Inspecting the Pipeline

In their fight to cut foreign-aid appropriations. House Democrats put on a cloak that was tailor-made for their uncomfortable posture. As onetime champions of mutual assistance and onetime foes of isolationism, they could not use the well-worn cry--"Why pour good U.S. dollars down foreign ratholes?''--against the principle involved.

"I want to give them every cent they need," cried Louisiana's Representative Otto Passman, leader of the cut-foreign-aid forces. The Eisenhower Administration, said Passman & Co., already has about $9.5 billion in unspent foreign-aid funds appropriated in previous years--plenty to keep the program going. Democrats could therefore place themselves on the record at one and the same time for economy and for effective foreign aid. The argument worked: the House cut the mutual-assistance appropriation to $3,191,810,000, about $810 million below the Administration's request and $175 million less than the House's own earlier authorization (TIME. Aug. 26).

Last week the Administration set out to prove to the Senate that the argument was phony. Before the Senate Appropriations Committee went the big guns--Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, retired Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Arthur Radford. new JCS Chairman Nathan Twining, and outgoing International Cooperation Administrator John B. Hollister. They spoke eloquently, but perhaps too generally of the urgent necessity for more foreign-aid money to protect the security of the free world. But they failed to dispel the statistical myth of the "surplus" $9.5 billion.

That had to be done in careful detail by a team of second-echelon ICA and Defense Department foreign-aid experts. Some of the "surplus" could be accounted for by the fact that Passman & Co. had engaged in such statistical antics as counting a $667 million item not once but twice in arriving at their final figure. Most of the $9.5 billion has been firmly committed to the foreign-aid pipeline. Example: the U.S. has about $3.7 billion in unexpended but obligated funds for arms for its allies. But such items as tanks and planes require about two years between the time they are ordered and the time they are delivered. The $3.7 billion, therefore, even though technically unspent, represents a U.S. obligation and cannot be casually tossed off as some sort of surplus.

What the pipeline explanation made clear is that cuts in appropriations this year will mean a serious slashing of actual aid to U.S. allies in 1959 and 1960, no matter what is done by Congress next year. It also made the point that when (and if) the time comes to call a halt to foreign aid the pipeline will have to be plugged two or three years in advance of the proposed cutoff date. The experts' explanation seemed to clear the Senate's vision. At week's end it seemed likely that the Appropriations Committee and the Senate itself would restore at least part of the House cuts.

Last week the Congress also: P: Voted in the House to give Songstress Jane Froman $138,205 for crippling injuries suffered in a Pan American World Airways crash at Lisbon in 1943 while she was on a troop-entertaining mission. The amount of damages that Miss Froman could collect from the airline was limited to $9,050 (including lost baggage) under the Warsaw Convention of 1929, an international treaty imposing a ceiling of $8,300 on allowable damages for physical injuries suffered in international flights unless the claimant can prove willful misconduct. By thus voting public funds to correct the restriction of a U.S. citizen's rights by treaty, the House took legislative notice of an inequity so far generally overlooked by Ohio's Republican Senator John Bricker and his Bricker Amendment followers. Also voted: $33,236 for Gypsy Markoff, injured in the same crash. P: Cited, in the House, three Un-American Activities Committee witnesses for contempt of Congress. The three--a radio broadcaster, a radio operator and a Western Union service writer--had refused to answer questions about Communism. Their grounds: the U.S. Supreme Court's Watkins case decision, which held that a witness must have a clear legislative reason for the congressional investigation and that all questions must be pertinent to that legislative reason.

P: Passed in the Senate,. a bill to buy $1,000,000 worth of new furniture for new Senate offices. Illinois' Democrat Paul Douglas protested. New Mexico's Democrat Dennis Chavez replied that Douglas could keep his ratty old furniture if he liked, but other Senators were going to live better. Cried Minnesota's Democrat Hubert Humphrey, who hopes that the bill will improve the Senate restaurant: "Hundreds of hours every day in this capitol are wasted by officials who are paid $22,500 a year, standing in line to get something to eat, as if they were in Moscow, queued up to get a yoyo. And when one does eat, one is packed closer than Norwegian sardines in a Bolivian tin can."

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