A Case of Assault

Swinging with accustomed wildness, the Senate Finance Committee last week assaulted one of President Eisenhower's three legislative "imperatives": the five-year reciprocal trade bill that the House had passed by a lopsided majority of 317 to 98 (TIME, June 23). In a surrender to tariff-lobby pressures and isolationist propaganda, the committee:

P: Slashed the bill's time span from five years to three, and the President's maximum tariff-cutting authority from 25% to 15%;

P: Provided that the President cannot overrule Tariff Commission recommendations for higher tariffs unless majority votes in both houses of Congress back him up;

P: Broadened the definition of "national security" to include "economic welfare," making it possible for just about any industry, even makers of beer mugs or rhinestones, to claim that its profit position is vital to the U.S.'s security.

Eight Finance Committee irresponsibles voted for the major changes. The Democrats: New Mexico's Clinton Anderson, Delaware's J. Allen Frear, Oklahoma's Robert Kerr, Louisiana's Russell Long, Florida's George Smathers. The Republicans: Indiana's William Jenner, Nevada's George Malone, Pennsylvania's Edward Martin. Often thought of as a blinkered old fogy, Virginia's Committee Chairman Harry Byrd. 71, rose to his responsibility by backing the House's version.

Commerce Secretary Sinclair Weeks, the reformed protectionist who has led the Administration's Capitol Hill campaign for the five-year bill, called the committee changes "unacceptable," vowed that the Administration would "fight to get the legislation that we think is to the benefit of this country." Due this week: a battle on the Senate floor to repair at least some of the Finance Committee's damage.

On Capitol Hill last week:

P: The Senate, jogged by the Goldfine hearings, dusted off and passed without debate an innocuous year-old House resolution setting forth a ten-point code of ethics for federal officials. A "sense of Congress" resolution with no legal force, the code urges officials to be loyal, hardworking, fair, clean as a hound's tooth.

P: House Speaker Sam Rayburn kept the Senate-passed Kennedy-Ives labor reform bill "on the Speaker's desk," and thus ready for floor action under special committee-bypassing rules, despite insistent protests of the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that the bill ought to go through the normal committee channel. If sent to committee so late in the session, the bill would die there, and that is just what the N.A.M. and the Chamber want. Reason: they object to half a dozen minor Taft-Hartley revisions, e.g., requiring employers to report to the Labor Department all financial dealings with labor unions or labor officials. As for reforming unions, the bill is only "half a loaf," argues the N.A.M., apparently forgetting what half a loaf is proverbially better than.

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