Veto Upheld

For the first time, Dwight Eisenhower stood on the edge of a congressional defeat. At issue was S. 144, the relatively trivial Rural Electrification Administration bill, which would transfer power to approve or reject REA loans from Agriculture Secretary Ezra Benson to power-hungry Clyde Ellis, director of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. To farm-state representatives of both parties the bill was alluring; Ellis for weeks had been bringing his regional managers into Washington to buttonhole Congressmen. As drafted by Benson-hating Senator Hubert Humphrey, moreover, S. 144 was a direct slap at the bedeviled Agriculture Secretary and, indirectly, at the President himself.

Mission Accomplished. The bill breezed through Congress according to schedule: 60-27 in the Senate, 254-131 in the House. Ike promptly vetoed it--exercising his thumbs-down right for the first time in the Democratic 86th Congress. Last February Ike had told a hostile REA meeting in Washington that it was time for prospering REA to give up its subsidy of low-rate Government loans (TIME, Feb. 23). In his veto message he explained that REA had all but fulfilled its mission--96% of the nation's farms have been electrified, more than half of them through REA loans--and noted that there was no sensible reason for changing a successful administrative system. "The REA," said Ike, "has been working well and progressing efficiently under the existing administrative arrangements. The change in those arrangements proposed by S. 144 would be contrary to the public interest."

Back on Capitol Hill, Speaker Sam Rayburn and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson saw opportunity: REA was one of those rare issues where Democrats of the South would likely stick together with other Democrats around the compass. They decided they could muster the necessary two-thirds vote to override the veto and doubly defeat the President. Republican Leader Everett Dirksen and Ike's other lieutenants in the Senate were in glum agreement; with the help of six farm-bloc minded Republicans (Kentucky's John Sherman Cooper. South Dakota's Francis Case and Karl Mundt, North Dakota's Milton Young and "Wild Bill" Langer, Nebraska's Carl Curtis) the Senate overrode the veto 64 to 29 with two votes to sp: re. But Indiana's Charles Halleck, the shrewd minority leader in the House, had already taken a reading, saw a fighting chance to defeat the bill and sustain Ike's perfect veto record.

Without waiting for the official veto message to reach the Capitol, Halleck and his whip, Illinois' Les Arends, had gone to work. All weekend they pestered and pressured their reluctant colleagues in the teeth of immense home-front opposition. Telephones buzzed and wires poured in from rural constituencies, urging passage of the bill. Worried Republicans from farm districts pleaded that a nay vote would be political harakiri, but Halleck sternly told them that it was a case of Ike or REA's Ellis--take your choice.

Thin Margin. By the time the burning issue reached the floor of the House the pressure was enough to crack the House chamber walls. Grim-faced Charlie Halleck stood by his desk while two assistants tallied the vote. Up his sleeve he had the votes of two Republicans who had secretly agreed to switch in favor of Ike if the situation got too rough. As it turned out, Halleck did not need his switch-hitters. Charlie Halleck & Co. had headed off the two-thirds override by the thin margin of four votes, 146 to 280. Of the 16 Republicans who had voted for the original bill, Halleck had lured nine back into the party fold to uphold the veto. And he lost only one of his five Democratic allies in the original vote--Pennsylvania's Frank M. Clark.

Hurrying to his off-the-floor office after the big save, Charlie Halleck beamingly accepted the telephoned congratulations of President Eisenhower. The narrow victory, both men knew, meant far more than a power shift at REA. It was a sobering damper on Democratic power in Congress and proof that an Eisenhower veto still packs a powerful punch.

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