Congress1 Week

Speaker Joe Martin thought things were shaping up nicely. He had just seen his brood of House Republicans drop their squabbles, and obediently line up to be counted for a rock-solid party vote. The issue was the constitutional amendment to limit a President to two terms. Not a Republican wavered as Democratic whip John McCormack wailed: "It will make the Constitution rigid. It ties the hands of future generations." Of the 238 Republicans present, 238 voted right. With 47 Democrats joining them, the vote was 15 more than needed for a two-thirds majority. Joe was pleased.

He needed some reassurance. All week long the Democrats had been snickering as Republicans lambasted each other over the 20% income-tax cut promised by bullheaded Harold Knutson during the campaign. Knutson had tried to bulldoze his Ways and Means Committee into endorsing his bill, only to have Michigan's Albert Engel rebel. Engel's plan: double exemptions to help the low-income group. The fracas had ruffled the G.O.P. leadership itself when Illinois' Leo Allen, Chairman of the Rules Committee, threw in a plan of his own. Allen would give the little taxpayer a 20% cut, the big fellow less. Laughing fit to bust, Tennessee's Albert Gore gloated: "The Republicans are stuck in the mud of confusion and hanging on the hook of irresponsible promises."

Only Child. In the committee rooms, things were humming. Presidential Candidate Harold Stassen appeared before Senator Robert A. Taft's Labor Committee to speak his piece on labor legislation. While his onetime protege Joe Ball glowered at him across the table, Stassen declared that the closed-shop ban and other anti-labor provisions of Ball's four labor bills would give so much "excess power" to capital that labor would be back to the bedrock days of the 19203, and the U.S. economy with it. Stassen's key suggestion: a strike should be called only if authorized by a secret ballot taken after all negotiations had failed. Snapped Ohio's Taft:-"I see no objection to it, but as a solution of the labor problem, I think it is trivial."

The Senate Banking and Currency Committee's hearings on rent control were brightened by Mrs. Frank Morris, a well-dressed, belligerent landlady of Dallas who wanted all controls taken off. Said she: "I am fighting for freedom for enterprise. I am fighting for my children [one daughter, three grandchildren] and for their future." Asked Chairman Charles Tobey dryly: "Oh, tell me, pretty maiden, are there any more at home like you?" Mrs. Morris: "I am an only child."

Ninety-five Ships. There was much flexing of muscles as the GOPsters snuffled under every stone that might conceal Democratic skulduggery. Maine's Owen Brewster gnashed his teeth at a report that Government agencies were destroying their records before his War Investigating Committee could get its hands on them.

The House Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee turned up a juicy bit. Russia, it found, had refused to return, or pay for, the 95 ships lent to her during the war, despite repeated requests from the State Department. Roaring mad, the committee threatened to subpoena Secretary of State Marshall to explain.

The President fared little better than his agencies. His request for an extension of some war powers for "a national emergency that we do not now foresee" made G.O.P. hackles rise. What controls were needed, said Senator Taft acidly, would not be granted in generalized powers, but in individual specific bills.

But the President tossed Congress one stinger. He renewed his 1945 request for legislation making the Speaker of the House, after the Vice President, next in line for the presidency. If Truman should die in office, that would make Speaker Joe Martin President. From the Senate, where there are as many presidential hopefuls as there are Republicans, there came not a word.

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