Work for the 85th

Between July 28, 1956, when the 84th Congress adjourned, and Jan. 3, 1957, when the 85th Congress convened, an avalanche of events had changed virtually every recognizable feature of the world landscape as seen from Capitol Hill. The U.S. returned Dwight Eisenhower to office in a devastating sweep--but for the first time in history a re-elected President would be confronted by a Congress controlled by the opposition. Crisis in the Middle East strained and stretched (but did not break) the historic alliance with Britain and France, even while crisis in Poland and Hungary demonstrated to the world anew the weaknesses (and the constant threat) of that long-standing cold-war antagonist, the Soviet Union. Economically, the boom kept booming, but now there were complaints about inflation on the one hand and "tight money" on the other. In Montgomery, Ala., Negroes and whites rode together on buses--at least in the daytime and signaled the passing of an old way of life.

Each of these events would have its own effect, and bring about a new response when, for the first time in five months, the U.S. Government this week would be working in all its parts--executive, judicial and legislative.

Important Key. Democratic Congressional Leaders Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn had already agreed on their general policy: they would wait for the Eisenhower Administration to present its program, deal with the proposals pretty much on their merits, hold off until 1958 (an election year) before unwrapping their own party-labeled legislative package. The Republicans faced a sterner test of congressional leadership. If the 1956 elections proved nothing else, they showed that the G.O.P. cannot depend even upon Ike's popularity to give it control of Congress; the key to an improved Republican congressional electoral showing lies in an improved Republican congressional record. In the somewhat unwieldy House, divided 233 Democrats and 200 Republicans (with two vacancies). Leader Joe Martin would just have to do the best he could--and Joe is a skilled veteran at getting what is possible. But it was in the Senate, cliff-hanging between 49 Democrats and 47 Republicans, that the G.O.P. had its best chance to demonstrate that it really believes in the kind of Republicanism that got Ike elected. And upon the massive shoulders of Senate Republican Leader William Knowland rests much of the responsibility for making the showing.

Some new leaders also would be tested by the changed world of 1957. As Congress convened this week, Arizona's Democratic Senator Carl Hayden, 79, would replace Georgia's retired Walter George as the Senate's president pro tempore; Montana's able Democratic Senator Mike Mansfield, 53, was ready to step into the place of Kentucky's defeated Earle Clements as assistant majority leader; Rhode Island's ancient (89) Senator Theodore Francis Green would take over from Walter George as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; and Illinois' staunchly internationalist Thomas Gordon, 63, would move into the place of South Carolina's retired James P. Richards as head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Glaring Light. The prospects for action from the election-refreshed 85th Congress were good. Despite the promise of a long-heralded Senate skirmish over rules, there was a strong chance for major civil-rights legislation, the first since Reconstruction. Some 175,000 Hungarian refugees had placed in glaring light the need for changes in the inflexible McCarran-Walter Immigration and Nationality Act. U.S. monetary policy was in for a review; so was the vastly important foreign-aid program. A school-construction program was likely to be enacted.

And nothing could better symbolize the changed world of the 85th Congress than the word, passed even as the members of the House and Senate were gathering in Washington, that President Eisenhower would seek congressional approval of a guarantee that the U.S. would defend the Middle East from Soviet incursion.

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