Work Undone

Alabama's Bankhead last week startled the Senate by suggesting that it go home soon. His listeners wondered if Senator Bankhead was putting out a feeler for the President, who enjoys life much more when Congress is not around. If that was the case, here was another occasion on which Mr. Roosevelt had not seen fit to take his Majority Leader into his confidence. For among the first to rise in surprised opposition to Mr. Bankhead's idea was plodding Leader Barkley.

Senator Connally of Texas jumped up to cry: "I think Congress should stay right here in Washington until all the visible dangers of involvement of the United States in foreign war may be removed. . . ."

Senator Barkley insisted that not war talk but work undone was the best reason for not adjourning. Before war comes to Europe, not after, Congress should clear its calendar, said he--a calendar that is indeed well clogged.

Because its majority is divided and because he had no new idea to spring, Franklin Roosevelt signalized this session of Congress by not demanding of it some major program to improve society. His "appeasement" of Business for recovery, now a bad joke, was to have been an executive job done by Harry Hopkins, whose performance was crippled by intestinal flu. In fighting with Congress for larger Relief appropriations than it was willing to give, the President has slowed up other legislation. And though the President's critics are doubtless unjust when they say that he has been plugging foreign policy to cover up domestic failure, certainly his emphasis on the foreign situation has kept Congress' mind off its home work.

Up to this week, Congress in four months had made progress only on national defense, deficiency appropriations, reorganization. It had finished only four out of eleven major supply bills. Committee hearings but no debates had been held on such time-takers as revision of Social Security, Labor Relations, Wages & Hours.

Economy, however small, was to have been one accomplishment of this session, and several appropriation bills actually were shaved to establish the principle of shrinking the Budget. But last week the vote-hungry House again liberalized the pension laws for World Warriors and their dependents, at a cost of $18,751,000 to start with, of hundreds of millions in future*--this year's prelude to a general World War pension bill scheduled for next year. And the Senate made a gesture even more expensive toward the farm vote. When economy-minded Senators proposed, in committee, to shave a flat 10% or 5% from all items in the House's $835,000,000 Agriculture supply bill, the committee shied. Such a move might be all right, they said, if applied by the whole Senate to each & every supply bill regardless, but to single out Agriculture for such treatment struck them as unfair and politically unwise,/- Not only that, but the committeemen jeopardized all economizing to date by voting into the bill $378,000,000 more for farmers.

Business, as represented by the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, last week launched a concerted drive upon Congress to do for it that which Franklin Roosevelt has not done (see p. 67). In particular the Chamber was pointing for a helpful tax bill, which Senator Bankhead's move, if adopted, would make impossible. No such bill has yet been written or even formally discussed, but from the House last week Business received one pleasant surprise. The Ways & Means Committee, preparing to carry out the Treasury's recommended revision of the Security laws, voted not only to freeze the old age insurance tax at 1% until 1943 but also to exempt from payroll taxes (unemployment insurance) all pay over $3,000 a year to any employe. Further, the Committee recommended that States with "adequate" unemployment insurance reserves be allowed to reduce payroll taxes for employers with "favorable" records.

> The House's week was enlivened by a fight in the California delegation. Democrat Alfred J. Elliott received by mistake a check for $100 made out to Republican Bertrand W. ("Bud") Gearhart by a Mrs. Gertrude Achilles of Morgan Hill, Calif., urging passage of a bill to create John Muir-Kings Canyon National Park. Mr. Elliott had the check photostatted, sent it back to California for remailing, set the FBI to watch for its cashing, and told people to watch him catch Bud Gearhart taking a bribe. When he got the check, Bud Gearhart returned it to Mrs. Achilles honestly and promptly. Then he learned of Elliott's trap for him. Last week he defended himself before a full house, flayed Elliott for a damnable dastard. One by one, Democratic colleagues of Alfred Elliott left their seats near him. Had he pressed for a vote, Bud Gearhart could doubtless have caused Democrat Elliott to be the first Representative formally censured (called to the well for a wigging by the Speaker) since Tom Blanton of Texas in 1921, who wangled into the Record, in an extension of remarks, a string of obscenities so vile that they had to be expunged from the permanent Record, torn out of the Congressional Library's temporary copy.

>Representative Harold Knutson, Minnesota Republican, caused Majority Leader Sam Rayburn deep pain with the following "unfortunate" remarks about Franklin Roosevelt's reception for President Somoza of Nicaragua (see p. 15): "Heading the parade was a White House limousine bearing that great democrat, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the stern dictator from Nicaragua, sitting side by side carrying on an amiable conversation. . . . Overhead droned hundreds of aircraft, burning the taxpayers' money.

"Let me say to Herr Hitler that if we want to see examples of militarism and military splendor it is not necessary for us to journey to Berlin and Rome to do so.'. . .

"Let Herr Hitler mind his own business and we will do likewise--maybe."

* Only Representative to say Nay among 361 voting on this measure was California's tousle-headed John Martin Costello, 36. /- Last month the New York Legislature (Republicans) made a lump cut of $30,000,000 (about 10%) applicable throughout the Budget submitted by Governor Lehman, who last week, on the advice of his Attorney General, decided to let the measure become law, test its constitutionality in court.

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