Boost for the Boys

Defense may be Robert McNamara's business, but the U.S. armed forces remain a special concern of Congress. The Senate last week voted 89 to 0 for a $1 billion pay boost for servicemen, despite the Defense Secretary's protests that the sum was twice as much as was needed. The Senate bill differed only in minor detail from the version that whipped through the House 410 to 0. The Congress thus assured an average raise of more than 10% for the nation's 2,681,747 servicemen on active duty. The bill also provides a $56 million cost-of-living increase for 400,000 retired servicemen, grants a $10 raise in combat pay (to $65 monthly), and permits free mailing privileges from Viet Nam. It will probably be signed by President Johnson in time to fatten servicemen's September paychecks. In another slap at McNamara, a House Armed Services Subcommittee disapproved by an 8-to-l vote the Pentagon's cost-cutting proposal to merge the Army Reserve with the National Guard, supporting the argument of its chairman, Louisiana's F. Edward Hebert, that the merger "would result in an immediate and serious loss in the combat readiness of the affected Reserve units." The House also passed and sent to the Senate a $1.7 billion supplementary military appropriations bill, which provides almost $100 million for U.S. bases in Viet Nam and surround ing area. In other actions, the Congress:

P:Confirmed, in the Senate, the nomination of Abe Fortas, 55, to the Supreme Court (three votes against), John W. Gardner, 52, as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (unanimous), and Thurgood Marshall, 57, as U.S. Solicitor General (unanimous).

P: Passed, by a 246-to-138 vote in the House, a $3.25 billion public-works program that extends the regional-aid approach of the Appalachia program to other depressed areas such as the Ozarks and northern New England. The bill now goes to a Senate-House conference. P: Refused, by voice vote in the Senate, to prohibit use of U.S. Information Agency funds to film the life story of the President or any other Government official. Republican Senator John J. Williams of Delaware offered the amendment after revealing that about $80,000 of the propaganda agency's funds already have been spent to make a movie variously called The Texas Story, and A President's Country, starring L.B.J.

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