Destination: Nowhere

At halfway point in the second session of the 84th Congress, U.S. Senators and Representatives went home last week for a ten-day Easter recess. While they rested, they could look back on three months of hard work--but no real accomplishment.

Since the session began, the House has passed 305 bills, the Senate has pushed through 424. But most of this action has been a spinning of small wheels. In a recess time summation of the "50 most important bills passed by the Senate," so far, Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson had to pad even that list with essentially trivial legislation, e.g.: "H. R. 3233 ... makes it a federal offense to move across state lines to avoid prosecution or custody for arson."

On routine appropriations the Congress is far ahead of schedule (action was completed last week on the first regular appropriations bill--$3.6 billion for

Treasury, Post Office and Tax Court). But it has acted affirmatively on only one issue of national significance (natural gas regulation), and that bill was vetoed. On the farm issue, after early action was urged by all sides, the Senate carved out a jigsaw puzzle that is being patched in conference and probably faces a veto.

On other major issues--school construction, civil rights, highways, foreign aid, labor and health, etc.--the Congress has not and probably will not accomplish significant results. While a case can be made for the merits of inaction, this was not what the leadership at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue intended.

The situation is not due to a lack of leadership but to some political facts of life. In the G.O.P. ranks on Capitol Hill there is a comfortable feeling that strong coattails will be available in November, and that the presidency is assured for the next four years. In that state of mind, and with only a series of nervous glances over their shoulders at the farm situation, the Middle East and the electrocardiograph, many Republicans prefer not to stir up the voters. The always divided Democrats are split worse than usual. While the division is most dramatically illustrated by the civil rights issue, it goes deep into the basic political cleavage of left and right. Result: no concerted, positive movement on either side of the aisle.

Thus becalmed, the Congress last week: P: Received, from a House civil service subcommittee, a "code of ethics" for federal employees, which Florida's Democratic Representative Charles E. Bennett described as approving gifts like "a sack of potatoes," but not "star sapphires and diamonds."

P: Received, from a Senate subcommittee on juvenile delinquency (Estes Kefauver, chairman), a report declaring that violent movies are potential "triggers" for juvenile delinquency. P: Learned, to its general surprise, that John Maragon, a crony of Harry Truman's cronies who was convicted of perjury in 1951 in connection with the influence-peddling scandals (TIME, Aug. 15, 1949 et seq.), went to work last week as a $1.61-an-hour laborer in the House of Representatives' folding room, where printed matter is made ready for mailing. Pennsylvania's Democratic Representative Herman P. Eberharter said that he had written a letter to the House Democratic Patronage Committee recommending Maragon. Growled Ohio's Republican Representative William H. Ayres: "If the Democratic leadership wants to take care of its ex-convicts this way, there's very little that can be done about it. I suppose we can look for Alger Hiss to be added to the staff of the House Un-American Activities Committee."

P: Approved, in the Senate, and sent to the White House, the bill continuing certain excise and corporation income taxes at their present rates.

P: Approved, in the Senate and the House, and sent to the White House, a conference-tooled bill to launch the $760 million Upper Colorado River development project.

P: Rejected, in the Senate, after six days of debate, a bill to revise the electoral college system of electing the President and Vice President.

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