The 80th Congress

As the New Year opened, the survival of Western democracy rested, at bottom, on the case the U.S. would make for it; on a strong, stable and friendly America depended the stability of the Western world. This week, as the U.S. Congress prepared to convene, the world watched with hope, suspicion and respect.

The Republicans, now majority members for the first time in 14 years, were in a businesslike mood. In their own words they wanted to "get things done, go home and give the people a breather." They were acutely aware that Americans find it hard to breathe in a thick political atmosphere. This session, majority leaders fervently hoped, would finish its work by July 1.

Priorities. The bills marked by the majority leadership as of top importance were all designed to straighten out the economic and social disorders in the nation.

Appropriations had to be reduced. That was the first item on the Republican agenda. Taxes also had to be cut. These problems were interwoven. But G.O.P. fiscal experts did not talk so confidently as they once had of whacking off appropriations and slashing taxes 20%; closer study of the problems had made them more cautious. Nevertheless, they would attack with vigor.

Labor legislation was next. To the long list of things to do (e.g., revise the Wagner Act, possibly outlaw the closed shop) party leaders added legislation to head off the economic blitz recently launched by labor lawyers with the portal-to-portal pay drive (see BUSINESS). In the first 48 hours probably a hundred labor bills will be dumped into the hopper.

The Republicans also proposed to solve the housing problem, so bungled by the Truman Administration that the solution must be started all over again. Other domestic matters, such as the seating of Mississippi's Senator-elect Theodore Bilbo (see below), will get their early attention. Such important questions as integration of the armed services and universal military training will be postponed until the GOPriority legislation is well on its way to becoming law.

In the area of foreign relations, the Republican majority will fix an immediate and searching eye on foreign borrowing. That problem they consider as urgent as the "must" domestic legislation. The world will watch closely. In the Republican philosophy, unlimited money cannot be laid out for foreign loans without creating inflationary debt in the U.S. Inflation in the U.S. would mean certain economic disaster for the world. The Republican hand will not be as wide open as the hand of the last Democratic Congresses.

The 80th Congress will re-examine the reciprocal trade program created by Cordell Hull; Nebraska's high-tariff Senator Hugh Butler has written Assistant Secretary of State Clayton asking him to postpone trade negotiations with 18 nations. Republican Congressmen would like to scrutinize some 3,000 pending trade agreement items before any agreements are made under the blanket authority delegated by Democratic Congresses to the President.

Squeals and Creaks. Carefully, even painfully, G.O.P. leaders picked the men to boss the party's legislative campaign. These men will be the influential chairmen of House and Senate committees. It was a business of swapping and dealing which made a few discordant squeals in the party's post-election harmony.

For one, Kansas' Senator Clyde Reed, longtime foe of the railways, demanded the chairmanship of the Commerce Committee. There he could fight for lower freight rates to the benefit of Kansas farmers. Maine's Wallace White, chairman of the Committee on Committees, also wanted that job. Old Clyde Reed, man of wrath,/- cried out that the party was being run by an "oligarchy."

But these and other squawks were the not-surprising sounds of a new legislative machine getting into motion. Although the Republican Senators were still in caucus early this week, most of the vital assignments had been settled. Maine's White, Ohio's Robert Taft, Michigan's Arthur Vandenberg, and Nebraska's Kenneth Wherry (the senatorial "Big Four") thought they had the machinery under control.

Gambit and Gamble. Vandenberg will preside over the Senate (as President pro tern) and serve as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. Wherry, a go-getter and vehement anti-New Dealer, will serve as party whip. White--old, mild and anxious--will serve as majority leader with the consent of Bob Taft, who could have had the title but chose to run the job from the sidelines while he fills the chairmanship of the Labor Committee. That hottest spot would be covered by a cool man.

Taft made that choice last week and thus pushed aside organized labor's zealous Republican friend George Aiken of Vermont, who was in line for the labor job by seniority. It was a statesmanlike decision, and the country generally welcomed it as such. Taft had made his record for judicious fairness to labor, most notably by standing firm against the rash make-'em-work legislation sent to Congress by Harry Truman when the railroad strike threatened last summer. Politically, it was a daring move for a potential presidential candidate. If Taft turned in a popular performance, his chances for the nomination in 1948 would be much enhanced. If his performance was bad, or unpopular, his chances might be wrecked.

Other committee chairmanships were filled: Finance, by Colorado's Eugene D. Millikin, lawyer and businessman (oil) whose rise toward the party's upper crust has been fast and even phenomenal; Rules, by the Chicago Tribune's C. Wayland ("Curly") Brooks, onetime (World War I) leatherneck, longtime leather-lunged isolationist.

"Good for the Country." On the House side, where Massachusetts' smart little Joe Martin stood ready to assume the Speakership, the new machinery squeaked a little, too. Supporters of New York's Governor Thomas E. Dewey pushed Dewey-man Charles Halleck, of Indiana, for the post of majority leader. Halleck would undoubtedly get the job, although he was loudly opposed by Ohio's Taft-man Clarence Brown.

But as more than 500 legislators troop into the old chambers this week, these will become minor problems and gradually recede. For Republican leaders major problems would reassert themselves. Out of power, the Republicans had been able to apply Joe Martin's pragmatic philosophy--"I've found out that in the long run what's good for one section is pretty much good for the country"--and not worry too much about the consequences. Republican leaders would now have to look sharper and farther. Generally, they were sober men and aware of their new responsibilities; they were ready for the big test.

/- "Just a man of wrath," his friend the late William Allen White once called him. "The old Kansas fever -- diagnosed modernly as ants in your pants."

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