The Nub: Politics

One by one, the 65 crystal chandeliers in the U.S. Capitol had been taken down, disassembled, washed prism by prism, reassembled and rehung. Twenty-two painters had brushed their way across Capitol Hill, cleaning and painting walls. By this week all was in readiness for the fall of the gavel opening the second session of the 84th Congress.

Every sign pointed to a long, noisy and hyperpolitical session, with nearly every word and deed aimed at next Nov. 6. Most of what is said and done will be affected profoundly by the heartbeats of two men. Political maneuvering in and between both parties will be influenced by the condition of Dwight Eisenhower's health and the course of his political decisions. The practical operations will revolve around the heart and hand of Texas' Democratic Senator, Lyndon Johnson.

When he arrived in Washington at week's end, Majority Leader Johnson had a daily routine planned to hold down the strain on his own heart. He had not been on the Senate floor since he suffered a severe attack in July; he plans to stay there for only an hour at a time during this session. Each day he expects to be on hand from noon until 1 p.m.; then he will retire to his second-floor office, off the Senate Gallery, for a two-hour nap. Late in the afternoon he will reappear on the floor briefly, roam the cloak rooms, head for home before 6 p.m. In case of crisis, Johnson's vigilant colleagues will summon him from his hideaway.

One of the first major items of legislation on Lyndon Johnson's calendar is not likely to ease the strain on many congressional hearts--including the majority leader's. Passed by the House in the final hours of the last session and lying there ready to tear the Senate apart is a bill to exempt natural-gas producers from fed eral regulation. Texan Johnson and Demo crats from other gas-producing states are hot for the bill; big-city Democrats, e.g., Illinois' Paul Douglas and Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey, are dead set against it (they want federal controls to hold prices down). Republicans are also divided on the issue, but not as sharply as the Demo crats. Lyndon Johnson believes that in an election year it is best to get such a bomb shell out of the way early.

On other major issues party groupings will be clearer, although hardly ever unanimous. Key items: Farm Policy. Democrats will attempt to make a major issue of falling income on the farm, but Republicans hope to steal the ball by coming forward with a pro gram to put more money in the farmers' pockets. The chances are against a return to high (90% of parity), rigid price sup ports as a general policy; the chances are excellent for the establishment of a soil-bank plan, under which farmers would get cash benefits for switching land from surplus to soil-building crops.

Taxes. The odds still favor some kind of cut in personal income taxes, after long, loud arguments between Republicans and Democrats about whether, who, what and when. But no action is expected until May or June, after the Administration has added up the tax returns for 1955 and gauged the prospects for '56 and '57.

Foreign Aid. The Eisenhower Administration will propose expenditures of $4.4 billion (up $200 million from the current fiscal year), will ask for new appropriations of almost $4.9 billion (up $2.2 billion) to refill the pipeline for later years. Both the size of the appropriation and the effort to put foreign aid on a long-run basis will be attacked from both sides of the aisle. Probable result: less money than requested, and no long-term base.

Education. After much argument about methods, a bill to provide more federal aid for school construction is expected to pass.

Highways. The federal-aid-for-roads program, bogged down in arguments about financing last session, will probably emerge as two bills, one to establish the road program, another to finance it on a pay-as-you-go basis through higher highway-connected taxes, e.g., on gasoline.

Social Security. A bill to lower the qualifying age for women from 65 to 62 and liberalizing the terms of the Social Security program, passed by the House in the last session, is expected to pass the Senate after appropriate noise.

Disaster Insurance. Because of the New England and Far West floods and their effect on Senators and Representatives from those areas, there will be a tendency toward bigger flood-control authorizations and serious consideration of a federal disaster-insurance plan.

While an election year might be expected to produce a rash of investigations, few are in the wind. None is genuinely new. There will be further probing of defense procurement policies, and of auto dealers' complaints against manufacturers. The Senate Internal Security Subcommittee is set to question Communists and ex-Communists in journalism.*

As they arrived in Washington over the weekend, Democrats were still divided on two important points of strategy: 1) Should they make a partisan issue of foreign policy? 2) Should they attack President Eisenhower directly? In both cases the older, cooler heads were still saying no, and the younger, hotter heads were saying yes. Whatever view prevailed (the noes had it last week), there will be a heavy overtone of individual and party politics on both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill throughout the second session of the 84th. It is likely to last until the Democrats hurry to Chicago for the opening of their national convention on Aug. 13.

*Reporting on its recess work, the Internal Security Subcommittee last week issued A Handbook for Americans on how the Communist conspiracy works in the U.S. The committee's estimate of the number of Communists in the U.S.: 22,663.

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