Moving Again

During the many months that he really needed their votes for the civil rights bill, President Johnson was downright deferential to Capitol Hill Republicans. But now that the measure has passed the Senate and seems certain of quick approval in the House, Johnson obviously figures that he no longer needs to be so nice. Last week he started pressuring the House to stay in session six days a week, at least through July 10, to act on a big pileup of legislation, in particular his anti-poverty bill.

House G.O.P. Leader Charlie Halleek, for one, thought that this was less than cricket. Fourteen House Republicans are members of their party's national convention Platform Committee, which starts work in San Francisco on July 6. Those members quite understandably would like to be on hand to shape the platform, and Halleck had been aiming for a July 3-20 House recess. Now he ruefully recalled the help that he and his G.O.P. colleagues had given Johnson on civil rights: "Memories are real short around here."

But Halleck had a stronger weapon than words: the civil rights bill still needed Republican votes to get it out of the House Rules Committee so that it could be whooped through on the House floor. Halleck publicly pledged that those G.O.P. votes would not be forthcoming if Johnson persisted in his stand. At week's end it seemed highly likely that Halleck and his colleagues would get to San Francisco on time--and that the anti-poverty bill would have to wait.

With civil rights on the way to enactment, the year-long legislative logjam began to break. Last week the Congress also: > Approved, by a 212-to-189 House vote, an Administration-backed $375 million urban-transit bill designed to aid cities in improving their municipal and suburban public-transport systems. Spread over three years, federal funds would cover up to two-thirds of the cost of transit-system renewal or expansion. >Shelved, by a voice vote of the House Ways and Means Committee, the Administration's longstanding medicare bill. Instead, the committee approved a measure that would boost Social Security cash benefits by roughly 5%. Maximum family benefit would be increased gradually to $300 a month, and individual benefit would go up to $143, the rise financed by a slightly higher tax on employers and employees. >Voted, 77 to 2, in a lively Senate session, to repeal the 10% federal excise taxes on a vast variety of consumer items ranging from cosmetics, handbags and luggage to mechanical pencils and pingpong balls. > Overrode, in a House Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations, the decade-old dictatorship of Chairman Otto Passman, a Louisiana Democrat whose only particular claim to fame is his effective hostility to the foreign-aid program. Always in the past Passman had been backed by Missouri Democrat Clarence Cannon, chairman of the full Appropriations Committee. But Cannon died last May and was succeeded by Texas Democrat George Mahon. At the urging of Fellow Texan Lyndon Johnson, Mahon persuaded the subcommittee to turn down Passman's demands for meat-ax foreign-aid cuts.

The subcommittee approved all but $200 million of the $3.5 billion the Administration had requested, and the full committee swiftly followed suit. Undaunted, Passman vowed to take his fight to the House floor. "I am not," he cried, "a political prostitute!" > Approved by unanimous vote of the Senate Post Office and Civil Service Committee a federal pay-raise bill earlier passed by the House. It would boost salaries of House and Senate members by $7,500--to $30,000--and provide increases ranging from 3% to 22 i% for 1,700,000 federal employees. On Cabinet-level salaries, the committee recommended an increase of $10,000 a year--up from $7,500 in the House version--to $35,000, to attract top talent to Government service. Approval by the full Senate was expected this week. > Raised, in a 48-to-21 Senate vote, the national debt ceiling from $315 billion to a record $324 billion for the coming fiscal year. >Authorized, by a 78-to-3 Senate vote, a $5.2 billion space budget. Before the final vote, a move to chop 10% from the Apollo man-on-the-moon program was narrowly defeated 43 to 38. The surprising strength shown by opponents of the Apollo program, led by Arkansas' Democrat William Fulbright, indicated that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration may run into trouble when the time comes for Congress to appropriate the actual funds.

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