Along with Some Euphemisms

Apropos of nothing, Illinois' Everett McKinley Dirksen arose in the Senate last week to ornament a dreary debate. "Mr. President," orated Ev, "there is such a word as 'euphemism.' I do not think I have looked it up for years, but I suppose a 'euphemism' is 'something that seems like what it ain't.' Perhaps that is as good a definition as I can give. I am reminded of the man who filled in an application for an insurance policy. One of the questions he had to answer was 'How old was your father when he died and of what did he die?' Well, his father had been hanged, but he did not like to put that in his application. He puzzled over it for quite a while. He finally wrote, 'My father was 65 when he died. He came to his end while participating in a public function when the platform gave way.' "

Message to Garcia. On the other side of the Capitol, the House Rules Committee continued to hold what it euphemistically calls hearings on the Administration's civil rights bill. Under the direction of Virginia's Judge Howard Smith--who reluctantly will send the bill to the floor after a long, grey line of Southern civil rights opponents have had their say--the proceedings were not so much informative as they were entertaining, which was all right with Judge Smith too. When Ohio's Republican Congressman William M. McCulloch testified in behalf of the bill, Smith tried to tease him into admitting that the public-accommodations provisions were not within the province of the Federal Government's charter. McCulloch was ready for him and launched into a quotation from James Russell Lowell's poem The Present Crisis:

New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still, and onward, Who would keep abreast of Truth.

Smith had better luck with Louisiana's Democratic Congressman Edwin Willis, who, like McCulloch, is a member of the Judiciary Committee that approved the bill. Smith and Willis complimented each other on the discovery that they both thought the bill ought to go back to the Judiciary Committee for further consideration. "In the interests of the best legislation that could be devised," said Smith seriously, "I wish you would suggest it to your chairman." "Oh," replied Willis, cheerfully, "I would be delighted to do it. I'll carry the message to Garcia, but I'm not sure it will be received."

Toward the Floor. The Senate Finance Committee, meanwhile, was having its best week since it began working over the Administration's $11 billion tax-cut bill. The committee voted to raise an extra $40 million a year by tightening tax restrictions on the foreign operations of U.S. oil and gas companies--raising the total of such new taxes to $80 million. And it picked up an extra $260 million by throwing out a capital-gains provision that would have favored taxpayers profiting from sales of stocks and properties. The committee's work for the week all but wrapped up the bill, fortifying members' hopes that floor debate may get under way before Feb. 1. It was a sensible, no-nonsense achievement--with no euphemisms.

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