Parting Salvos

Despite the Democratic majorities confronting him in Congress in all but the first two years of his Administration, Dwight Eisenhower built up a remarkable record of making his vetoes stick: of his first 143 vetoes. Congress failed to override a single one. Last week, just before he took off for Europe, the President jeopardized his perfect record with Veto No. 144. Turned down: the lardy, $1.2 billion public works bill, more popularly called "the pork-barrel bill." Objected Ike in his veto message: the bill included 67 new projects not listed in his budget. These projects would add only $50 million to outlays in the current budget, but "their ultimate cost wall be more than $800 million. This illustrates how easily effective control of federal spending can be lost."

Some of Congress' top Republicans, including Indiana's House Minority Leader Charles Halleck, advised Ike not to veto the pork-barrel bill, hog-fat as it was. It had passed the House by a voice vote and the Senate by a lopsided 82 to 9, and since it included projects for every state, a lot of Republicans would be tempted to vote to override the veto. Said Iowa's Congressman Ben Jensen, ranking Republican on the Appropriations subcommittee that drafted the measure: "I just can't see how the President could veto this bill." Before boarding his plane at midweek, the President fired several other salvos in his running battle with the Democratic Congress. Items:

BOND INTEREST. Ike warned of "grave consequences" if Congress fails to heed his request for cancellation of interest-rate ceilings on long-term U.S. Government bonds so that the Treasury can float long-term bond issues and shake free of its present instability-fostering reliance on short-term bonds (see BUSINESS).

HOUSING. Risking a veto, the House passed and sent to the White House a $1 billion housing bill, slimmed down from the $1.4 billion housing bill that the President vetoed last July, but still a lot fatter than he wanted. Ike sent Congress a message bluntly announcing that Housing Bill No. 2 had some "seriously objectionable" features. Some Capitol Hill Republicans predicted that Ike would veto the bill, even though it passed by more than the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto: 283 to 105 in the House, 71 to 24 in the Senate.

HIGHWAYS. Along with his housing message, Ike gave Congress notice that he did not like the highway-financing plan just voted by the House Ways & Means Committee, chaired by Arkansas Democrat Wilbur Mills (see below). The committee proposal to boost the federal gasoline tax by 1-c- a gallon to get the nearly stalled federal-state highway program fueled up again was a "step in the right direction," said Ike (he had urged a 1 1/2 increase), but he objected to the proposal to channel about half the revenue from federal taxes on automobiles and parts into the highway trust fund. Transferring that revenue, argued Ike. ''would only shift the fiscal problem from the highway fund to the general fund, which is already in precarious balance.''

On Capitol Hill last week:

P:Congress welcomed its three new members from the 50th state. In the flip of a silver dollar to decide whether Republican Hiram L. Fong, first man of Chinese ancestry to sit in Congress, or Democrat Oren E. Long would rank as Hawaii's senior Senator, Long called heads and lost. In a draw to determine which would get the long term, Fong won again. Over in the House, Democrat Daniel K. Inouye, World War II hero whose right arm was shattered by a German grenade in Italy, took his seat as Hawaii's sole Representative, became the first man of Japanese ancestry to sit in Congress.

P:Three dozen Senators (26 Democrats, 10 Republicans ) joined New York Republican Jacob Javits in sponsoring a resolution declaring it "the sense of the Congress" that the U.S. Government should encourage "in every appropriate way" an American Bar Association plan for "a series of conferences of lawyers from many nations with a view to the strengthening of the rule of law among nations."

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