About-Face

Three days after it had marched up the hill to spear the President's request for authorization of a long-term foreign-aid development fund, the House Foreign Affairs Committee did an abrupt about-face last week, marched back down again to approve the bill 17-10.

Pivot of the turnabout was Arkansas' hardworking, international-minded Brooks Hays, whose plight showed how personal pressures and preoccupations can affect the voting of even a highly conscientious legislator. Hays had been so busy with the unfamiliar duties and responsibilities of his new post as lay president of the Southern Baptist Convention that he could find little time to do his homework on the new foreign-aid program. On the committee's first go-round, he instinctively voted against a sharp departure from Congress' customary practice of year-to-year authorizations for foreign aid. But Hays felt uneasy about his vote. On his weekend, he read up on the advantages of a long-range fund: e.g., a three-year authorization, in place of the usual one-year program, would be more efficient, less expensive and would encourage underdeveloped countries to undertake sound, well-planned projects.

Back to the committee room went Brooks Hays, convinced that his first vote was wrong. He moved for reconsideration, got new help from members who had been absent from the first meeting, and emerged with a committee vote recommending the development fund (already approved by the Senate) to the full House.

Also last week in Congress:

P:The Judiciary Committees of both Houses rushed through an Administration "must" bill to ease the effect of the Supreme Court's Jencks case ruling that defendants have a right to inspect FBI files relating to testimony by a Government witness (TIME, June 17)--a decision that, said Attorney General Herbert Brownell, had brought about "a serious crisis in law enforcement." Under the Administration measure, the trial judge would examine the FBI material requested by the defense, turn over only the parts he considers relevant.

P:The Senate, after voting down cuts proposed by Illinois' left-wing Democrat Paul Douglas and Idaho's right-wing Republican Henry Dworshak, unanimously approved a $34.5 billion defense appropriation--virtually all, except for bookkeeping shifts, that the Administration had asked for.

P:The House scheduled a vote this week on what Speaker Sam Rayburn calls "the Bow thing," a resolution, fostered by Ohio Republican Frank T. Bow, calling upon the Administration to scrap its status-of-forces agreements (TIME, June 17) with foreign countries. Ohio's Bow, who has made a career out of attacking status-of-forces pacts, got his resolution through the House Foreign Affairs Committee by an 18-to-8 vote, and will very likely get it through the full House. But the Senate, asking a dim view of House meddling with the Senate's business of treaties, is expected to bury "the Bow thing" deep.

P:The House Republican leadership polled G.O.P. House members, reported that they are overwhelmingly opposed to a major Administration proposal: federal aid for school construction.

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