The Week's Work

Last week the President: P: Signed the $126 million Airport Aid Bill, a bill raising the interest ceiling from 4.75% to 5.25% on G.I. housing loans, and the corporate-and excise-taxes extension bill (see The Congress). P: Marked off a new line of fiscal frugality for his Administration. A balanced budget was something he was earnestly striving for, said Ike, but he pointedly omitted previous hints that this might mean a tax cut. Said he: "We should be starting to pay off our [$284 billion] debt . . . Congress itself expects us to get in the business of paying off some of these great obligations, and I think we should." P: Pinned an oakleaf cluster, in lieu of a third Distinguished Service Medal, on the chest of retiring General Maxwell D. Taylor. Cracked Ike, as he searched for a place to pin the last award on the much decorated tunic of his wartime comrade: "There's not much room left, is there?" P: Adroitly fielded a press conference question that is bound to come up in a hundred different ways between now and July 1960, as reporters and politicos try to get him to express a personal preference between Vice President Richard Nixon, Governor Nelson Rockefeller, or any other Republican who might be his successor. "I certainly shall never, so far as I am able, indicate publicly ... or privately [a personal preference], because I don't think it is correct or right." P: Observed the 43rd anniversary of his marriage to Mamie Geneva Doud with a seasoned philosophy: "I can just say it's been a very happy experience . . ." P: Interrupted a holiday weekend with his family and a few old friends at his Maryland mountain retreat, Camp David, to return to Washington by helicopter on Independence Day, lay the cornerstone of the Capitol's new east portico, using the same ceremonial trowel that George Washington used at the cornerstone dedication of the original building in 1793.

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