"A Salable Piece of Work"

Near adjournment time one afternoon last week, Illinois' Republican Senator Everett Dirksen arose in the Senate. "Mr. President," he proclaimed, "I present an amendment in the nature of a substitute." Passing to Senate Parliamentarian Charles Watkins a 74-page rewrite of the House-passed civil rights bill, Ev resonated: "I doubt very much whether in my whole legislative lifetime any measure has received so much meticulous attention."

By that time the civil rights bill had been before Congress for six months and six days. Reported to the House last Nov. 20, after 22 days of Judiciary Committee hearings, the bill was debated for nine days, then passed by the House 290 to 130. On March 26, the Senate voted to take up the bill, has been debating it steadily since March 30. During the last three weeks, Dirksen, who insisted on 50-odd amendments in return for precious G.O.P. votes in invoking cloture against the Southern filibuster (see box), was "beating out the iron upon the anvil of discussion" in conferences with other Republicans, Minnesota's Democratic Senator Hubert Humphrey, and Attorney General Robert Kennedy. The fruit of their endeavors was what Dirksen now offered the Senate.

"We have now reached the point where there must be action," said Ev. "I believe this is a salable piece of work, one that is infinitely better than what came to us from the House."

One who predictably disagreed was Georgia's Democratic Senator Richard Russell. "Stripped of any pretense," he charged, the Dirksen substitute amounted to "a punitive expedition into the Southern states." Russell continued:

"As one who lives in the South, as one who has never been ashamed of being a Southerner, and as one who believes that the people of the South are as good citizens as people anywhere else in the country, I resent this political foray." He also had a word of warning for Dirksen. "Unless I am badly fooled," said Russell, "he has killed off a rapidly growing Republican Party in the South, at least so far as his party's prospects in the presidential campaign are concerned."

If Ev was worried he didn't show it, instead exuded optimism over prospects for a speedy cloture vote. "I believe we can get cloture," he said. "And I think we have to have cloture now."

Last week the Congress also:

>Approved, in the House Foreign Affairs Committee, President Johnson's $3.5 billion foreign aid authorization request. It was the first time in the stormy, 17-year history of foreign aid that the committee had voted to give a President all he asked for. But Johnson wasn't home free. Still to come was the foreign aid appropriations bill, which would no doubt feel the paring knife of Louisiana's Democratic Representative Otto Passman, champion dasher of Presidential foreign aid hopes.

> Endorsed, in the House Education and Labor Committee, the Administration's $962.5 million anti-poverty program by a party-line vote of 19 Democrats to 12 Republicans. Among the program's costlier features: $340 million to finance 90% of local projects that will attack such poverty-breeding misfortunes as illiteracy, lack of job skills, slums and health hazards; $190 million to establish a volunteer job corps for youths from 16 to 22; and $150 million for a work-training program to pay part of the employment costs of youths who must work to help their families.

> Passed, in the Senate, a $1.3 billion deficiency-appropriations bill to beef up programs that are running out of money. Included in the total were $1 billion for military pay raises and $45 million for Alaskan earthquake recovery.

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