The Prospects for '62

Representatives and Senators gathering for this week's opening of the 87th Congress. Second Session, found the Capitol Hill landscape somewhat rearranged. The giant new $100 million House office building, only a web of rusty girders when Congress adjourned last September, was resplendent in a coat of white Georgia marble, though it will not be ready for occupancy for at least another year. New parapet lights illuminated the ornate designs on the Senate's arched ceiling, which have generally been shrouded in darkness since Constantino Brumidi painted them nearly a century ago. Space inside the reconstructed east front of the Capitol has been used to give both House and Senate large, tastefully appointed new dining rooms, along with several dozen handsome hideaways for high-seniority Congressmen.

But the membership of the Congress has not changed--and neither has its temper. That fact can only spell trouble for President Kennedy's domestic legislative program. "We look and we look," says a top Kennedy aide, "but it's hard to see much daylight anywhere."

Scratch & Claw. The Senate, with 64 Democrats and 36 Republicans, is likely to go along with the President on most issues, just as it did in 1961. The House is a different matter. There, though Demo crats ostensibly outnumber Republicans 263 to 174, power is actually divided be tween a conservative coalition of about 180 Republicans and Southern Democrats and about 180 members who can be expected to go along with most Administration proposals. That leaves some 70-75 "uncommitted" members among whom the Administration must scratch and claw to put together a winning margin. In 1962, collecting those uncommitted votes will be even more difficult than last year, since nearly all Congressmen report that during their adjournment-period visits back home they found great popular sup port for President Kennedy but little enthusiasm for his domestic programs.

The change in House leadership caused by the death of Speaker Sam Rayburn is another complicating factor. With Mister Sam gone, much of his power is bound to be claimed by the House committee chairmen, whose patriarchal views and parochial interests generally reflect conservative tendencies. Virginia Democrat How ard Smith, chairman of the Rules Committee, is certain to stand in the way of Administration programs. Missouri's Clarence Cannon, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, last week announced, even before he knew what was in Kennedy's budget, that he intended to cut it.

Of all the chairmen, the one whose support Kennedy most vitally needs is Arkansas' Wilbur Mills. It is Mills's Ways & Means Committee that must pass on at least three major items in the Administration's legislative package: liberalized foreign trade, medical care for the aged, and interim tax revision. Although Mills personally favors freer foreign trade, he is under heavy pressure from protectionists back home, and the extent to which he will support the Administration is problematical. Mills goes along with tax revision, but is in flat opposition to President Kennedy's medical-care plan.

The specific prospects for the 1962 legislative year:

FOREIGN TRADE is the issue on which the Kennedy Administration plans to make its hardest fight. The line-up of the House Ways & Means Committee is generally favorable, thanks to Sam Rayburn's longtime insistence that any Democrat named to the committee be for liberalized foreign trade. But the House as a whole is far less friendly to liberalized trade, and special-interest groups, ranging from wheat farmers to glass blowers, are preparing an all-out battle against the bill. In the end, Wilbur Mills, despite heat from his own district, will probably try for the strongest bill he thinks the House will accept. It may turn out to be much less than the White House wants.

MEDICAL CARE FOR THE AGED is an issue on which President Kennedy and his staff figure the Democrats can make big political gains in the 1962 elections. The Administration desperately wants to bring the medical-care bill to a House floor vote, even if it requires attaching the program as a rider to some other revenue bill or using another parliamentary maneuver to bypass Mills. The Administration feels that a floor vote would indelibly stamp the Republican Party as the opposition to medical care--and thereby hurt Republican candidates in areas where there is considerable enthusiasm for the program.

TAX REVISION has a good chance to move ahead, in the form of easier tax credits for investment in new equipment and measures for loophole narrowing. But real tax reform--overhaul of the whole structure--is off until 1963.

AID TO EDUCATION will be sought in a watered-down bill offering colleges federal help on scholarships and equipment; it should pass without too much trouble. The Administration has no intention of reopening the Pandora's box of controversy about general aid to public schools, which Catholic opposition killed last year.

POSTAL RATES stand a good chance of being raised, since the Administration has agreed to seek only $600 million in higher rates instead of the $850 million requested earlier. The Administration will push hard for this bill, arguing that the President's plans for a balanced budget depend on it.

CIVIL DEFENSE may stir up a fight in the coming session--but not along straight conservative-liberal lines. Source of possible trouble: the President's plan for community shelters at a cost of about $700 million, which may get lost in the shuffle of other bills.

FOREIGN AID will come up for routine annual-appropriation requests--which are sure to be cut, as in the past, by the House Appropriations subcommittee chaired by Louisiana's Otto Passman.

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