Shuffled Furniture

The light on ex-Senator Joe Ball's telephone flashed with an incoming call one day last week but there was no answer. Joe Ball's old Senate office was empty; the name plate had been taken off the door, and Joe was gone. So were a lot of other Republicans. All around the vaulted, marble buildings on top of Capitol Hill the Democrats were moving in.

For the Democrats it was a triumphant week. Once again they were in charge of the congressional household which they had dominated for 14 years, from 1933 to 1947. There was more than office furniture to be moved around. The Republicans, in their two brief years of power, had also disarranged a lot of Democratic political furniture (e.g., labor laws and tax bills), and the Democrats were determined to put-them back in place.

Vote as You Please, But--Harry Truman conferred with the leaders who will boss the job: Texas' Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the House; Massachusetts' John McCormack, House majority leader; Illinois' Scott Lucas, the new Senate majority leader (see below). Vice President Alben Barkley, from his position as presiding officer of the Senate, would also take an active and commanding part in steering the Truman legislative program.

As a group, Truman's congressional leaders were seasoned and skilled tacticians, if not deep political philosophers. Franklin Roosevelt had provided the political philosophy a decade ago; now Truman would have to. The President and his Congress leaders agreed to revive Franklin Roosevelt's old custom of conferring at the White House once a week, at Roosevelt's old hour--Mondays at 10.

The Administration's strategy began to emerge. Southern Senators, who had wandered off the reservation, would be told that Harry Truman did not intend to be "vindictive." The Southerners could vote as they pleased, but any effort to thwart the majority's will by filibustering a bill to death (such as an anti-poll-tax measure) would be sternly punished by cutting off federal patronage.

Where It Belongs. In the House, the Truman forces made a flank attack on the powerful old Rules Committee. The committee is the House's traffic cop, assigning right of way to all legislation moving through the House. Dominated by a crusty alliance of Republican and Southern Democratic members, it had often muzzled New Deal legislation when its job was simply to monitor it.

Sam Rayburn first went to work in his own party, got a Democratic caucus to curb the committee's power. After five stormy hours, the caucus decided that henceforth the chairman of any House committee which reports a bill will have the right to call up the bill for consideration by the whole House, after the Rules Committee has sat on it for 21 days. Then, the plan was put before the entire House. By a voice vote the changes became law.

It was perhaps the most far-reaching liberalization of House rules since the late George Norris and a band of fellow insurgents clipped the autocratic power of old Speaker Joe Cannon, 39 years ago. "Uncle Joe" Cannon had wielded his power through the Speaker's right to appoint all committees. Norris changed all that, but he hadn't succeeded in cleaning out all the old glory holes where a minority could defeat the will of a majority. Last week's showdown went even further toward outting authority where it belonged--in the majority of the House.

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