Fair & Warm

On Capitol Hill the foreign-aid climate continued fair and warm last week in the face of stormy world events. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, appearing before a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee in an effort to get back some of the $7.1 million cut by the House from his $199.9 million State Department budget, discovered that there was little need to plead. No less a climatologist than Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson was almost shoving money towards him. "At the moment, our future rests upon the shoulders of the diplomatic corps," said Johnson, who last year led an unmerciful attack on the U.S. Information Agency's $1,400,000 request. "We are facing very real perils. These perils must be reflected in the plans which you are making and which can be carried out only through operating funds provided by the Congress."

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was in the same statesmanlike frame of mind as it considered the $3.2 billion foreign aid authorization bill already passed by the House with only $339 million cut. Certain of the wisdom of continued aid, the committee restored $104 million of the cut. Even that cut was adopted apologetically as a necessary tactic to forestall deeper cuts when the bill hits the Senate floor. To prove good will, the committee even voted to let the President himself decide where the $235 million cut could best be shaved.

In other congressional action last week:

P:Senate and House, by unusual unanimous votes in both houses, approved and sent to the President a conference committee's postal-rate-and-pay bill. The bill would raise salaries for most postal employees 7.5% (compared to the 6% raise Ike asked), would also provide a three-year cost-of-living raise for postal workers in lower civil service grades. To finance the increases, postal rates go up, e.g., on Aug. 1, under the bill, the cost of domestic letters would jump from 3-c- to 4-c-, domestic air mail from 6-c- to 7-c-, postcards from 2-c- to 3-c-. Second-class rates (magazines and newspapers) will rise by steps over a three-year period to a total increase (weighted for content) of 28% for editorial matter and 53% for advertising matter by 1961.

P:The Senate Finance Committee approved (11-4) and sent to the floor the unemployment-compensation bill already passed by the House. The bill extends unemployment benefits half again as many weeks as each state allows, provides that the Federal Government be reimbursed for such payments, gives states the option to accept or decline extended payments.

P:Minnesota's Senators Hubert Humphrey and Edward J. Thye and four Minnesota Congressmen discovered that to return home to Minneapolis as honorary delegates to this week's tenth anniversary session of the World Health Organization they had to be cleared as nonsecurity risks under a 1948 law.

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