Congress' Week

The Senators had ransacked their souls, and the day was at hand. The opposition to the Greek-Turkish loan had shaken down into the extreme Left (worried about the U.S. moral position) and the extreme Right (worried about the U.S. purse). For the fainthearted, Secretary of State George Marshall cabled from Moscow that the program had his full support.

For good or ill, the Senate had made up its mind. Firmly, it voted down the attempt of Colorado's Edwin C. Johnson to eliminate military aid. Then, 41 days after President Truman's challenge, the Senate approved the Truman Doctrine, 67-to-23.

Thirty-five Republicans and 32 Democrats voted yea; opposed were 16 Republicans and seven Democrats.

With relief, the Senate then turned to the domestic arena. Here was familiar ground. Once again Tennessee's cob-nosed Kenneth McKellar was on his feet, attacking a TVA appointment--this time that of Gordon Clapp, 41, to succeed David Lilienthal as chairman. Gone was the vindictive hatred that had given his denunciation of Lilienthal a certain rheumy dignity. He talked to an almost deserted floor.

"Mr. President," he said, "I have been so horribly mangled." Maundering and maudlin, he recounted the long history of TVA and his own part in it. "Can Senators blame me for feeling hurt over the fact that the President of the United States and some of my colleagues on this side of the aisle--men whom I have known intimately, men whom I have sat next to in the Senate, one of whom

[Texas' Tom Connally] I lived with for a long time--would take up for my enemies? In all my long life ... I never was more hurt."

A relic of an older day and an older creed of senatorial seniority and personal privilege, Kenneth McKellar sat, bowed and disconsolate, as his colleagues voted 36-to-31 to confirm Gordon Clapp.

Cold Stare. The remainder of the week, Congress spent on labor, taxes and economy. With a wary but determined air, the Senate Finance Committee began hearings on the House's tax-reduction bill. Almost immediately, members were faced with the cold stare of Treasury Secretary John Snyder. Secretary Snyder was in an "adamant" mood. He stiffly reasserted the Administration's stand against tax cuts, refused to let Republican committeemen persuade him that big cuts are needed now to bolster public purchasing power, and left the anxious committee to guess whether Harry Truman would veto the final version of the tax bill.

Then up stepped New York Financial Consultant John W. Hanes, onetime Under Secretary of the Treasury under Franklin Roosevelt, and chairman of the Tax Foundation, a big-business tax-research group. Witness Hanes declared that present tax laws added up to "foolish and dangerous discrimination against those with managerial ability." Pooh-poohing Government figures, he declared that the Treasury surplus would be large enough to enable the U.S. to have substantial tax cuts and substantial debt reduction, too. What Congress had to do, said Hanes, was to cut federal spending.

Cuts & Howls. That was precisely what the House Appropriations Committee was doing. It reported out a bill cutting Interior Department funds by 47% (from an approximate $295 million to $156 million). The burden of the cut fell on Interior's Reclamation Bureau, and brought howls from Secretary "Cap" Krug and most of the western states that depend on federal irrigation money.

Onetime New Dealer Krug seemed to have forgotten an old New Deal thesis--fat years are the time to cut Government spending and save for a rainy day. To placate him and the western Representatives, the committee put back some $5 million for western states.

Despite this compromise, the House Appropriations Committee still meant to push its appropriations cuts. It had already lopped $77.8 million from the Labor-Federal Security budget and $897 million from the Treasury-Post Office budget. Last week an appropriations subcommittee stopped a $31 million appropriation for the State Department's Office of International Information and Cultural Affairs by raising a point of order--the OIC is not authorized by law. And there were stiffer cuts to come, including a whopping $250 million cut in the Agriculture Department appropriation.

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