A Hash & a Hedge

"This is the day," said Texas' Senator Lyndon Johnson, "that all of us who have fought for national defense have been waiting for." Last week, after months of wearying debate, the Senate finally came to grips with the first two major issues of the 82nd Congress: the extension of the draft bill (due to expire July 9) and the dispatch of troops to Europe. But before the week was out, the Congress seemed on the verge of making a hash out of one and a hedge out of the other.

It had started out auspiciously enough. By an overwhelming 75-to-5 vote,* the Senate not only passed a draft act; it passed a universal military training measure along with it. Recommended in the beginning by George Washington, bitterly opposed by religious leaders, many educators, beaten by every congressional body which had ever considered it, UMT at last had the endorsement of at least one congressional wing.

Measure for the Future. It was not the Senate's idea that UMT would begin to operate immediately. But the Senate, following the recommendations of the Pentagon, would fit UMT into long-term military planning, once the present crisis passed. Then, the measure would require every 18-year-old to take six months' training, sign up thereafter for a choice of standby military duties. On most of the draft bill's other measures, the Senate was also willing to accept the word of the Pentagon. The bill would:

P:Lower the draft age to 18, with only the qualification that local draft boards must induct all available 19-to-26-year-olds first.

P:Raise draftees' service from 21 to 24 months.

P:Give the President authority to defer annually some 75,000 specialized students (to be selected by a civilian board).

P:Allow men between 18-18 1/2 to enlist in the National Guard and Organized Reserves, and be deferred from the draft, until the Defense Secretary decided that those organizations are adequately filled.

Ceiling: 4,000,000. But at that point the Senate began to haggle. The Pentagon wanted no limits on its authority to call up as big an armed force as it might think necessary. In the dark days after the North Korean invasion, Congress had removed all statutory ceilings. But now the Senators were feeling a little more relaxed. They began thinking again about senatorial prerogatives. Wayne Morse of Oregon, nominally a Republican but actually a no-party man, prepared an amendment which would limit current mobilization to 3,500,000--just about the figure the Pentagon had set as its current goal.

The Pentagon violently objected. George Marshall wrote: "A direct gamble with national security . . . The armed forces have never been throttled with a mandatory ceiling in the midst of a period of great emergency." But the Senate was not impressed. It did raise Morse's figure. But at the risk of constricting the armed services at just the moment when they might need to call up more reserves or National Guard divisions, it put a ceiling of 4,000,000 on mobilization plans--and reaffirmed Congress' right to determine the size of the nation's armed forces.

Another Look. Obviously, the Senate was beginning to feel its constitutional oats. Its burgeoning concern for congressional rights also lit up the argument over the resolution on presidential authority to send troops to Europe. The chairmen of two major committees, Texas' Tom Connally (Foreign Relations) and Georgia's Richard Russell (Armed Services), put together a resolution designed to end the Great Debate by giving Senate approval to the Administration program. The Connally-Russell wording simply advised the President, before committing any more troops than the six U.S. divisions now planned, to get an O.K. from the J.C.S. and consult with the appropriate congressional committees.

Non-isolationist Republicans and Southern Democrats, who were for the general idea, suddenly reared back for another look. It was clearly stated in the report on the North Atlantic Treaty that the whole Congress should not be deprived of any power in implementing the pact. The House as well as the Senate should have something to say in the matter.

New Jersey's H. Alexander Smith wrote an amending section which read: "Congressional [meaning Senate and House] approval should be obtained of any policy requiring the assignment of American troops abroad." The committee unanimously voted it out.

Yes--but No. What Smith intended to do, what the committees thought he had done, was to write an amendment merely requiring the House to join in the sentiments of the Connally-Russell sections before the President assigned any troops to Europe beyond the six divisions already scheduled to go. But the result was utter confusion. The Connally-Russell section said yes to the President. The Smith amendment actually said no. The resolution appeared to require congressional approval before the President could send any ground troops at all to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization army.

This week Connally and Russell called their baffled committees together again to try and smother the strange two-headed monster, or at least operate on its extra, nay-saying head. But considerable damage had already been done. The Senate's blooper gave impetus to a new isolationist drive in the House. There, some Republicans talked of attaching to the draft bill a rider limiting the President's power to assign troops to Europe.

The House also cast a jealous eye on the Senate's draft bill. Georgia's Carl Vinson, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, had his own bill which would push UMT off for consideration some time in the future, hold the draft age minimum at 18 1/2. As long as the news from Korea was of victories instead of defeats, the Administration could expect to find hedges that had yet to be hurdled all along the legislative road of its military program.

*The five, all Republicans: Dirksen (Ill.), Jenner (Ind.), Langer (N.Dak.), Schoeppel (Kans.), Welker (Idaho).

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