Dogging Issues

Bags packed and business backlogged. Congress shifted restlessly from foot to foot, waiting to take off on a ten-day Easter recess. Holding the members back: an eleventh-hour squabble between houses over terms of a bill authorizing $275 million in emergency funds for state public-assistance programs. Breaking down their differences--after a threat by Nevada's "Molly" Malone to talk until the snow was nine feet deep on Pennsylvania Avenue--House and Senate finally escaped Washington until month's end.

Three biting issues, aside from budget-cutting, were likely to dog them as they faced constituents. The three and their prospects:

Civil Rights. Though Southern Senators have bottled up legislation for a month in James 0. Eastland's Judiciary Committee, a break is in sight. Last week Senate Minority Leader William Fife Knowland delivered a G.O.P. ultimatum: no out-of-town trips for judiciary members until civil rights reaches the Senate floor. Reacting hastily, the Democratic leadership promised to report out the measure by May 20. Prognosis: after passage in the House and a last-stand Southern filibuster in the Senate, civil rights will be passed this session.

Federal Aid to Education. Though the Eisenhower Administration and schoolminded liberal Democrats have compromised on a bill authorizing $2 billion in aid to states over the next five years, the congressional atmosphere for a school bill is stifling. Not only is New York's Adam Clayton Powell Jr. threatening to tack on again his kiss-of-death integration rider, but congressional budget-cutters are eying with whetted axes the $400 million that would be appropriated for school construction next year. Prognosis: poor, almost hopeless.

Natural Gas. Still blackened and chastened by the explosion over high-pressure lobbying on the gas bill that prompted President Eisenhower to veto their bill last session, congressional Democrats are cautious. Though the President last week endorsed a new bipartisan measure now --, before Congress as agreeing in general "with the criteria that I announced as necessary in a bill which I would approve," Democrats are holding back. Said Acting Majority Leader Mike Mansfield last Week: "There will be no gas bill this time unless and until the President takes and maintains the leadership for it all the way." Prognosis: doubtful.

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