Step Toward Decision

The carved mahogany door of the House Ways & Means Committee's conference room swung open and out came a score of frazzled committee members, leaving wan and weary Chairman Wilbur Mills behind to talk to reporters. Arkansas' Mills had an announcement of key importance: pending a final vote this week, the committee had informally approved the Eisenhower Administration's five-year extension of the reciprocal-trade program, with authority for the President to cut tariffs by an additional 25% at the top rate of 5% a year.

Behind that announcement lay weeks of wrangling and hours of bone-tiring, closed-door committee sessions under Wilbur Mills, longtime reciprocal-trade advocate, whose hopes to be Sam Rayburn's successor as Democratic House Speaker might well be at stake in the success or failure of the trade bill. At one point Mills was so discouraged that he predicted total House defeat for reciprocal trade, urged the Administration to take responsibility for watering down its own program (TIME, May 19). When the Administration stood firm, Mills went back to work. The gizmo that finally won the Ways & Means Committee's informal approval was a thing of doubtful value and doubtful parentage, known as the "Martin Amendment" because House Republican Leader Joe Martin had helped persuade President Eisenhower to approve it.

Privileged Business. Under the amendment, adopted by a 16-to-9 Ways & Means Committee vote, if the President were to override any recommendation of the Tariff Commission, Congress would have 60 days to reverse his decision by a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate. Actually, Congress already has that power: it can pass laws reversing presidential tariff-cutting decisions, then override a presidential veto by a two-thirds vote. The only real difference is that under the Martin amendment a resolution reversing the President would become privileged business; i.e., it could come directly to the floors of Congress without being delayed or sidetracked in committees.

With the Martin amendment Wilbur Mills was willing to take a chance on reporting out the bill. But reciprocal trade is still a long way from being out of the woods. The first House floor battle will come on the issue of a closed rule -a rule that would bar amendments from the floor. To get that rule, Wilbur Mills is willing to retreat from the five-year reciprocal-trade extension to a three-year extension.

Combined Opposition. After that the program faces the opposition of protectionists who have, for the first time in years, combined in support of a single rival bill. Authored by Pennsylvania's Republican Richard Simpson, it is openly designed to gut reciprocal trade. The key battle will come on a motion to send the reciprocal-trade bill back to the Ways & Means Committee, with orders that it approve the Simpson substitute.

At week's end, as the reciprocal-trade program moved toward the House floor, leaders of both parties were industriously counting House noses -and the future of liberalized foreign trade as a vital U.S. answer to Communist economic aggression hung in the balance.

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