Man for the Job

President Eisenhower's proposal last winter for a nonpartisan monetary commission to study the nation's financial system set Congress forthwith to courting reasons why a congressional committee could do the job and do it better. But even on that score a hitch arose; nobody in Congress could decide which committee qualified.

First to apply for the job of ferreting out fiscal failings was Texas Democrat Wright Patman, who proposed a House Banking and Currency subcommittee (headed by Patman) to look into the fiscal picture. He received Speaker Sam Rayburn's blessing, but little more. The House, which knows Patman as an easy-money man who blames most of the world's troubles on big bankers, handily voted down an enabling resolution. Another candidate, Senate Banking and Currency Chairman J. William Fulbright, was equally unpromising. Two years ago Fulbright and his committee undertook an investigation of the stock market, accomplished little more than a sharp drop in market prices.

Last week a surprise nominee walked off with the honors. Virginia's budget-dogging Harry Flood Byrd quietly announced that his Senate Finance Committee would begin hearings on "the financial condition of the U.S." by mid-May, would carry out "one of the broadest investigations ever undertaken by Congress." Because the committee already has funds to begin, Byrd asked for no approval, needed none. But he could certainly have got it had he tried. To the Senate, which reveres Harry Byrd as a man who knows fiscal policy as well as he knows Virginia apples, his credentials were eminently satisfactory.

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