Easy Money

The obfuscated profundities of the tax bill (see p. 13) furnished some small excuse for the way Representatives shirked their duty to study and debate that revolutionary document last fortnight (TIME, May 11). But when the session's second major measure--the $2,364,229,712.53 First Deficiency Bill--was reported out by the House Appropriations Committee last week, even the simplest-minded Congressman knew what it meant. It meant that WPAdministrator Harry Hopkins was going to get $1,425,000,000 to spend on relief in fiscal 1937 in just the way he will have spent about $1,600,000,000 this fiscal year. When the bill was brought to the floor, not more than 50 Representatives appeared to discuss it.

President Roosevelt had asked for a $1,500,000,000 appropriation. He got $75,000,000 less because most of that sum had been shifted to CCC in a compromise with Congressmen who wanted more camps than the President had provided for in his budget. Lumped with about $1,000,000,000 which will be left over from this year's $4,880,000,000 appropriation, plus $675,000,000 for CCC and regular public works, the Government will have about $3,500,000,000 for 3,800,000 jobs in the year ending July 1. Roads and streets topped the new WPA list with an allotted $413,250,000, followed by public buildings ($156,750,000), parks ($156,750,000), public utilities ($171,000,000), flood control ($128,250,000), white-collar projects ($85,500,000), women's projects ($85,500,000), miscellaneous work projects ($71,250,000), National Youth Administration ($71,250,000) and $85,500,000 for rural rehabilitation.

A House bloc headed by New York's Alfred Beiter was determined to get nearly half of the relief appropriation earmarked for the heavy permanent projects of Secretary Ickes' PWA. Their argument: not only does PWA give the country something for its money, it is boosting the construction and other heavy industries back to normal. At the White House last week President Roosevelt, who is sold on Harry Hopkins' quick jobmaking, said NO to this Congressional group, refused to haggle over a $400,000,000 compromise. Calling a Democratic caucus, the bloc was voted down, 70-to-53. When Leader Beiter rose in the House and offered his earmark as an amendment to the bill, he was ruled out of order. At that, the hopes of the bloc and Secretary Ickes expired. The PWAdministrator promptly foreshadowed the end of his organization by preparing to discharge 2,500 employes, one-fourth of his administrative staff.

Also bowled over in quick succession were Republican amendments to: 1) substitute the dole for work relief; 2) set up non-partisan local boards to administer relief; 3) fine and imprison any WPA official attempting to influence votes in a national election. As swiftly approved were Democratic amendments to: 1) bar aliens illegally resident in the U. S. from relief; 2) end the rule that WPA jobs may be had only by those on relief rolls since last November.

Last year's relief bill was stalled in Congress for more than a month while Labor's friends tried to tack on an amendment requiring payment of prevailing (i.e., union) wages on relief jobs. Opposed by the Administration, the amendment finally failed. Last week the new bill's administration managers promptly accepted a prevailing wage amendment offered by Massachusetts' Connery, let it be voted through after five minutes' discussion. Understanding was that, at prevailing hourly rates. WPA employes would work fewer hours for the same total pay. Explanation of this magnanimous campaign-year gesture toward Labor was that in his secret testimony before the Appropriations Committee, revealed last week, Harry Hopkins had told Congressmen that WPA was already paying prevailing wages almost everywhere in the land. Average WPA pay, he disclosed, ranged" from $23.93 per month in North Carolina "to $72.23 per month in New York City.

Echoing President Roosevelt's warning that more relief money might be needed next January unless Business makes more jobs. Administrator Hopkins discouraged Committee suggestions of a permanent relief program, declared: "I am convinced that [relief] has little to do with reviving employment as such : that it is a palliative; that it is a necessary thing. ... I think the emphasis and thinking of Congress should be far more on the whole problem of unemployment itself than on the problem of relief.''

This week, having registered perfunctory protest against politics and graft but not caring to go on record against relief in an election year. Republican Representatives joined Democrats in passing the Deficiency Bill by a whacking 340-to-37.

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