Through the Back Door

The U.S. House of Representatives last week tussled over the key to the Treasury's back door. Up for final congressional approval, after emerging from a House-Senate conference committee, was the Administration's $394 million bill to relieve economically depressed areas. But what was really at issue was the measure's method of "backdoor financing"--under which the Administration, once the bill was passed, would not have to return to Congress for actual appropriations or loan authority. To many a Representative, this seemed a dangerous dilution of Congress's constitutional power of the purse.

The House is sensitive about its pocketbook prerogative, and for a while last week the debate was hot and heavy. Texan Wright Patman, floor manager for the bill, hit at the opposition's weak spot: a nay vote would mean a decision against helping the economically depressed. "If you vote against it," he warned, "there will be no depressed areas bill this session." In vain, Republican Leader Charles Halleck argued that the bill could always be sent back to conference for change in its financing method. Cried he: "I do not think the gentleman should be inclined to scare people to death." Raged Missouri's Clarence Cannon, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee: "What a way to run a business--any business, from a peanut stand to a bank. And yet that is the way we are running the greatest government on earth. Let us close the back door."

If only back-door spending had been put to vote, it is likely that the House would have defeated it. But to most Congressmen last week, the need for relief to depressed areas outweighed the financing problems. With 31 Republicans--all from districts where unemployment is running high--voting aye, the House passed the bill by a 223 to 193 vote and sent it to President Kennedy for signing.

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