Go-Slow Roadblocks

Bracing his lanky Texas frame against his polished first-row desk, Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson early one evening last week delivered his latest plea for nonpartisanship in the U.S. Senate. He had a good partisan reason. Far from indulging in nonpartisanship as Lyndon likes it, Republican Senators were heightening their resistance to pell-mell Democratic antirecession spending.

Back from a recess that revealed most constituents calm and cautious (TIME, April 14), buoyed by the President's stinging vetoes and preachments against panic, the G.O.P., with the session's tightest discipline, was earnestly tossing roadblocks into the path of the freewheeling Democratic majority.

Idle Gestures. The week's first roadblock loomed up when Johnson cast around for the two-thirds Senate vote needed to override the White House vetoes of 1) the bill to freeze farm price supports at 1957 levels and 2) the lard-heavy rivers-and-harbors authorization. He soon counted too many Republican noes. "I don't believe in idle gestures," said he, and gracefully helped the farm bill along to an agriculture committee that will probably let it mildew for the rest of the session. The pork-barrel bill went to the Public Works Committee for a word-for-word review that might skim off the lard that Ike rejected.

A second roadblock was thrown up during the maneuvering over Arkansas Democrat J. William Fulbright's Community Facilities Bill to provide long-term (50 years) public-works loans to small cities with low credit ratings. Fortnight ago, Republicans on Fulbright's Banking and Currency Committee (joined by Democrats Paul Douglas of Illinois, Allen Frear Jr. of Delaware and Willis Robertson of Virginia) trimmed the bill's total from $2 billion to $1 billion, upped the proposed interest rate from 3% to 3 1/2%.

When the bill was called on the Senate floor last week, Fulbright doggedly introduced a 3% interest amendment. But Republicans pulled him up short a second time. They argued that the lower interest rate was a short-term rate unsuitable to long-term loans, defeated the amendment (41-40) in a straight party vote. But when the bill had been shaped to suit them, 20 Republicans shifted, helped pass (60-26) and send to the House the measure making loans available for small-town schools, hospitals, sewers, parks and recreational facilities.

Odd Base. During the debate over the interest rate, Bill Fulbright took off onto a new and unusual line of advocacy. Arguing for his 3% interest, he ticked off foreign nations that have fared as well or better with U.S. loans: "Afghanistan pays 3% on its mutual-security-program loan. Burma paid 2 3/8 on an overseas surplus property loan. Nationalist China under the mutual-security program has been paying 3%." Cried he: "It is beyond my understanding why grants to that extent and loans for economic development in the amount of more than $41 million can be extended at 3%, and yet objection is made so strenuously to the 3% provided in the bill."

Rhodes Scholar Fulbright, who prides himself on his knowledge of foreign aid problems, well knew that a low-rate foreign loan or grant usually has security or political implications that play no part in U.S. domestic affairs. Snapped New Jersey Republican Clifford Case: "If it is impossible for the people of the U.S. to understand the reason for loans at lower interest rates to foreign countries . . . then indeed the security of the U.S. is at a low ebb."

Fulbright's oddly based belligerence had an echo from another hard-pressed Democrat, Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey, who also soundly prides himself on understanding the national need behind foreign aid. "If the Administration insists on turning down the legislative enactments of the Congress," he said, "then the Administration can note in its executive notebook that mutual security and reciprocal trade are going to be in trouble."

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