Old-Fashioned Horse Trade

Out of the House Ways & Means Committee last week came the Administration's bill to extend social security to 10 million U.S. citizens not now covered, e.g., lawyers and farmers. Before the committee approved the bill, it cut out a provision that would have included physicians. This pleased the American Medical Association, which had been strongly opposed to social security for physicians (although dentists are covered by the bill). Despite the physician-removing operation, the bill was a surprising proposal to come before the House from the hand of New York's hard-shelled Dan Reed, who is anything but social-security-minded. Explained Ways & Means Chairman Reed: "It has been sold to the country. The Administration wanted it. I'm part of the Administration."

Despite the firmness of Dan Reed's manner, word soon filtered through the cloakrooms that his explanation did not cover the situation completely. In the hands of Reed's powerful committee were two bills that the Administration was for and Dan Reed was against. One was the social-security bill; the other was the Randall Commission's freer-trade bill. With the congressional season growing late, Dan Reed and the White House made an old-fashioned horse trade: Reed would move the social-security bill out of his committee; the Administration would ease up, for the present, on its trade bill demands. With that it was clear that a one-year extension of the present reciprocal trade program is the best the Administration can expect to get out of Dan Reed's committee and the 83rd Congress.

Last week the Congress also: P: Took-final legislative action, in the Senate, to change the name of the Nov. 11 legal holiday from "Armistice Day" to "Veterans' Day."

P: Saw a new battle developing on public housing. Within three hours after the Administration's housing bill was reported out by the Senate Banking & Currency Committee, South Carolina's Democratic Senator Burnet Maybank, long a champion of public housing, introduced an amendment to wipe out all provisions for public housing. Reason: Maybank is furious about last week's Supreme Court decision (TIME, May 31) prohibiting racial segregation in a California public-housing project.

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