Work Done

With the McCarran bill out of the way and the rest of its major chores all but completed, Congress was fidgety and anxious to be off for home and the hustings. But nobody dared leave until Harry Truman had made up his mind whether to veto of sign the anti-Communist bill; unless Congress is in session ten days after the bill goes to the White House, the President could quietly smother it to death with a pocket veto./- Between fidgets last week, the Congress:

P: Received from the President a plan to create a new Civil Defense Agency, charged with coordinating state and local defenses against atomic attack.

P: Learned that Senate-House conferees had agreed to the main provisions of the $4.5 billion tax-increase bill, were still trying to decide whether to impose a retroactive excess-profits tax this year (as the House wanted) or to put it off until next year (as the Senate did).

P: Heard that conferees had, also, agreed on a $17 billion supplementary appropriation, mostly for defense of the U.S. and its allies; had disagreed on a Senate-sponsored amendment forbidding economic (but not military) help for any Marshall plan nation exporting strategic materials to Communist nations.

The Senate:

P: Confirmed (42-22) the nomination of New York's ex-Mayor Bill O'Dwyer as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico.

P: Heard its foreign relations committee recommend contempt citations against three key witnesses who refused to talk about Communist associations during the McCarthy hearings. The three: ex-U.S. Communist Boss Earl Browder, Commie Angel Frederick Vanderbilt Field, ex-Editor Philip Jaffe of Amerasia.

The House:

P: Heard the Un-American Activities Committee recommend that the pinko National Lawyers Guild be added to the Attorney General's subversive list as an agent of the Soviet Union and that its 3,891 members be forbidden to work for the U.S. Government.

/- A device Harry Truman has never used on any major legislation.

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