Holiday for Builders

"And now, Mr. Speaker, there being no further business," drawled Acting House Majority Leader Hale Boggs of Louisiana, "it is my honor and privilege to move that the first session of the 89th Congress do now adjourn." The clock stood at 12:52 a.m.; the Senate had quit two minutes earlier. To a chorus of yahoos, Speaker John McCormack banged his gavel, and the 40-odd members still on the floor headed jubilantly for the exits.

Thus, at long last, Congress wound up a first session whose record of legislative achievement (see box) was unsurpassed in bulk or scope by that of any other Congress in U.S. history --even by Franklin Roosevelt's celebrated 73rd. In a heartfelt thank-you message to his congressional lieutenants, Lyndon Johnson predicted: "What you have done will find a shining residence in the history books."

Words: $3,000,000. The Congress had also set records for the bookkeepers. In all, the 89th spent $119.3 billion--a total unprecedented in peacetime and one that will require decades to pay off; interest on this year's national debt alone came to $11 billion. With its oratorical blast, the session had filled more than 33,250 pages of the Congressional Record, another record, which cost the taxpayers only some $3,000,000.

As adjournment fever gripped the Hill, a constant flow of bills shuttled between the Capitol's wings, to be acted on within hours by both House and Senate. Energetically sweeping out the legislative leftovers, the two houses sped through dozens of bypassed bills on matters ranging from authorization to fly the U.S. flag 24 hours a day in Lexington, Mass., to approving medals for the 250th anniversary of San Antonio in 1968.

Pork Prize. More substantive measures authorized a $1.4 billion vocational-rehabilitation program, a $178 million-a-year 10% increase in disabled veterans' pensions, and the traditional pork-barrel prize for the Congressmen themselves: 140 pet rivers-and-harbors projects in 41 states, at a cost of $2 billion. And, as always with the 89th, the week saw one major Administration victory: final passage of President Johnson's $2.3 billion higher-education bill establishing the nation's first undergraduate federal scholarships.

With its supporters in no mood to haggle with the opposition, the White House also suffered some last-minute reverses. In the $4.7 billion appropriation measure, House-Senate conferees knocked out the $13 million needed to launch a National Teachers Corps --which Administration opponents had tried unsuccessfully to eliminate from the original higher-education bill. Also dropped in the Senate for this year was the Administration's controversial rent-subsidy scheme, whose funds had been denied by the House the week before.

Exact Quorum. As the last day dawned, only two obstacles remained to adjournment: a proposed pay raise for federal employees, and a sugar bill to set quotas for domestic production and foreign imports. Grudgingly the House, which had wanted to give Government workers a raise of 4%, unanimously passed a Senate version limiting the increase to 3.6% when President Johnson threatened to veto anything higher. The Senate, for its part, acquiesced to a House-passed sugar bill granting U.S. growers a 580,000-ton increase in annual production, and setting foreign quotas for five years instead of two, as the Senate preferred. But Congress rejected amendments designed to 1) curb the activities of sugar lobbyists, and 2) permit foreign quotas to be fixed by the Administration instead of the House Agriculture Committee's autocratic chairman, Harold Cooley.

On a first sugar ballot, near midnight, Senate leaders found that they lacked a quorum, sent pages scurrying to round up absent members. Ohio's Frank Lausche arrived in black tie and dinner jacket. Then, in an exact quorum vote of 41 to 10, the upper chamber passed the sugar bill--the last law of the session.

Busy Line. After that there remained only the traditional report to the President. Mike Mansfield and Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen went to Mansfield's office, put in a call to L.B.J. The last problem. A new girl was on the White House switchboard; the President was talking to someone else, she explained, and she did not dare interrupt. Chivalrously Mansfield and Dirksen twiddled their thumbs as the operator repeatedly reassured them, "Just a minute." Finally the normally placid Mansfield lost patience, snapped at the girl that she was keeping the U.S. Senate waiting. The call went through, and Mansfield delivered his formal notification to the President: "The Senate has completed its business." Back on the floor, he announced: "The President has no further communications to Congress at this session"--the "this" evoking weary chuckles from the members, who will reconvene Jan. 10.

In the eyes of Administration supporters, the 89th had risen heroically to the challenge of a nation undergoing vast economic, technological and social change while striving as never before to heal its ragged edges of prejudice and poverty. But many a fellow Republican agreed with Indiana Representative Richard Roudebush, who warned: "For those who believe in limited government and preservation of personal liberties, this Congress has been a disaster." To Republican Congressman Robert Griffin of Michigan, the 89th was "the Great Stampede," and Richard Nixon dubbed it "the Xerox Congress."

In fact, though House G.O.P. Conference Leader Melvin Laird of Wisconsin mourned that "we are dangerously close to one-party rule," Republicans had inflicted several key defeats on the Administration. With Southern Democrats, the G.O.P. blocked the Johnson-backed home-rule bill for the District of Columbia. A seven-day filibuster commanded by Minority Leader Dirksen smashed Johnson's bid to repeal Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act, under which states may pass laws outlawing union membership as a condition of employment. On the positive side, Republicans contributed to the medicare bill a major section providing for voluntary payments, matched by the Government, for physicians' services. The biggest achievement was the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, which was drafted in Dirksen's office; and it was he who rallied bipartisan support for the measure.

On to 1966. As the 89th's members went home to face the electorate, they could look forward to a lighter legislative load in the second session--if only because the White House no longer has many major programs ready to propose. Congress nonetheless will face a responsibility next year that promises to be both subtler and more difficult than the enthusiastic rush of 1965. For, having generously supplied all the measures aimed at creating a richer and more equitable society, the lawmakers will be confronted with the hazards inevitable in so great an enterprise: corruption, misjudgment, frustration, disenchantment.

As suggested last week by a survey showing that 50% of all Britons would gladly jettison the welfare state, even the loftiest visions of a better society can be swiftly outdated--and rightly so --by a general rise in living standards and social expectations. If the 89th Congress is indeed to shine in the history books, it will need to deal wisely and well with the cooler second phase of the Great Society.

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