Texas Tom in the Bush

For almost three days last week, the Senate's top Republicans, in full cry, went after Texas' 72-year-old Tom Connally. Long-haired Senator Connally was being crossed, and he yields to no man in his dislike of opposition.

Chewing on a cold cigar and occasionally spitting dangerously into his brass gaboon, he stood at his Senate desk, bellowing with annoyance, dealing out forensic cuffs and insults while his horn-rimmed glasses slipped lower & lower on his nose.

The question at issue was Point Four, the President's "bold new program" for steering private U.S. capital into the underdeveloped areas of the world. Already authorized by both houses as a fractional part of the whole $3.2 billion foreign aid bill, Point Four had emerged from a conference of House and Senate members at a compromise figure of $35 million--the amount which the U.S. Government would put up for technical assistance abroad and encouragement to private investors.

As the bill had left the Senate, it contained not the slightest hint that the Government would insure any investors against losses overseas. As the bill came out of conference with the House, some Republicans thought that it did imply a guarantee. Ohio's Robert Taft, coolly indignant, declared it "an absolutely new bill" to which Connally, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, had asked the Senate to give its "casual approval."

What Is "It"? "Oh, no, I did not," yelped Connally, getting to his feet. "Notwithstanding the supererogation of the distinguished Senator from Ohio, who seems to know more about less than anyone else I know."

"What does the Senator mean by 'supererogation?'" Taft demanded, while visitors who crowded the galleries listened in fascination to the debate. "I want an explanation of the term."

"The Senator can look in the dictionary for it.* I do not have time to educate the Senator from Ohio."

Missouri's plodding, painstaking Donnell, sometimes known as the "Big Itch," read some of the language of the bill: "It involves confidence on the part of investors . . . that they will not be deprived of their property without prompt, adequate and effective compensation . . ."

"These are high-flown expressions," rejoined Connally, "designed to create the right kind of climate--if the Senator knows what is meant by that statement." Massachusetts' Republican Saltonstall came unexpectedly to Connally's aid. The words merely created "a climatic background in which treaties can be made," he elaborated hopefully.

"What does he mean by that?" Donnell persisted.

"He means," snapped Connally, "a favorable background, warm in the winter and cool in the summer."

But--"The language is, It involves," Donnell quoted earnestly. "I do not know what it means."

"It is a neuter pronoun," shouted Connally. ". . . Mr. President, allow me to say to the Senator from Missouri that he has a regular FBI intellect. He probes into these matters and imagines boogers in every bush. There are no boogers here."

With a Little "S." But Taft and others were sure there were. Colorado's bald-domed Eugene Millikin thought he had flushed a booger out: there was no time limit to Point Four.

"The time limit is here in the Senate," Connally explained. "Whenever the Senate gets ready to terminate this thing it can terminate it. The Senator knows that."

"We will be so involved in it that we will never be able to terminate it," argued Millikin. "We will have such big payrolls, so many vested interests, so many clerks . . . lawyers . . . consultants . . . commissions . . . joint commissions, that there will be no way in God's world of getting rid of it. The Senator knows that," he mimicked Connally.

Vice President Barkley had to order the packed galleries to refrain from demonstrations. Connally hoped sarcastically that the order did not apply to Senator Millikin--"because his physical exertions here are so attractive as to obliterate completely his intellectual achievements." Connally took one last swing at his opposition. The Republicans were trying to kill the whole foreign-aid bill by making an issue of Point Four, he cried. Taft's arguments were an example of statesmanship "with a little 's.' " As for Donnell, Connally scoffed, he would not be against Point Four after November. "As soon as he gets out of the woods in the present campaign he will see a light . . . But until November he is going to be as tight as Dick's hatband."

Connally plumped down and listened gloweringly while Millikin closed the debate. When Millikin finished, crossed over and patted him on the back, Connally impatiently brushed the Colorado Senator away, bit viciously into his ragged cigar. Then came the vote: 47 for the conference report, which included the whole foreign aid bill; 27 against. The vote was a triumph for Connally. Both houses still had to appropriate the money for the somewhat bedraggled, somewhat less than bold, but apparently boogerless Point Four.

After members had listened for eleven days to 55 gamblers, officers of the law and assorted experts, the Senate Interstate Commerce Committee voted out a bill that would hobble, if not stop, nationwide betting. The bill would make it illegal to transmit across state lines any such information as "bets or wagers, scratches, jockey changes, weights, probable winners, betting odds or changes in the betting odds" until the race actually started.

The House passed (216 to 11) a two-year, stand-by extension of the draft. If the Senate agrees, draft-age men will be registered and classified. In an emergency, Congress would then merely pass a joint resolution to begin inductions.

-According to Webster's: performing in excess of what is required.

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