Raising Anti-Poverty's Ante

Experimental, controversial, and only nine months old, President Johnson's anti-poverty program is also about to get stronger and richer. Last week the House of Representatives passed and sent to the Senate an anti-poverty authorization bill of $1.9 billion for the current fiscal year. This was $400 million more than the original Administration request and $1.1 billion above the appropriation for the nine months that ended June 30. Further, the new bill gives Anti-Poverty Chief Sargent Shriver the right to reverse a Governor's veto of federal decisions to place certain types of projects in the Governor's state.

Marked Deck. Some Republicans and a handful of Democrats repeatedly lost bids to amend the authorization downward and impose administrative restrictions. Amendment after amendment went down in voice votes. The opposition came close only once, on the issue of the Governor's veto, when it lost a teller vote 155 to 150. Still, there were some lively protests.

California Republican H. Allen Smith called the program a "monstrous boondoggle" that was being increased although there had been no "meaningful evaluation" of it. Ohio Republican William Ayres chided the Administration for keeping Shriver as head of both the domestic Office of Economic Opportunity and the foreign Peace Corps. Said Ayres: "We are now asked to double the appropriation and still retain a half-time director." Pennsylvania Democrat John Dent liked the program's aims but charged both Republican and Democratic Governors with using the program for political purposes--"both in the same poker game, and both have the same marked deck." New Jersey Republican Peter Frelinghuysen taunted Democrats about difficulties at some OEO centers (TIME, July 16). "Many mistakes have been made," Frelinghuysen said, "yet we try to brush them under the rug. This program does not deserve an additional penny."

Positive Thinking. Harlem's Adam Clayton Powell, chairman of the Education and Labor Committee that had expanded and reported the bill, spoke from personal experience when he observed that "social-welfare power struggles, political friction and public controversy have been spawned." But, Powell claimed extravagantly, the program already had "uplifted and given new hope" to 3,000,000 people who had been "drifting aimlessly through shabby lives." John Lindsay, the Republican mayoral candidate in New York, also acknowledged problems. Then he said: "I think we should look at this rather affirmatively--we should look at the good that these programs are doing for human beings rather than condemn the entire noble effort because it falls short of immediate perfection."

As the debate went into its second day, the House leadership tried to cut it off. Republicans resisted the rush tactics, and even a Democrat, Paul Jones of Missouri, cried: "This is the damnedest thing I've seen in all my life." He shouted at his fellow Democrats: "Some of you should be ashamed to call yourselves legislators." The opponents gained more talking time, but it did them no good. The final vote on the authorization was 245 to 158.

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