On the Job

A commentary on U. S. democracy used to be the frequent demand that Congress go home and let the country alone. Last week the U. S., alarmed about democracy, had a different notion of Congress' duty.

Thunderous in the press and in letters to Capitol Hill was the demand that Congress stay in Washington, get on with a job whose scope and shape were as yet un known.

Just why the country wanted Congress to stay on the job could not have been said in one sentence. Behind the demand were conflicting uncertainties and doubts: whether the President had asked and Congress had voted enough for Rearmament; whether the President could do whatever had to be done without grants of further power; whether, without the restraining presence of Congress, the President could safely be left with the powers which he already had. And -- although the latest Gallup poll showed that the President's foreign policy was still his greatest strength -- a clamorous minority of the U. S. press doubted that the President could be trusted to keep the U. S. from going all the way into war.

This popular clamor to keep Congress in session came to the ears of Franklin Roosevelt and his lieutenants as a rude surprise.

They had assumed that June heat, plus the imminent G. O. P. convention, would make Congressmen more than glad to grind out the necessary Defense legislation and adjourn as quickly as they could.

Correspondents at a press conference early last week thought they heard Mr. Roosevelt say that Congress could well finish its task within the fortnight, leave the details of execution to him. Majority Leaders Alben Barkley in the Senate, Sam Rayburn in the House acted as if that was the idea, got much Defense work done.

But echoes from outside began to reecho in Congress. Maryland's Senator Tydings cried that members who voted to go home should be kept there by their constituents. "I couldn't vote for myself if I ran away from duty at this time," declared Arizona's sesquipedalian Senator Ashurst. Sam Rayburn heard much of the same from his colleagues in the House, growled that "a great many of them, if there was a secret ballot, would vote to adjourn. ..." First sign that Congress' public sense of duty might prevail sprang from an even greater phenomenon: a fear among Congressmen that they were not taxing the people for Defense as heavily as the people wanted to be taxed. Testifying on a bill to broaden the Federal income-tax base, raise upwards of $1,000,000,000 a year in new taxes (TIME, June 17), Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau welcomed a thorough, time-taking overhaul of the tax system--should Congress care to stay in session long enough to do the job. The House passed the stopgap bill anyway, sent it to the restive Senate.

By week's end, the call to stay in session (with temporary recesses for the G. O. P. and Democratic conventions) was too loud for the Administration to ignore. The President found it expedient to deny that he had ever bade Congress be done and be gone. Sam Rayburn and House Speaker William Bankhead, who had been preaching adjournment by June 22, also gave up. Said Mr. Bankhead, while Sam Rayburn nodded his homely old head in agreement: "I think that we might as well be candid about it. I don't think that we can adjourn as planned."

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