The First Hurdle

Looking ahead last winter, Speaker Joe Martin had predicted that foreign aid would run into stormy weather when it reached the House. He was right. But last week the biggest men in the House, on both sides of the aisle, joined forces to push the Eisenhower Administration's foreign-aid bill through, 260-126.

The big bipartisan move began when Minority Leader Rayburn strode down the aisle. The 372 members present stopped their chattering as respected Sam Rayburn turned to the House.

"Mr. Chairman," he said, "I am supporting this bill. I am not supporting it grudgingly. I am supporting it wholeheartedly ... Do we want allies? We do and we must have them. And after they have been broken by war and its devastation, they must have help from somewhere. I am willing to give it to them ... I am willing to spend some billions to help our allies and other democracies of the world to be strong and stay strong ... I plead with you ... to do the thing here today to preserve, protect, defend and perpetuate not only this, the greatest democracy that ever existed in all the tide of time, but the other democracies of this unhappy, this distraught and this dangerous world."

There was loud applause as the bald minority leader went back to his seat on the Democratic side of the chamber. The Democrats followed statesmanlike leadership. When the final vote had been tallied, 141 Democrats, 118 Republicans and one Independent (Ohio's Frazier Reams) were on record as favoring a $3,368,608,000 mutual-security program (only $109 million was cut from the original bill). Now the bill goes to the Senate, where the forecast is the same as it was in the House: trouble.

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