The Sump Pumps

In election years, Congressmen operate by a kind of law of political physics; they seldom rise above the level of the political sump pumps back home. Last week the House of Representatives gurgled along under the pressure of assorted builders, Chambers of Commerce and veterans' organizations.

Under consideration was a bill to spend more than a quarter of a billion dollars to expand by 16,000 beds the hospital facilities of the Veterans Administration. The expenditure, which Congress had authorized last year, had been rejected by Harry Truman on the grounds of economy and common sense. The VA itself said that: 1) it did not need 16,000 new beds, 2) the actual cost of the new program would be closer to $279 million than to the $237 million in the bill and 3) the VA did not have the medical personnel to staff 16,000 more beds. Many people wondered why the VA could not use Army & Navy hospitals which were being abandoned.

For the Stars & Stripes. But the sump pumps began to throb. On the floor of the House, Mississippi's old Dixie Demagogue John Rankin (D.), leader of many another Treasury raid in the name of the nation's veterans, led this raid with customary eagerness and cunning. He had wangled the bill out of committee. "Passage will do much to relieve a real need," he declaimed. Members fell over one another rushing to the well to add their voices. Said Massachusetts' motherly Republican Edith Nourse Rogers: to turn the bill down would be "a very cruel thing." Pennsylvania's Republican James

Van Zandt supported the bill "not for political reasons but for the purpose of supporting the veterans of the country who carried the Stars & Stripes on the many frontiers of battle, not only in the Spanish-American War but in World War I and World War II." Said Rankin piously: "I want to say that this is the first time I ever heard politics mentioned."

"It Smacks Too Much." "It is no more than that," snapped Wisconsin's Republican Congressman Glenn R. Davis, 35, winner of nine battle stars in 3 1/2 years' service with the Navy in the Pacific. Everyone knew, he went on, that the President would veto the bill and the veto would not be overriden. "It smacks too much of trying to show up the President," he said. "It will not be good politics to vote against the bill, but those of you who have been talking about economy . . . should."

But talking about economy and opposing the folks back home were two different things. With a new amendment directing the VA to survey the abandoned Army & Navy hospitals and use them if it could, the bill was shouted through without a record vote and sent on to the Senate. No one could tell for sure how any member had voted; back home each could talk however it suited the occasion, out of either corner of his mouth.

Fading Possibility. So it went. The possibility of holding down next year's estimated $7 billion deficit to even that whopping figure faded further when the House Ways & Means Committee continued to slash excise taxes. Newest items marked for tax relief were telephone bills, Pullman-berth tickets and cabaret chits. Added to cuts made the week before, the new slashes would reduce the Treasury's intake by about $1 billion.

In only one area did there seem to be any disposition to economize. In the Senate, where members apathetically debated the new ECA appropriation, Republicans considered whether foreign aid could be reduced. Noting that Britain in the last six months had "balanced its international budget," Robert Taft said: "I wonder why . . . we should advance anything to the United Kingdom during the following year." But it seemed likely that, after all the talk was over, ECA would get most of the $3.3 billion it asked for.

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