Work Done

In Capitol Hill action last week:

>The House, by a lopsided vote of 319 to 79, passed and sent to the Senate an education bill to provide $1.5 billion in aid to colleges over the next five years. The money ($900 million in grants, $600 million in loans) would be used for construction of classroom buildings, libraries, laboratories, etc. President Kennedy had wanted much more. Though he had all but given up on his request for $2.3 billion for secondary school construction and teachers' salaries, after last year's battle over whether parochial schools could be included, he vainly hoped for $750 million to raise teaching standards, $600 million for medical education, $50 million for a campaign to educate illiterates. One other Kennedy proposal still has a slight chance: the Senate version of the bill includes $892 million for 212,500 college scholarships. If the provision survives Senate vote, it will have to face House resistance again in a Senate-House conference committee.

>The Senate, by a 71-12 vote, confirmed Republican John A. McCone as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. McCone, a wealthy Californian with oil and shipping interests, was Under Secretary of the Air Force in the Truman Administration, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission under President Eisenhower. Though he won unanimous confirmation for those earlier posts, he ran into opposition this time on varied grounds. Maine's Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith argued that McCone has never done intelligence work. South Dakota's Republican Senator Francis Case worried about McCone's business interests: "Will his instincts be free from his background?" Pennsylvania's Democratic Senator Joseph Clark and Minnesota's Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy insisted that McCone was temperamentally unsuited for the job. Ruffled senatorial sensibility accounted for still another "no'' vote: Arkansas' Democratic Senator J. William Fulbright said that no one had consulted his Foreign Relations Committee about the appointment.

>Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield's bill to make a sixth-grade education the only required proof of a voter's literacy, now backed by Minority Leader Everett Dirksen as well, faced its first legislative test--and failed. The backers of the bill hoped to avoid sending their measure to the Judiciary Committee, which, under Mississippi's Senator James Eastland, has been a graveyard for civil rights legislation. They hoped instead to have it referred to Mansfield's Senate Rules Committee. But Vice President Lyndon Johnson, advised by the Senate parliamentarian, ruled that it had to go to Judiciary. The setback will be only temporary, Mansfield promised. If the Judiciary Committee does not act within 90 days, he will attach his proposal as an amendment to unrelated legislation.

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