The Author & the Crocodile

On the floor of the U.S. Senate last week, Democrat Paul Douglas of Illinois bewailed the economic state of the nation and lugubriously pictured the U.S. housewife hunched over her electric stove, the burden of taxes weighing heavily on her shoulders. Up from behind a paper-littered desk rose Colorado's Republican Senator Eugene Millikin to trade political insults. (Douglas chided the G.O.P. for a recent Government pamphlet on Ways to Cook Rabbit. Millikin recalled a Democratic treatise on the love life of a watermelon.) Then Gene Millikin stumped to the rear of the chamber, puffed on a cigarette, and licked his lips in anticipation of a good fight. He watched Douglas for five minutes, then stumped out his smoke and moved painfully (he suffers from arthritis) down the aisle on the Democratic side; Douglas went to meet him. For the next five hours two of the Senate's ablest debaters faced each other in poste and riposte which, if not instructive, was vastly entertaining. Their subject: taxes, especially the proposed cuts in excises (TIME, March 15-22).

Millikin waggled a finger under the Douglas nose. Douglas waggled right back. Clearly outreached, stubby Gene Millikin retired briefly. Douglas accused the Republicans of sponsoring tax measures which would benefit only the wealthy. Rejoined Millikin: "Dear Senator, if that did not come out of your mouth. I would call it sheer claptrap--and it is still claptrap, even though it comes out of your mouth." From his safe distance, Millikin waved a long yellow pencil at Douglas.

23 Skiddoo! Snapped Millikin: "Let us cut out the bunk about how this tax bill is for the benefit of the rich, and how it oppresses the poor." Douglas pointed to a proposed reduction in the federal tax on cabarets. Asked he: "How many workingmen go to the Stork Club, the '23' Club,* and other such places, where gay blades like the Senator from Colorado are wont to congregate?"

That brought a youthful glint into old (63) Gene Millikin's eyes. "The Senator from Illinois," said he, "causes me to think very nostalgically . . . His mind is preoccupied, for some strange reason, with the Stork Club and other fancy clubs, where, I assume, curvaceous and attractive girls gather."

Douglas broke in: "Let me say that I have never been in a nightclub in my life." Wistfully, Senator Millikin replied: "Nor have I, for many, many years . . . The Senator from Illinois has stimulated my imagination. His mind is strangely preoccupied with elegant clubs like the Stork Club and the '23' Club--is that the right name?" Douglas had the answer at the tip of his tongue. Said he: "The '23' Club, according to Walter Winchell!"

Come On, Six! Millikin stayed in his dream world. "At any rate," he said, "that is what the Senator is thinking about. There bejeweled women congregate--I suppose. There is a very toothsome chorus line out in front--I suppose. They have acts of various types."

Abruptly Gene Millikin returned to reality--and the hard fact of taxes. He held up a book written by Douglas, onetime college economics instructor, in which Douglas advised against deficit financing when unemployment is under 6%. "Not five and a half," said Millikin, "not four, not seven. It must be six. It is as though the Senator was shooting crap and calling for a number; six is the number."

Good Quaker Douglas was on his feet in protest:. "Mr. President, being a devout member of a religious faith, I must say that I have not shot craps, as the Senator from Colorado intimates."

First, denials of nightclubbing, then of dice; Millikin displayed mock horror at such unworldliness. "Soon," he said, "the Senator will disclaim any knowledge or interest in many activities in which many people engage, and he will then stand in an exalted sort of position and we will all have to act like disciples of Father Divine." Millikin made a tiny bow at Douglas. "Good Father, please spare us from that!"

Minnesota's brash Democratic Senator Hubert Humphrey jumped up, expounded his own tax views, and was quickly routed when Millikin said: "That is an Icarian syllogism." Humphrey, looking blankly toward the presiding officer: "Mr. President, that is too much for me." Millikin explained: "In other words, the Senator from Minnesota would pin wax wings on his own back in an attempt to fly. However, because of his unsure base, he would land in the ocean." Understanding dawned on Humphrey's face. Asked he: "Is not that just another way of saying I am all wet?" Millikin just smiled.

Golden Tablets. Next day, Douglas asked for more. In the early stages of debate, said he, it is Millikin's habit to "lie somewhat torpidly on the banks of the parliamentary stream. I once spent some time in the tropics ... I noticed the crocodile, the king of the tropical rivers, lying in the mud, apparently inattentive to what was going on but, if excited, springing up and, in a paroxysm of rage, lashing his tail and extending his giant jaws--a very formidable creature indeed." Millikin answered: "I do not mind being compared to the crocodile. If I were not in a pleasant mood, I might think of even more obnoxious animals with which to compare the Senator from Illinois."

Douglas, said Millikin, was certainly not a crocodile. In fact, he was "hardly an author--but somewhat of an author ... He holds his arguments until, like unveiling a statue, he drops the curtain and here it is, Mr. President: here is the golden tablet . . . the tablet of Dr. Douglas, the author of 14 books. Therefore, Mr. President, Mr. Douglas says to the members of the Senate: 'My friends, you must take this. Otherwise you are guilty of sacrilege and you are guilty of sin.' "

But the other Senators accepted only a small flake from the golden tablet of Paul Douglas. They voted down two amendments he had sponsored, but did cut excises on household appliances. Then, by a 76-to-8 vote, the Senate passed the billion-dollar excise tax reduction bill substantially as it had been reported by Eugene Millikin's Finance Committee. The measure then went to a House-Senate conference committee for final shaping.

* The Senator was talking about Manhattan's famed "21" Club--not about the 23rd Street Milk Bar.

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