Unblocking the Road

With the doors of the House chamber shut to keep out the public, the press and the Republicans, the Democratic members of the House met last week in a party caucus that will be long remembered on Capitol Hill. After years of futile attempts, House Democratic liberals finally won a decisive victory over Virginia's crusty old Rules Committee Chairman Howard W. Smith, leader of the road-blocking conservative coalition that has dominated the mighty Rules Committee since 1937 (TIME, Jan. 13). The caucus lasted only 15 minutes, but it cleared away the most formidable congressional obstacle to the New Frontier plans of the Kennedy Administration.

Saved-Up lOUs. Judge Smith's defeat was the combined work of Texas' Speaker Sam Rayburn, 79, no liberal, and Missouri's Richard Boiling, 44, leader of the House's "pragmatic liberals" (so called to distinguish them from the "bomb-throwing liberals" like California's Jimmy Roosevelt). Leathery Sam Rayburn, who became a Congressman in 1913, before Richard Boiling (or John F. Kennedy) was born, is immune to ideological itches, felt none of the liberal urge to topple Judge Smith. But Rayburn is a damn-the-infidels Democrat, and during last August's postscript session of Congress he got very sore at Smith for bottling up Kennedy's legislative program in the Rules Committee, thereby lending aid and comfort to the Republican enemy only a few months before the election. Last month, with a Democratic President about to take office, Rayburn made up his mind that in the interests of party responsibility and party control of Congress, he was going to have to loosen Judge Smith's grip on the Rules Committee.

Rayburn decided to add three new members--two Democrats and one Republican--to the committee, bringing the membership up to 15 (ten Democrats, five Republicans). If the two new Democrats were men who would go along at Rayburn's bidding--and Mister Sam would see to that--the change would drastically curb Smith's power. In the past, Smith formed a bloc with the committee's four Republicans, plus Mississippi's conservative William M. Colmer. Since nearly all major bills require a positive O.K. from the Rules Committee before they can come to the House floor, these six conservatives were able to stall liberal legislation with a 6-6 tie vote. Under the Rayburn plan, Mister Sam would have an 8-to-7 committee majority.

Smith refused to go along with Rayburn's plan, set about marshaling Southerners for battle. But Missouri's Boiling was doing some marshaling, too. A hard-thinking strategist and Rayburn's straw-boss member of the Rules Committee, Boiling had started preparing for the battle months ahead of time. He had saved up as ammunition all the lOUs that he had collected last autumn for helping Democratic House candidates while he was serving as the Kennedy-picked chairman of the committee to coordinate congressional and presidential campaigns. Making use of the detailed information in a fellow liberal's elaborate card file on Democratic Congressmen, Boiling exerted on each waverer the particular kind of pressure that seemed most likely to swing him.

Remembered Arithmetic. With a lopsided majority of the House Democrats lined up behind him, Sam Rayburn scheduled a party caucus to "instruct'' Rules Committee Democrats to report the Rayburn resolution to the House for floor action. In an attempt to avoid the indignity of being put under party orders, proud Howard Smith conceded defeat. "I went to school in a little red schoolhouse," he told the caucus, "and I learned to count, and I've never forgotten how." What he meant was that he had added up the votes and knew he would lose. He asked Rayburn to skip the instructions to the Rules Committee, promised that the committee would report the Rayburn resolution to the House. Once given, Howard Smith's word is his bond, and Sam Rayburn knew that. But Mister Sam was in an unforgiving mood, insisted on instructing the Rules Committee despite Smith's promise. By a voice vote, the caucus went along with Rayburn.

"I will fight it on the floor," Smith vowed. In that fight, he would get Republican help: the House Republican Policy Committee met the day after the Democratic caucus and voted to oppose the Rayburn plan. But it seemed certain that once the resolution got to the floor, this week or next, Rayburn and Boiling would muster the simple majority needed for victory-- a victory that for Judge Smith and for the entire House would mark the end of an era.

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