So Far, So Good

Onto the floor of the Senate last week walked Virginia's Democratic Senator Harry Flood Byrd. wearing a white summer suit and a small smile. Up for Senate debate and voting was a Byrd-written amendment that would have refused to the Kennedy Administration its urgently requested authority to place the U.S.'s $8.8 billion foreign aid program on a five-year basis, without having to return to Congress with a begging bowl each year. Kennedy's proposal made sense in the need to be able to match Khrushchev in long-term commitments to needy nations. But Congressmen do not lightly surrender the power of the purse as a lever on the Executive. Harry Byrd, dean of Senate conservatives and as accurate a vote counter as exists on Capitol Hill, was pretty sure that his amendment would not pass. But he hoped for a moral victory that would encourage the foes of the five-year proposal when it came up in the House of Representatives, always much tougher about foreign aid than the Senate. "Well,'' said Byrd. "the Administration wants to win this one pretty badly, and I expect they will. But I think we may get as many as 45 votes, so that if they win, it will hardly stand as much of a vote of confidence in the President."

The New Frontier also recognized the importance of the upcoming vote--and President Kennedy himself spent up to three hours a day on the telephone, lobbying with Senators against the Byrd amendment. The Democratic Administration received valuable support from Kentucky's Republican Senator Thruston Morton, chairman of the G.O.P. National Committee from 1959-61. Morton arose on the Senate floor to remind his Republican colleagues that Dwight Eisenhower had sought, and been refused, just such long-term foreign aid authority in 1957. He cited the words of Republican Secretary of State John Foster Dulles: "Economic development is a long-term process, not an annual event."

When the vote came, Harry Byrd fell far short of the strength he had counted upon for his moral victory: the Senate turned down his amendment 56 to 39. So far, so good. After that key vote it seemed likely that the Senate would overwhelmingly approve the Administration's foreign aid bill. But the legislation would still have to pass the test of the House--and to pass that test, it would need all the power, persuasion and politics that the New Frontier could muster.

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