Work Done

Before adjournment last week the Congress :

> Passed, after four weeks' haggling, a bill amending the Social Security Act: 1) to spare employes and employers $825,000,000 in taxes over the next three years by freezing the old-age payroll tax at 1% through 1942; 2) to limit the unemployment insurance payroll tax to the first $3,000 of earnings cutting off about $65,000,000 in taxes; 3) to liberalize old-age benefits by commencing payments in 1940 instead of 1942, and to allow benefits to persons becoming 65 in 1939; 4) to add 1,300,000 seamen, bank clerks and farm association members to the rolls; 5) to obligate the Government to match States dollar for dollar up to $20 per month for old-age pensions; 6) sharply to limit the size of the old-age reserve account to three times the maximum yearly benefit payments expected in the next five years. The conferees on the bill finally killed the most controversial amendment, a proposal by Texas' Tom Connally that the Government match the States two dollars for one up to $15, an attempt to help poor States live up to pension promises.

> Appropriated 38-c- to make up a deficiency in appropriations for Indian School buildings.

> Voted to reconsider the vote by which it passed the Logan-Walter bill empowering Federal courts to set aside rulings and decisions of most Federal quasi-judicial administration agencies on a long list of grounds, thus drastically curbing the executive powers of those agencies. A provocative, extremely controversial bill, it was rolled through the Senate by Senator Logan one day when his Kentucky colleague, Leader Barkley, was napping (TIME, July 31). Logan acceded last week to Barkley's plea for reconsideration, but vowed to bring the bill up again next session.

> Appropriated $795,000 to buy Alaskan reindeer to feed 19,000 Eskimo families.

> Authorized a $15,000,000 start and a total of $277,000,000 appropriation to three-track the (now two-track) locks of the Panama Canal. Representative Ed Izac of California, bemedaled War veteran, pleaded vainly for the 114-year-old dream of a Nicaraguan Canal, which would take ten years to build, cost $800,000,000 (Panama Canal's original cost $366,650,000).

> Added $73,000,000 to this session's record total of $1,800,000,000 already appropriated for U. S. defense. In this authorization was a $10,000,000 item for the purchase of strategic war materials; another $10,000,000 for construction of an air research laboratory, with the site to be chosen by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.*

> Approved legislation completing the barter transaction whereby 600,000 bales of U. S. cotton will be exchanged for British rubber.

> Repealed an old requirement that lifeboats on passenger ships be so designed that one person can lower both boat-ends at the same time.

>Gave Vice President John Garner/- a good excuse for conducting a front-porch Presidential campaign in 1940. Senate members of the Two Hours For Lunch Club presented him with a shiny new wicker rocking chair.

>Appropriated $2,500 to buy an oil portrait of Herbert Hoover to hang in the White House.

Work Undone. The Congress, by adjourning :

> Left on the clerk's desk a bill by West Virginia's Neely which would have extended the application of the Hatch Act (see p. 11) to all State employes paid in part with Federal funds.

> Killed a House authorization of $2,000,000 for a dirigible.

> Left on the calendar the State Department's bill permitting use of Government arms plants and shipyards to build naval vessels and make arms for Latin-American nations.

> Left in their pigeonholes proposed amendments to the ten-month-old Wage-Hour law.

*This item has been advocated for several months by Colonel Charles Lindbergh, as a first essential for preparedness. The laboratory will probably be located in Sunnyvale, Calif.

/-Back in Texas, John Garner said: Calif. "I'm going to get eviler every day. . . ."

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