THE 82nd CONGRESS: AN APPRAISAL

The 82nd Congress, which concluded a ten-month session last week, has a mixed and contradictory record, hard to assess in the familiar pattern of two-party politics. In fact, Congress in 1951 demonstrated a marked further decline in the two-party system.

The record of the 82nd can best be understood in terms of the relationships of four voting groups to three areas of legislation. The groups:

1) The Fair Deal Democrats, nominally led by Harry Truman, knew that they could not get his domestic program through, and made no real fight for it.

2) The Southern Democrats had a tight grip, through seniority, on important committee chairmanships, but they had no positive program.

3) The liberal Republicans, drawn primarily from the eastern and western seaboards, were leaderless, and often disagreed on domestic policy.

4) The conservative Republicans, a cohesive minority skilled in the tactics of opposition, were far from unanimous on positive ideas on foreign and domestic policy.

The three principal areas of legislation where the four-bloc system operated:

i) The struggle against Communist aggression: The Southern Democrats, the Fair Deal Democrats and the liberal Republicans joined to push through the Administration's program for the defense of Western Europe. Most important: the Senate's resolution approving the dispatch of four additional U.S. divisions to Germany; the $7.3 billion appropriation to provide arms and economic aid for Western Europe, non-Communist Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. On resolutions demanding a clear-cut anti-Communist policy on China, conservative Republicans, liberal Republicans, Southern Democrats and even Fair Dealers joined. The two Republican blocs insisted, by resolution, that strategic use be made of Spain, Western Germany, Greece and Turkey. On rearmament, all four blocs were in general agreement; they approved the $57 billion appropriation for Army, Navy and

Air Force, and authorized construction of Air Force and Navy bases overseas.

2) Domestic policy: Conservative Republicans and Southern Democrats blocked most Administration proposals. The Republican 80th Congress, castigated by Truman, had a direction in domestic policy; the 82nd had no direction. The Fair Dealers are a minority; the majority, made up of loose-knit groups without common aim or discipline, did not and could not accept responsibility for developing a program. The frustration and division of Congress was such that it made no progress on such measures as the St. Lawrence seaway, statehood for Alaska and Hawaii, reapportionment and redistricting of congressional districts.

Congress appropriated a record peacetime $96 billion, while individual Congressmen tried, usually in vain, to whittle down expenditures. Most of this whittling was haphazard slashing in the hope that it would strike fat, not muscle; Congress knew that it could not really understand the vast and complex budgets of the administrative departments.

3) Monitoring the Administration: All blocs, including the Fair Dealers, joined in 130-odd congressional investigations, a record in congressional history. Their net effect was to throw light on obscure, muddled Administration policies, and to rout out certain influence peddlers.

The split in the Republican Party is no deeper than similar party fissures at other periods of U.S. history, and no deeper than is inevitable for a party out of power for 19 years. The Democratic split, however, has been steadily widening since 1937. Even the powerful whip of federal patronage cannot enforce discipline on a party whose two wings are much further apart than the two wings of the G.O.P.

When the 82nd reconvenes in January, there is little chance that the deadlocks of 1951 will be resolved. A Congress with a direction will have to await the 1952 election. Either an unprecedented sweep of Fair Deal Democrats or a victory for the Republicans, who would probably be unified in power, would produce a Congress with a workable majority.

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