List for List

Early in the week, Lyndon Johnson seemed in top shape. "The end is in sight," he told newsmen shortly after he came from a lunch with members of his policy committee. He had also gone the rounds on Capitol Hill, checking with other key Senators and with the House leaders. All were agreed: the Congress could finish its work in plenty of time for a July 30 adjournment.

With obvious satisfaction, Johnson cited a list of 50 major bills passed by the Senate (some of them were still being considered by the House). Then he tossed a few political taunts toward the White House and its Republican occupant. Said Texas' Johnson: "I think this list should be contrasted with a statement made by a certain party leader last fall that a Democratic Congress would mean a 'cold war of partisan polities' . . . I think on the basis of what this Congress has done that some of the speech writers on Madison Avenue had better run for their dictionaries and find a new definition for 'cold war.' "

Big Chance. Next day the "certain party leader" replied with a list of his own. When the subject of Johnson's remarks came up at Dwight Eisenhower's news conference, the President grinned meaningfully. He reached inside his coat, pulled out a sheet of paper, put on his glasses, and said: "Now, you have just given me a big chance to read a little list of legislation I want." If the Democrats really wanted to cooperate, Ike said, they could just get to work on his list.

He began to read. The first item was highway construction. Next came the Administration's military-reserve program. Snapped the President: "This is vital to all of us. Why are we fooling around about it?" He returned to his list: military survivor benefits, housing and health legislation, school construction. When he got to mutual-security authorization and appropriations, he commented acidly: "If anything should go through in a hurry, that should."

Ike continued, barking out the words like parade-ground commands: refugee-act amendments, water resources, the Upper Colorado, Frying Pan and Cougar dam projects, customs simplification, minimum wage, the atomic peace ship, Hawaiian statehood.

As the President came to the end of his reading he was so riled up that he fumbled with his glasses for a moment before managing to get them off. He took a deep breath and calmed down. He was "just delighted" with what the Congress has done so far, he said. But he added firmly: "Now I want some more."

Shavetails. When Lyndon Johnson read the news report of Ike's statement, he lashed back: "We are not going to carry out instructions like a bunch of second lieutenants." In a private conversation with a friend, he spoke of his pride in the record of the 84th Congress. Ironically, in view of his heart attack later in the week, he said he was especially satisfied with the Senate's accomplishments this year because they had been achieved without exhausting night sessions and "without killing any of the old men on my side."

As the interchange between Johnson and the President took place, the Congress was in the midst of one of its busiest weeks. Items:

P: The House passed the military-reserve bill cited in the President's list. It placed the maximum size of the ready reserve at 2,900,000 (the present maximum is 1,500,000), provided for a new class of trainees: volunteers for six months' active duty followed by 7 1/2 years in the reserve. For others it set the length of obligated training at six years (broken up, in most cases, into two years of active duty, three years in the active reserve and one year in the stand-by reserve). The bill was sent to the Senate, where little trouble is expected.

P: By a 273-to-128 vote, the House passed the $3.2 billion mutual-security bill (also listed by the President). At one point in the debate, Wisconsin's Republican Representative Alvin O'Konski, soaring high on oratorical wings, nearly persuaded the House to refuse $50 million in aid to Yugoslavia. Cried O'Konski: "I'd rather appropriate $1 billion to the Devil!" Only last-minute pleas by House Speaker Sam Rayburn and G.O.P. Leader Joe Martin saved the grant to Yugoslavia.

P: Appropriations bills included $32 billion for the Defense Department, $466 million for the State and Justice Departments and the federal judiciary, $2.3 billion for military construction, and $1.2 billion for the Commerce Department, the Panama Canal Zone and the St. Lawrence Seaway Corp.

P: Both branches voted to extend the present national-debt limit ($281 billion) for another year.

P: The Senate killed President Eisenhower's atomic peace ship proposal by a 42-to-41 vote. All Democrats voting, except South Carolina's J. Strom Thurmond, were against the measure. All Republicans voting were for it.

P: Both branches approved a resolution setting up a twelve-man bipartisan commission to study the Government security program.

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