Pension Race

In the House of Representatives for months a great race has been quietly but breathlessly going on between two committees. The contest is to see who can outstrip whom in helping The Veteran help himself to the U. S. Treasury. The committees: 1) Pensions, headed by South Carolina's Allard Henry Casque (pronounced Gaski), whose own military experience is limited to honorary membership in the United Spanish War Veterans, and 2) the Committee on World War Veterans' Legislation, whose chairman is Mississippi's loud, bushy-haired John Elliott Rankin. Congressman Rankin lists himself in his official biography as "ex-soldier of the World War" because he spent the 22 days before the Armistice at Camp Zachary Taylor, Kentucky.

Messrs. Gasque and Rankin and their committees are men dedicated to any & every proposal to pay more money to anyone who wore a uniform, even though the bill for veterans' benefits already tots up to $600,000,000 each year (about 8% of the budget). Franklin Roosevelt pays both groups plenty of attention, for it was they who led the fight and passed the $2,000,000,000 Bonus over his veto.

Until last year law required that a World War veteran be at least 30% disabled for his wife to get a pension when he died. John Elliott Rankin proposed that this disability requirement be lowered to 10%, so more widows would get more money. Franklin Roosevelt reluctantly compromised on 20% rather than face another fight with veteran-conscious Congressmen.

But this year Pensioner Gasque began to outpropose Pensioner Rankin. While Mr. Rankin languished with laryngitis, shrewd Mr. Gasque assaulted the Treasury with no less than nine new bills. But last week found Mr. Gasque bedded in Walter Reed Hospital with a reported heart attack and Mr. Rankin's lieutenant, Congressman Glenn Griswold of Peru, Ind. took his side's opportunity to steal a march. He whipped the old Rankin 10% Disability Bill onto the floor, under the unusual procedure of suspending the rules. The bill could never have reached the House but for quick conniving by Administration Leaders Bankhead and Rayburn, whose orders from the White House might have read: "Take the Rankin Bill; maybe it will head off Gasque." With but one loud NO the bill was passed by the House, swallowed by the Administration and sent to the Senate after Congressman Griswold assured his colleagues: "When you get the rate down to 10% the line of demarcation between the service-connected and the non-service-connected cases is very small."

The Gasque Bills which the Administration is determined not to swallow* are two. The first would liberalize the interpretation of disability to include every soldier "unable to do manual labor," would up non-service-connected pensions from $30 to the $40 they were before the Economy Act of 1933. Cost estimate: $5,000,000 the first year. The "big" Gasque Bill carries out the announced aims of American Legion Commander Daniel J. Doherty: pensions for all veterans' widows, regardless of whether their husbands ever fought anything but mosquitoes. Estimated annual cost: 1939--$34,000,000; 1940--$68,000,000; 1968--$1,300,000,000.

As he prepared to bring his bills to the floor next week, Mr. Gasque might expect that they would pass a veteran-loving House in an election year, but could hardly believe they would get through the Senate this session. He could comfort himself, however, by remembering that it took seven years to begin collecting the Bonus, that a widows' bill is usually followed by general pensions for all living soldiers, that the time for general pensions must be drawing near. Said Allard Gasque last January: "The Spanish-American War widows were given a pension 20 years after the Spanish-American War. Now it has been just about 20 years since the World War. . . ."

*Says Mr. Gasque of a possible Presidential veto: "We should not let it get in our way."

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