Rare Teamwork

The Republican congressional leaders had barely drawn their chairs up to the President's desk for their weekly White House legislative conference last week when Dwight Eisenhower issued a warning. The warning: go slow on bills designed to cure the recession with heavy spending; the Democrats are trying to spend too much too soon. Senate Minority Leader William Fife Knowland thought he knew where to begin the slowdown, went back to the Capitol to take aim on a Democratic special: the $1 billion Community Facilities bill designed to pump 3 1/2% loans into worthy town and city public-works projects, which Banking and Currency Committee Chairman J. William Fulbright had reported onto the Senate floor for speedy action. Before the day was done, stolid Bill Knowland's slowdown had rolled into a fast-moving Republican revolt against the well-laid plans of Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Nose Count. Democrat Johnson, leaving early for an Easter vacation on his LBJ ranch in Texas, had put Montana's Mike Mansfield, assistant majority leader, in his chair as straw boss. Johnson also left orders that Bill Fulbright's bill was to be pushed through fast. Mansfield made a try; in the best Johnson tradition he threatened to keep the Senate sitting for as long as necessary to debate and pass the measure. But Bill Knowland's nose count showed that the G.O.P. had votes enough to stall the Fulbright bill at least until after Easter.

Thus fortified, Knowland rose on the Senate floor to move for a fortnight's postponement. Immediately. Straw Boss Mansfield took the floor, moved to table (i.e., kill) Knowland's motion, thereupon brought on a vote. Mike Mansfield's motion lost 41-36 (39 Republicans, plus Virginia's Harry Byrd and Ohio's Frank Lausche. voting against it), with Lyndon Johnson and twelve other sorely needed Democrats absent.

Easy Holdup. Once the Democratic counterattack had been blunted, Republicans opened a cover-fire for Knowland's motion. New Jersey's Clifford Case argued that the Fulbright bill really would provide little new employment in depressed communities and could easily be held up. Illinois' Everett McKinley Dirksen pointed out that immediate Senate action was inconsequential since the House had not even taken up the bill. Colorado's Gordon Allott sniffed that a billion dollars was not to be lightly allocated in the course of one afternoon. Recounting noses, Knowland decided to bring his motion to a vote, carried it by a narrow 41-39.

Mike Mansfield was visibly distressed by the unexpected turn of events. Said he: "I must say that the way of the straw boss is hard. I wish the distinguished minority leader had seen fit to put this power play into operation while the distinguished majority leader was on the floor and in charge." But Mansfield overlooked one point. Republicans, however small their victory, exhibited the tightest White House-to-Senate leadership-to-floor teamwork displayed so far this season.

In other congressional action last week:

P: Senate and House conferees, led by Tennessee's Democratic Senator Albert Gore, ignored a ukase from leaders of both houses, voted to keep provisions against oversized billboards on some 25,500 miles of interstate highways to be built with matching federal funds. As a result, the $7.2 billion highway-construction bill, the first to contain an overall federal anti-billboard policy, was quickly approved by both houses, sent to the President.

P: The House, overriding bitter Southern opposition, approved (272-98) a $750,000 grant to cover initial operating expenses of President Eisenhower's new Civil Rights Commission.

P: House and Senate voted final approval of a $1.5 billion pork barrel rivers-and-harbors authorization bill--with pork fatter by some $34 million in new projects added to the Senate version while the bill was before a conference committee, sent it to the President.

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