The Worst Defeat

One of the first legislative successes of the Kennedy Administration after taking office in 1961 was passage of a $394 million program of economic aid to areas with heavy unemployment. The bill easily cleared the House of Representatives, 224 to 193. By the end of this year most of that money will have been committed, so the Administration proposed a new $445,500,000 appropriation to extend and expand the program. Last week the House killed the new bill, 209 to 204, gave the Administration its worst defeat of the year.

Why the big switch in two years? Some analysts leaped to the conclusion that Southern Congressmen had turned against Kennedy in anger at his civil rights policies. Yet a comparison of the 1961 and 1963 votes shows that precisely 52 Southern Democrats voted against the distressed-areas bill in both years. The difference was that this year only 15 Republicans voted for it, while last time 31 voted yes.

There were some valid reasons for the more solid G.O.P. opposition this year. The program, which includes loans to redevelop both industrial and rural areas, has at times been poorly administered. Wisconsin Republican John Byrnes cited, for example, a loan to build a tissue-paper manufacturing plant in Tomahawk, Wis., just when the tissue-paper industry as a whole is having a hard time. Other Congressmen were plainly tired of taking the heat from communities that wanted loans but failed to qualify for them under bureaucratic requirements. After the vote, Kennedy indicated that he will try to get the bill through the Senate and then back for another house vote.

On other legislative matters:

>Kennedy made a rousing pitch for his medicare program in a five-minute talk to the National Council of Senior Citizens meeting in Washington. He also chose the occasion to criticize indirectly Ways and Means Committee Chairman Wilbur Mills, whose committee has been bottling up medicare. "I am certain that if members of the House and Senate have a chance to vote on the bill it will pass in this Congress," said Kennedy. Since Mills also is a key figure in Kennedy's tax-cut plans, the criticism seemed curiously timed.

> With a massive Southern filibuster against civil rights legislation in prospect, Oregon's cantankerous Democratic Senator Wayne Morse announced that he may stage a one-man talkathon of his own against the Administration's $4.5 billion foreign aid request. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara also was grilled warmly on the military-assistance portion of this request by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Arkansas Democrat J. William Fulbright joined Morse in charging that some European nations are not adequately sharing the costs of their own defense.

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