Congress' Week

By last week the Republican-led 80th Congress had been in session nine weeks. To date it had not accomplished much: it was still getting ready to do a lot of things.

The House had a surface air of complacency; in fact, it could hardly muster a quorum. The reason was that most of its work--cutting Treasury funds by some $900 million, considering plans to improve the Panama Canal or admit Hawaii as a state--was being done in committee.

On the floor, members whooped it up on a vote to change the name of Boulder Dam back to Hoover Dam, and challenged the Senate to a ball game.

Tension. Over in the Senate, the galleries were nearly empty. During the week, the Senate had managed to approve the appointment of Lewis W. Douglas as Ambassador to Britain, send the Military Merger Bill to the Armed Services Committee, vote OPA into oblivion (expiration date: June 30), and promise a cut of $4 1/2 billion in the President's $37.5 billion budget. The Senators had also had to stew around while colleagues on both sides of the aisle belabored the Congressional Record with eulogies of William Randolph Hearst (see PRESS), editorials and letters from the folks at home. Gradually, such stewing had brought a general Senate tension.

It was not relieved by the Gallup poll report that the Republicans had fallen to second place in U.S. favor (TIME, March 10). Massachusetts' Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. roasted his colleagues by inserting an editorial from the Worcester (Mass.) Telegram in the Record. Said the editorial: "It is high time an aroused public opinion again reminded the Republican Party why it was chosen at the polls last November. ... In an atmosphere of political pussyfooting, the Republicans have been eyeing 1948. . . ."

That began the real news of the week. Then, on one of the Senate's days off, freshman Senator Raymond E. Baldwin (ex-governor of Connecticut) sent a letter to Colorado's Eugene D. Millikin, chairman of the Republican Conference of Senators.

Unity? The letter was a rebuke to the G.O.P. leadership for ignoring the Senate's Republican fledglings, and a demand for party unity and action. It was signed by 15 other Republican freshman Senators.

While he was in the writing mood, Baldwin had also got off a letter to Party Chairman Carroll Reece. Said he: "The report of the Gallup poll indicates that the trend is ... away from us. Why is this so? . . . Are we united?" Veteran Campaigner Baldwin thought not, and he thought he saw one of the main reasons. "There are a lot of good men who would like to run for President. We have some darn good candidates, but there isn't a team--at least in the Senate--to help put any one of these fellows across. The greatest help that any candidate could have is a good record--a good record by this Congress--and I mean the whole Congress."

While Republicans blinked and Democrats grinned, there came another blast. South Dakota's ultra-conservative Republican Senator Harlan J. Bushfield bounced up to declare, "The leaders of Congress are in confusion among themselves. . . . We have failed in everything which we promised the voters. ... I predict that unless the Republicans come alive . . . . they will fail again when the next election comes around."

Actually, the Congress was not hopelessly behind schedule. Few Congresses have accomplished much in their first nine weeks. But Leader Bob Taft was sensitive. He blamed the Democrats for "deliberate" stalling--a defense which roused the conservative Washington Star's Cartoonist Jim Berryman to gibe right back. He threatened to break the lull by calling the Senate into daily and nightly sessions. This week, with other party leaders, he held a unity meeting with the G.O.P. freshmen and promised them two places on the G.O.P. Policy Committee.

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