Drive for Adjournment

"We have dawdled along month after month with no bills on the calendar," said Pennsylvania's Joe Clark to a well-filled Senate Chamber. "Now we find ourselves in a hectic position of disarray, trying desperately to pass enough legislation so that we will not be held up to the scorn of the country."

Liberal Democrat Clark's tongue-lashing was meant for Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, but it made a certain amount of sense to his red-eyed, rumpled colleagues, worn down by 14-hour working days as they rushed toward adjournment before the July11 Democratic Convention. The House side was equally hectic. After five leisurely months, the 86th Congress last week launched a frantic drive to pass "must" legislation. Items: P:The House passed (258-124) a $3.58 billion foreign-aid bill, $590.5 million below Administration requests, but a surprising $200 million above the $3.38 billion package backed by House Speaker Sam Rayburn--thanks to a rare combination of conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats engineered by Minority Leader Charlie Halleck. New York's Old Guard John Taber, longtime aid trimmer, led the disciplined Republican ranks in bidding for $200 million more for military assistance (total: $1.8 billion), which the Democrats supported. In return, Halleck & Co. voted to restore U.S. aid ($515 million over ten years) to the Indus River project for India and Pakistan, a favorite liberal cause. On the strength of that quid pro quo, the coalition scored a smashing 212-173 roll-call victory, passed the aid bill to the openhanded Senate, which will likely push it close to Ike's original figure. P: The Senate spent half the fiscal 1961 federal budget by appropriating $40.5 billion for defense -- $1 billion more than the original Administration request and the total in the House-passed bill. In its mood of cold war militancy, it approved (85-0) multimillion-dollar boosts for the Atlas, Minuteman and Polaris missiles, pushed the Samos, Midas and Discoverer satellites, pumped new life into the B70 bomber and Bomarc antiaircraft-missile program, bolstered the Army's airlift capability, and earmarked $293 million for a conventionally powered supercarrier. Added by floor amendment were $90 million (for a $422 million total) to modernize Army weapons and $40 million to keep the Marine Corps at 200,000 men. A conference committee would likely split House-Senate differences, peg defense spending at some $600 million over Ike's budget.

P: The Senate, by voice vote, stripped the controversial non-Communist affidavit requirement from the 1958 National Defense Education Act, added criminal penalties (five years, $10,000 fine) for anyone accepting a scholarship while a member of the Communist Party or within five years of such membership. P: Senate and House passed a constitutional amendment enfranchising residents of the District of Columbia in presidential elections. The amendment now must be approved by three-fourths (38) of the states within seven years. The prospective 23rd Amendment would give the district three votes in the Electoral College--the number held by "the least populous states" (Alaska, Vermont, Delaware, Nevada, Wyoming and Hawaii). P: The House, under the hard eye of swarming lobbyists, launched a 7.5%, across-the-board pay hike for 1,600,000 civil service and postal employees. Cost: $746 million. Headed for a sure veto by Ike, the election-year offering passed by a lopsided 377-40, swept through the Senate by another veto-proof landslide (62-17), over sharp complaints by Arizona Republican Barry Goldwater ("A purely political bill") and Idaho's Frank Church, Democratic Convention keynoter: "I can't in good conscience support a $750 million bill to fatten the federal payroll."

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