Jangled Nerves

The whole fast-changing now-you-spend-it, now-you-don't situation was too much for the jangled nerves of Arkansas' J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "We are not bankrupt," said he to the Senate, "but we do look as if we are determined to end up the richest, fattest, most smug and complacent people who ever failed to meet the test of survival."

Fulbright was vexed at the President, because White House influence had helped kill off Fulbright's cherished plan for a five-year Foreign Aid Development Loan Fund, financed by back-door borrowing from the U.S. Treasury (TIME, July 13). Ike was vexed at the Senate, because it had chopped heavily into military assistance funds in cutting his $3.9 billion request for foreign aid authorization down to $3.5 billion. The Senate, he told his press conference, was "not taking into account the tremendous responsibilities of the U.S.," and he hinted that he might call a special session if military-aid cuts were not restored. And the Senate's Democratic leadership, including Bill Fulbright, was irritated and glum, because chances were good that when Senate and House conferees met to put together the final foreign aid bill, they would find Dwight Eisenhower's argument pretty hard to resist, would probably have to give him pretty much what he wanted.

Also last week in Congress:

> The Senate Appropriations Committee reported out the year's whopper: the $39,594,339,000 Defense Department appropriation--$346,139,000 more than the White House had asked, with the Army getting the biggest bonus. Included in the bill were an extra $380 million nuclear carrier for the Navy, $85 million more for the Air Force's Atlas missile, and $309 million for the Army's Nike-Hercules and for Army equipment modernization. The Defense Department was directed to keep the Marine Corps at 200,000 men instead of the budgeted 175,000, keep the National Guard at 400,000 instead of 360,000, the Army Reserve at the level of 300,000 instead of 270.000.

< The Senate by voice vote gave the Tennessee Valley Authority permission to issue and sell up to $750 million worth of bonds to help finance its power system. The Administration had requested authority for the Budget Bureau to approve the sales, but Congress reserved that authority for itself. It also put a five-mile limit on further TVA territorial expansion.

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