Hit or Strike Out

"Congressional courtesy" is a code under which an insult can only be hurled if it is politely wrapped and properly addressed. Last week the House of Representatives found it hard to stay within the code. Rumple-haired Al Engel of Michigan sputtered: "The rules prevent me from saying what I would like to say with regard to the delays in the other body."

"It is high time that the House asserted itself," added Michigan's angry John Dingell. "They [the Senators] have had two strikes already. Now force them to hit or strike out." The trouble with the Senate, he added, was its addiction to "bowing and talking about nothing."

What had House tempers on edge last week was the Senate's quibbling, frustrating delays over the 1950 budget.

It had been years since appropriations had been in such a sorry shape. Though the House had whipped through all its major money bills by mid-April, the Senate had dawdled for months, still had $29 billion--almost three-fourths of the budget--to approve. Twice the House had extended the time limit. Last week, after venting its spleen, the House voted another extension rather than risk the alternative : payless paydays for some 2 1/2 million federal employees.

At week's end Majority Leader Scott Lucas warned Senators that the Administration was going to keep them at their homework "even if we have to stay in Washington until Thanksgiving time."

Last week the Senate:

P: After a brisk skirmish, confirmed Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark 73 to 8, unanimously approved the nomination of Senator J. Howard McGrath to succeed Clark as Attorney General.

P: Turned down one of Harry Truman's prize reorganization plans, to create a tenth Cabinet post and a new Department of Welfare, principally on the grounds that politically ambitious Federal Security Administrator Oscar Ewing would get the job and use his Cabinet rank to push his ideas on national health insurance.

P: Amended the internal revenue laws so that the names of all citizens whose salaries are more than $75,000 a year would no longer be made public.

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