All Lyndon's

Unlike the Kennedy-sponsored tax cut or civil rights legislation, the $947.5 million anti-poverty bill was Lyndon Johnson's own baby. Riding with its fortunes on Capitol Hill was a large measure of presidential prestige. Indeed, when Johnson sent his poverty program to Congress last spring, he expressed his "total commitment" to it. That being the case, there was practically nothing the Administration wouldn't --or, as it turned out, didn't--do to get the measure approved.

In the Senate, the bill passed by a margin of nearly 2 to 1, but only after Administration forces stood still for a $15 million cut and a Southern-sponsored amendment that gave state Governors veto powers over several of the bill's programs within their states.

When the measure finally reached the House floor last week, the going was even rougher. For three days a bitter battle raged. Trying to placate enough of their Southern colleagues to produce a majority on the final roll call, Democratic leaders found themselves giving ground both to segregationists and states'-righters. Thus an amendment, by Mississippi's Democratic Congressman John Bell Williams, requiring loyalty oaths of all youths enrolling in the bill's job corps, passed 144 to 112. And the House upheld the Senate's gubernatorial veto provision.

But perhaps the strongest sign of the Administration's determination to have a program at any price was its willingness to scuttle Adam Yarmolinsky, who has been on loan to the Poverty Corps from his Pentagon job as special assistant to Defense Secretary McNamara. Yarmolinsky is disliked by many Southern Congressmen because 1) he is a liberal, and 2) he helped set up a Kennedy-ordered commission to investigate racial discrimination in the armed forces, later took part in implementing its anti-discrimination proposals. Those same Southerners did not want Yarmolinsky messing around with the Poverty Corps. The coup de grace was delivered, fittingly, by Georgia's Democratic Representative Phil Landrum, a recent convert to Johnsonism, and the bill's floor manager. Landrum told the House: "Mr. Yarmolinsky will have absolutely nothing to do with the program," added: "I have been told on the highest authority that not only will he not be appointed, but that he will not be considered if he is recommended for a place in this agency."

Around Washington, "highest authority" could mean only one thing: the White House itself. Thus placated, nearly 60 Southern Democrats joined forces with non-Dixie Democrats and 22 Republicans, and the bill passed by a vote of 226 to 184.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.