Grudging Progress

THE CONGRESS

Wearily, Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield announced that the first session of the 90th Congress would recess for four days for Thanksgiving. "Do you think," piped up Delaware's John Williams, "that we'll be able to get Christmas off?" "And in what year?" inquired Maine's Edmund Muskie.

Already more than ten months old, the session slogged on toward a probable mid-December adjournment. Though it will not beat the longevity record of the wartime Congress that sat for a full year in 1940-41, the current session will be remembered for its monumental nonproductivity. Still, after months of disgruntled stalemate, the members last week did grudgingly enact some of Lyndon Johnson's bruised and battered legislative program.

Delusion & Fraud. A compromise $2.7 billion foreign-aid bill, authorizing around $500 million less than the President had originally requested, finally emerged from the recalcitrant, economy-minded House. It very nearly died in the process. Iowa's truculent H. R. Gross came within five votes of relegating the bill once again to a Senate-House conference with the stipulation that the U.S. cut off aid to Poland as long as that country continues to trade with North Viet Nam. By some adroit parliamentary legerdemain, House leaders delayed a final tally until they could persuade a crucial handful of members to defect to their side.

Another major Administration measure, the $2.06 billion antipoverty bill, also faces a House hatchet job. Such Republican critics as Ohio's William Ayres and New York's Charles Goodell want to lop some $600 million to $800 million off the authorization, which will probably come to a vote this week. Angrily, Sargent Shriver threatened to quit as head of the Office of Economic Opportunity if Congress will not give him the funds to do his job. "It would be a delusion to the poor," he said. "I don't think it would be advisable to continue a fraud."

Congressional inaction on a gallimaufry of appropriations has already begun to strangle some OEO and other programs. Last week poverty projects in six U.S. communities had been shut down for lack of federal funds, while programs in 15 other cities were being manned by volunteers after federal funds had been exhausted.

Moribund Measures. Congress did manage to shove through at the last minute a stopgap financing bill to forestall payless paydays for the District of Columbia government and five other agencies that were technically without funds because their appropriations had not been approved. In addition, the Senate Finance Committee cleared a bill to raise social security payments 15% across the board, bringing a little closer to action the benefit increases that the President pledged a year ago.

But a sheaf of Johnson's key measures are moribund for this year at least--highway beautification, gun controls, aid to elementary and secondary education and, most significantly, the President's proposal for a 10% income tax surcharge.

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