Men in Motion

The Congress listened with gravity to Harry Truman. Then in some ways (but not in all) it went on being the same old garrulous, partisan Congress. Senators belabored one another over the McCarthy affair. Both houses shuddered at the idea of squeezing out $10 billion more in taxes in an election year.

And members continued to oppose Senator Paul Douglas' dogged efforts to whack some of the pork and patronage out of bureau payrolls, road projects, and reclamation dam plans in its huge ($32.5 billion) omnibus appropriation bill. Illinois' Douglas took his defeats philosophically. At one point when William Langer, standing next to him, was self-righteously arguing for flood control in his state of North Dakota, pumping out his reasons with his right arm, Douglas reached out and grasped Langer's hand and whimsically pumped along with him.

But in matters of national defense, the 81st Congress was a body suddenly galvanized. The President's message had hardly been droned out by the reading clerk when the House passed his $1.2 billion Mutual Defense Assistance Program (the Senate already had). The vote in the House: 362 to one (Vito Marcantonio).

Bills to give Harry Truman far-reaching economic powers were presented to their respective banking and currency committees by South Carolina's Senator Burnet

Maybank and Kentucky's Representative Brent Spence. Said Spence: "I think the people are in a mood to give the President whatever power is needed."

Armed Services Chairmen Tydings (in the Senate) and Vinson (in the House) moved with even greater dispatch. Before the week was out they had slammed through their committees and presented to the Congress two major military bills: one to take the 2,006,000 ceiling off military manpower, the other (immediately passed by the Senate) to extend all enlistments for a period of one year beyond present expiration dates.

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