What Price Aid?

For 14 years the U.S. has been subsidizing other countries at prodigious rates by lend-lease, foreign aid, loans, etc. By best available estimates, the total from 1940 to 1954 is about $95 billion. Today most Americans agree that such expenditures are good policy, if the money is spent wisely and carefully. Such an American is Louisiana's youthful (35) Senator Russell Long. But when the Foreign Aid authorization bill reached the Senate floor last week, Democrat Long was the bill's chief opponent.

Long started his campaign two years ago against what he believed to be excessive foreign aid. At that time he offered a series of amendments to see how much he could cut from the bill--first $2 billion, then $1.5 billion, then $1 billion, then $500 million. Each in turn was voted down until the Senate finally accepted a $200-million cut. Last year, when Long's move for a $500-million slash was defeated, he gave up, until last week, when he argued for several hours on the Senate floor in favor of paring down the Administration request in fiscal 1955. Among Long's points:

P: Waste in domestic spending comes to Congressmen's attention sooner and more surely than waste in foreign spending. P: The bill calls for $800 million for "a war that is no longer being waged" in Indo-China, although $450 million worth of equipment is "stacked on the docksides" and another $600 million is already in the Indo-China pipeline. P: Long realized that the new money for Indo-China might not be spent there, but be transferred to other areas. Said he: the other areas will have enough money without it.

P: As of June 30, the Foreign Operations Administration had $9.7 billion of unspent money on hand. Since FOA has never spent at a rate faster than $5 billion a year, it has enough to last almost two years, even if no new money is appropriated.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee had already cut almost $350 million off President Eisenhower's $3.5 billion request. Long wanted to shave it another billion, but on that he was voted down 48 to 38. Promptly, he tried for a half-a-billion cut, and this time he won, 45 to 41.

However, the House of Representatives had approved a larger amount. In negotiating between the two Houses, the conferees split the difference, resulting in an authorization of $3,054,568,000. From Russell Long's point of view, this was still too big a piece of change, but Congress would have another crack at it when the appropriation is finally voted.

Busy on other fronts last week, the House:

P: Approved a Senate-passed bill which would require restaurant menus to label imported trout with the name of the country of origin. (These days most come from Denmark and Canada.) Violators would face penalties up to three years in jail and a $10,000 fine. Idaho's Republican Congressman Hamer H. Budge argued that, without such a law, the nation's 325 trout farms might go broke. New York Democrat Emanuel Celler disagreed. He declared that the purpose of the bill was to help "one Senator riding in on the tail of a fish so that he can get re-elected." The Senator: Idaho's silver-thatched Republican Henry Dworshak, who coaxed the bill through the Senate. P: Passed, 293 to 55, a bill to force Fifth Amendment witnesses to testify, by allowing Federal judges to grant them immunity from prosecution based on their testimony.

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