georgia's Democratic Walter George saw nothing sinister about it but slyly suggested: Why not tax such expense allowance? "If the tax is too burdensome," he said, "when the President asks us to raise $4 billion additional taxes, he will have a gentle reminder of what it all amounts to."

After hours of such talk, the Senate passed the salary bill (68 to 9). It was as nice a raise as anyone would get in the U.S. in 1949. The same bill raised the Vice President's and the Speaker's salaries from $20,000 to $30,000, and gave them each $10,000 in tax-free expense money to boot. The House passed the bill this week.

How About the Calliope? Morse, whose hobby is raising horses, was not through trying to hobble the Democrats. He charged in again when Majority Leader Scott Lucas called up a resolution to give Government employees a four-day weekend for the inauguration. The Truman inauguration, he said, was proof of his earlier remarks about extravagance. He lamented: "I wonder what has happened to the word 'economy.' "

Lucas boiled up. Didn't Morse know that a Republican committee, before the November election, had made all the lavish arrangement for the inauguration?

"There are many items which the Democrats have added," Morse persisted. "I call the attention of the Senator ... to the calliope which will tag-end the circus." Morse had the last word, but Government employees got their four-day weekend.

Where Will We Wind Up? On the House side, Republicans were still trying groggily to get on their feet. They heard that Speaker Sam Rayburn, more confident than a lot of others, hoped to have a bill repealing the Taft-Hartley act on the floor by March 1, and would try to give Harry Truman just about everything else he wanted--with the possible exception of the whole $4 billion in new taxes. With tears actually running down his face, one angry and frustrated G.O.P. leader said: "I can't imagine what Sam Rayburn and John McCormack [majority leader] are thinking about. I know they're patriotic, sincere, honest. But how in God's name they can swallow this program is more than I can see. God knows where we'll wind up."

Michigan's Republican Clare Hoffman took some personal fury to the floor. He waved a copy of the Kalamazoo Gazette, which quoted Michigan's Democratic John Lesinski as saying that "Hoffman is a pimp of Joe Stalin." Hoffman complained for 40 minutes before Lesinski got a word in.

When he did, Hoffman was hardly mollified. What he had said, Lesinski explained, was merely that Hoffman "had no more authority than a rabbit" to act as a one-man committee to investigate labor trouble in Michigan. To this Lesinski had added: "That to me is what Mr. Hitler tried to do to the unions in Germany . . . And Mr. Hitler was a pimp of Joe Stalin, a prostitute."

One of the Administration's achievements of the week was to kick Mississippi's ranting John Rankin off the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Administration leaders ruled him off because he was going to be chairman of another committee (Veterans' Affairs)--a technicality specially thought up to get rid of him. Rankin was not surprised. Fortnight ago he grumbled: "The word seems to have come down from Moscow to keep me off." On another technicality (that all committee members be lawyers), Louisiana's F. Edward Hebert, a fellow Dixiecrat of Rankin's, was also unseated. With the Administration so far in charge, the 81st Congress was on its eager way.

* President Truman, who asked for more money from the middle and upper income brackets, defined his terms. The "upper bracket" begins at from $25,000 to $30,000 a year. The middle bracket begins at $6,000.

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