The Last Lurch

The U.S. Congress lurched toward adjournment last week, and accomplished precious little on the way. Particularly in the House was there stumbling and indecision and downright irresponsibility. The sorry show reached its climax as the House killed a badly needed national highway construction program.

Ditching the Roads. First, by a 221-to-193 vote, the House defeated the Eisenhower Administration's road-building program, which called for financing the work over the next 30 years by a $21 billion special bond issue ("Bonds for Boulevards," scoffed congressional Democrats). Then the House turned to the plan sponsored by its own Democratic leadership, under which $24 billion would have been spent in 13 years, financed by road-tax increases, on gasoline, diesel fuel, truck tires, etc. Against this bill stood the American Trucking Associations, Inc. and its network of state organizations. The A.T.A. threw only three lobbyists into the fight on Capitol Hill, but its state units had alerted individual trucking lines, large and small. From the truckers themselves came a storm of telephone calls and telegrams (the House Public Works Committee, which handled the bill, got 5,000 wires).

Under such pressure the House collapsed, ditched the road bill 292 to 123. Democratic Floor Leader John McCormack charged out of the chamber sputtering to newsmen: "Everybody wants a road bill, but nobody wants to pay for it."

Working late Saturday night, the House made a show of efficiency by passing 260 bills in a single day. But most of them were private bills, of little significance to anyone but their legislative sponsors and select groups of constituents. Among the measures that might otherwise have been important the House action often came too late to have much current meaning, e.g., the House held up the natural gas regulation bill for months, then passed it at the last moment by a six-vote margin. Then the House leadership was indignant because the Senate decided it had not received the bill in time to act on it this year (Speaker Sam Rayburn kept sending angry little notes to the Senate leaders about the bill).

Delayed by Housing. Despite its stumbling, the Congress might have been able to adjourn last week had it not been for differences between the House and the Senate on the issue of public housing. Early in June the Senate passed a bill calling for up to 135,000 public housing starts during each of the next four years. Late last week the House finally got around to acting; it passed a bill that in effect offered no public housing at all. The two versions went to a House-Senate conference committee, which went to work down in the old Supreme Court chamber.

Before it could adjourn, the Congress had to receive and act upon a report from the conference committee--and the committee was deadlocked. (Said New York's Republican Senator Irving Ives: "We didn't come within gunshot of each other.") That being the case, there was nothing to do but stay in Washington over the weekend and try again this week.

This week, as its record was added up (see box), the first session of the 84th Congress could claim some accomplishments, but it had also compiled a considerable list of wretched failures.

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