Grab Bag

The 76th Congress last week again resembled a desultory grab bag from which some members were trying to extract prizes, personal or political, while other members strove for distinction by staying their hands.

Maiden Taft. The Independent Offices bill came up in the Senate and Colorado's spunky Adams, victor in the Relief economy fight (TIME, Feb. 6), sought to prevent restoration of $17,206,000 for construction of TVA dams at Watts Bar and Gilbertsville on the Tennessee River, which had been stricken out by the House. Mr. Adams' efforts were reinforced by Ohio's tall, squinty Robert Alphonso Taft, the new Senator of noble name and nominal fame in current Presidential polls, who had chosen this subject for his maiden Senate speech. Mr. Taft's party floor leader, Oregon's McNary, asked a quorum call, to which 88 Senators responded. So the G. O. P.'s leading Senate freshman had a good audience as he began in a clear but colorless voice: "Mr. President, I understand. . . ."

Most memorable passage in an otherwise pedestrian speech: "The only way we are going to stop spending is to stop paying out money, and the surest way of preventing the paying out of money is not to appropriate the money to be paid out."

Maryland's debonair Democrat Tydings helped out Ohio's Taft by picturing the Gilbertsville dam as a flood-control project superimposed upon a power project, but Tennessee's McKellar, TVA's Nebraska father, Senator Norris, and Majority Leader Barkley were too much for them. By wide margins the Senate voted the money for Watts Bar and Gilbertsville.

Minority Leader McNary shook hands with Freshman Taft when he sat down. Michigan's Vandenberg, doubtless recognizing no forensic threat in this serious son of the 27th President, leaned over grinning amiably from his nearby seat. Afterwards Ohio's Taft said: "It was just like making a speech any place else, except that the acoustics are terrible. I have a pretty good voice but I felt I had to shout to make people hear me." Presently he was chosen to read Washington's Farewell Address, shouted very nicely.

> First objective of the Republicans' drive to discontinue "emergency" powers conferred upon President Roosevelt since 1933 was to defeat a bill continuing the life of Reconstruction Finance Corp. (Author: Herbert Hoover. Chairman: Jesse Jones) from next June 30 to June 30, 1941. After House Republicans had failed to beat the bill, in the Senate Michigan's Vandenberg precipitated hot debate by objecting to an increase of $20,000,000 in the capital of Disaster Loan Corp. (RFC offshoot). At length a clerk informed the sheepish Senate that it had already settled that issue when it passed RFC's life-extension on the unanimous consent list some hours before.

> The House committee on Un-American Activities imposed upon itself a publicity rule: no sounding-off by individual members (including Chairman Martin Dies), only statements by the committee as a whole. With its new $100,000 appropriation in hand, the committee hired Lawyer Rhea Whitley, 35, to head its investigating staff. Mr. Whitley, stocky and curly-haired, was in FBI for ten years (1927-37), with a final "nice, easy, restful" hitch in Manhattan. He studied law at Washington & Lee, married a Sweet Briar girl. Un-Americans from Jonesboro, Ark. might get a break from him. He was born there.

> Missouri's Democrat Cochran presented the House with a Reorganization bill of which not even thunder-gusty Columnist-General Hugh Johnson could complain. Eschewing aspects which aroused cries of "Dictator!" last session, the new measure simply invited the President to submit before Jan. 21, 1941 a plan to alter the executive establishment. The plan would become effective if Congress should not (without filibustering) veto it by majority vote in 60 days. Things which the President may not touch or have: Comptroller-General's office, Civil Service Commission, Department of Public Welfare or Works, more than six administrative assistants.

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