Dead as Slavery

Back in mid-July. House Speaker Sam Rayburn bluntly told President Kennedy that any school-aid bill this session was "dead as slavery." But the President insisted that his congressional leaders keep trying to turn up some compromise--almost any compromise--that would satisfy the House, where the issue of aid to public schools was roiled by religious rancor and segregationist distrust. Last week President Kennedy learned the hard way that Rayburn had been right. In the Administration's second major legislative defeat of the week, the House voted down a diluted school bill by the humiliating margin of 242 to 169.

As presented to the House last week, the Administration's bill was the mildest of measures. Left out altogether was the controversial aid for teachers' salaries. To sweeten an allotment of $325 million for school construction, congressional leaders passed the word that the funds could also be used to pay off debts for past construction--a ploy calculated to charm Congressmen from the South, which has had a wave of classroom construction.

The entire school-aid package was sugar-coated by two provisions dear to most Congressmen: extension of the student loan program of the National Defense Education Act; extension of federal aid to school districts that have large numbers of children of federal employees, including servicemen. With this bill at the ready, White House Aide Larry O'Brien snapped: "Let's have this damn thing out right here and now."

Last Wednesday, resplendent in a mocha-colored sports coat, Chairman Adam Powell of the House's Education and Labor Committee arose on the floor to propose calling up the Administration's last-gasp bill. The customs of the House allow committee chairmen to try to bring bills directly to the floor on "Calendar Wednesday" without going through the roadblocking Rules Committee. But up stood Louisiana's conservative F. Edward Hebert, a Catholic, to challenge Powell's attempt to put the bill before the House. Rayburn promptly ordered a roll-call vote on the issue, commented sourly: "This subject has been around long enough."

As the "noes" echoed across the House floor, the Administration was deserted by many of its own leaders, including Louisiana's Hale Boggs and Arkansas' Wilbur Mills and Oren Harris. "I certainly never thought we'd get a licking like that,'' said New Jersey's Frank Thompson, author of the compromise bill, when the voting was done. "We lost some guys out there who wouldn't dare vote against the bill itself if it actually got to the floor.''

Puffing on a corncob pipe, Powell complained: "I told them the House wasn't going to move any sort of legislation like this. It's too late, and they're tired. I told this to the Speaker. I told it to everybody."

Other action last week on Capitol Hill: P: After easily beating off attempts to tie in new civil rights legislation, the Senate voted 70-19 to extend for another two years the life of the watchdog Civil Rights Commission.

P: As a legal weapon against airline hijackers, the Senate sent to the White House a bill that would classify the crime as piracy, make it punishable by death.

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