Revenge

One of the best ways to stir up a Congressman is to reject or to cut the appropriations he wants. In this session of Congress no one has refused and cut more than crusty old (76) Clarence Cannon, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Last week the House cut back at Missourian Cannon.

The Open Rule. The ringleader was Michigan's Democratic Representative Louis Rabaut, a man with a special grudge. As the head of an appropriations subcommittee on public works for the Eastern U.S., Rabaut had seen his recommendations junked by Cannon, who autocratically rewrote the bill.

But Rabaut had plenty of eager help. Cannon had particularly annoyed many another Congressman by refusing to move quickly in providing pay-raise funds for committee staff members and other House employees. This annoyance turned to fury last week when Cannon wrote into the catchall supplemental appropriations bill a sentence giving immediate pay raises to some of his own committee staffers-but to no others.

Before the supplemental appropriations bill could go to the House floor, it had to pass through the powerful Rules Committee, which was still waiting for a pay raise for its own employees. Since nearly every appropriations bill goes against some House prohibition, e.g., appropriations bills cannot contain substantive legislation, it has long been the custom for the Rules Committee to set terms under which points of order are waived during floor action. But not this time: the Rules Committee coldly sent Clarence Cannon's bill to the House under a wide-open rule, placing it at the mercy of every point of order that might be raised.

"I Concede." On the House floor Louis Rabaut was waiting. Against nearly every clause of the supplemental appropriations bill Rabaut raised a point of order. But Clarence Cannon, who has a notoriously low boiling point (he has been in fistfights with other Congressmen time and again), remained cool. "I concede the point of order," he said repeatedly. His reason: Cannon figured that he could show up the Rules Committee's petty vengeance by letting it result in the death of badly needed appropriations. With Rabaut objecting and Cannon agreeing, out went money for agricultural conservation. Out went funds for the Farmers Home Administration, for the Small Business Administration, for military construction and public works. Out went an appropriation for new headquarters for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Item after item was killed, until only $222 million (or about one-eighth) was left in the bill that had originally appropriated $1,648,876,128. The members of the House sat happily watching the slaughter; general feeling was that it could hardly be happening to a more deserving guy than Cannon or a more deserving committee than Rules. Besides, the Representatives all knew that the Senate would restore the cuts.

Despite this indulgence in revenge, the Congress 'did manage to get some work done last week. Items:

P: By a 251-to-123 vote, the House appropriated $2.6 billion for Mutual Security. But angry Congressmen slashed $420 million from requested funds for military aid. The cut came after the Defense Department and Foreign Operations Administration, finding themselves with $420 million left over from previous appropriations, rushed to tie up the money before the end of the fiscal year instead of returning it to the Treasury.

P: Out of the House Public Works Committee came a twelve-year, $48 1/2 billion U.S. highway construction program, which would be the biggest in the nation's history. Under the bill, much of the program would be financed by increasing the taxes against highway users, e.g., the federal gasoline tax would go up to 3-c- from the present 2-c-. The Administration (although it still prefers a bond issue) has, through Treasury Secretary George Humphrey, already approved the principle of increasing the user taxes. The Senate is still working on a highway program that would be paid for by outright federal appropriations.

P:The House shouted through a resolution asking the President to "take all necessary and proper steps to bring about an invitation to Spain to become a party to the North Atlantic Treaty and a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization."

P: The Senate unanimously adopted a resolution to "proclaim the hope that the peoples who have been subjected to the captivity of alien despotisms shall again enjoy the right of self-determination."

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