"So Much That Baffles"

As the midsummer heat seared Washington, the Congress of the U.S. was overworked, jumpy, restive, turbulent, eloquent, despondent, confused. "We humbly confess," the House chaplain, Rev. Bernard Braskamp, observed in one of his daily prayers, "that in thinking of our days with their mornings and evenings, their problems and tasks, we frequently find so much that baffles and perplexes us." Overhanging the nation's busy lawmakers were two calendar clouds: 1) six weeks hence begin the presidential nominating conventions, and 2) four months hence 35 Senate and all 435 House seats are at stake in the congressional elections.

Biggest item in the Senate last week was foreign aid, handled ineptly by the Republican Administration, defended eloquently -and perhaps decisively -by the Democratic dean of the Senate, Walter George (see below). The Senate reserved its heftiest clouts for Defense Secretary "Engine Charlie" Wilson and, despite his objections, it awarded the U.S. Air Force $960 million the President said he did not want.

The House passed (and privately expected the Senate to kill) a sure-fire election-year special: pensions of $90 a month to veterans of World War I, aged 65 and above. But the congressional action that would have the biggest and most immediate impact on the people of the U.S. (see BUSINESS) was enactment of the historic $33.5 billion federal-state road-building program, signed by the President before leaving Walter Reed Hospital. Starting this week, the U.S. motorist will begin to pay for the unprecedented 41,000-mile project with a tax of one cent more for every gallon of gas, plus a tax on tires that will run around 70-c- a tire for passenger cars.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.