Ike's Program Stalls
ECKARDT, W. V.
Leaders of Congress are indifferent to the legislation proposed by the President Ike's Program Stalls By W V Eckardt Washington, D.C. The President's admonitions to get on with his legislative...
...It seems that the Eisenhower appeal is entirely a personal one—distinct from any ideology or program...
...By 1952, the head men had changed their minds, but 33,936,252 followers remained true to their idol...
...They are far more concerned about pleasing them than about pleasing the President...
...These old-timers ?men like Joe Martin (Mass...
...By the same token, the hazy mandate has dissipated and confused the will to overcome these time-honored obstacles...
...This realization seems to be dawning now in the White House, but it's probably too late to rescue the legislative program...
...Indo-China, McCarthy and early adjournment are matters of far greater concern on Capitol Hill than Eisenhower's legislative troubles...
...The Ikemen among the Republicans in Congress, who come mostly from "marginal" East and West Coast districts, find it exasperatingly difficult, if not altogether impossible, to overcome these solid blocks in their middle road...
...What remains has met the same obstacles which confronted Eisenhower's predecessors, except that the roadblocks have been considerably, though probably inadvertently, strengthened by those who voted for Ike...
...The more emotional frills of this legislative package quickly wore off, however...
...These leaders, contemporary surveys show, were at the time fully backed by their followers...
...Anything might happen...
...While it is statistically true, according to a mid-May analysis by the Congressional Quarterly, that the GOP score for supporting the President is 74 per cent and the Democrats' only 39, it is also true that 26 of Eisenhower's 30 Congressional victories this year would have been impossible without help from the Democrats...
...According to our Congressmen, however, that isn't likely to happen...
...Democratic Congressmen can honestly report to their constituents that they have voted for those items in the "dynamic new program" which are familiar to them and germane to Democratic philosophy...
...citizenship—never received any serious legislative consideration on Capitol Hill...
...Obviously, they still felt the way Emil Rieve, President of the CIO Textile Workers Union, did in 1948 when he said about Eisenhower: "I really don't know what he stands for...
...He was not elected to amend the Taft-Hartley Act, institute flexible rather than stable farm-price supports, strengthen public health and welfare, extend Social Security, provide tax relief for the rich, urge the states to raise unemployment-insurance benefits, revamp Federal housing policies, steer a different course in foreign relations, or give our allies more trade rather than aid, but apparently on the sole basis of his personality...
...President Eisenhower would give the bulk of tax relief to the corporations and the 8 per cent of American families which own corporation stock and receive income from dividends...
...Our domestic employment, our standard of living, our security, and the solidarity of the free world—all are involved...
...The Old Guard is unwilling to grant adequate foreign aid or trade...
...This issue bodes well for the Democrats and worries Republicans...
...They are in about the same position as the Democrats were vis-a-vis their party's Southern conservatives under the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations-except that the Republicans are further divided by their McCarthyites...
...The journal reminds us that, in 1947-48, political figures as diverse in their views as Alf Landon, Senator Richard Russell, Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., Leon Henderson and James B. Carey liked Ike and wanted him to be the standard-bearer of their respective causes...
...Eisenhower opposes the increase...
...But I would take a chance...
...These chairmen, or most of them, seem little impressed by Eisenhower's warning that their party does not deserve to remain in power unless it can enact a progressive, dynamic program...
...Shaking off the thought by abruptly ending the interview, a Congressman is apt to say after a moment of silence: "Heck, you ran never tell, of course...
...Faces tighten and eyes fix darkly as the ever-recurring, unanswerable question casts its shadow on the mind: What if we get embroiled in the holocaust: where will it end...
...The Quarterly reminds us, with a host of charts and statistics, that Eisenhower's ability to pull votes across all normal partisan lines was fully evident five years before the Great Crusade was launched, in advance of the 1948 election...
...This is particularly true of one vital matter which is perhaps the only distinct and original contribution of the liberal, Willkie-type Republicans on the "team" and which seems dearest to the President's heart...
...What seems to matter back home, more than people in Washington seem to realize, is the anxiety and frustrated idleness which is so inadequately reflected in the unemployment figures...
...193 Democrats stuck with their party's proposal, but 9 voted against it, thus upholding the President...
...and Arthur Watkins (Utah) in the Senate—obviously feel that they did not attain control for the Republican party in order to preside over the liquidation of what they consider its sacred conserva-tivism...
...But both fear that, by November, the gathering storm in the Far East may have swept us all into an unpredictable new state...
...in the House, and John Bricker (Ohio), Hugh Butler (Neb...
...will we even see the edge of the abyss...
...It's meant to sound casual...
...According to a recent study by Herbert H. Hyman and Paul B. Sheatsley in the Public Opinion Quarterly, it wasn't even the promise to end the war in Korea or the "mess in Washington" which swept Ike into the White House...
...With rare exceptions, they are Old Guardsmen who hold entirely different, if scarcely more definable, views of Republicanism than Eisenhower...
...Up to now, the opposition has been largely unified by massive Republican vilification, without permitting itself to be provoked into retaliation in kind...
...As Congressmen prepare to park up and leave for their districts, they tune up to play for the folks bark home...
...They usually hail from "safe" districts and worry little about re-election...
...They favor an increase in the personal-income-tax exemption to give much-needed tax relief to wage-earners and thus increase their purchasing power...
...Congressmen are not, because, they say, the electorate isn't...
...On March 30, 1954, when he sent his recommendations for the "trade, not aid" program to Congress, the President's message said: "If we fail in our trade policy, we may fail in all...
...What they did for the new school building on Main Street is more important to them than what they may or may not inscribe on the pages of American and world history...
...Homer Cape-hart (Ind...
...It has no chance of enactment except for some ignominious face-saving...
...Off-year elections, they say, are pretty much a local affair...
...and John Taber (N.Y...
...This quasi-Republican group, which seems to think in terms of what Senator Jenner calls the "Republican Revolution," is mostly confined to the Senate, but it has more than nuisance power in a nearly evenly divided Congress...
...It is interesting to note that the only item in the President's 7,000-word 1954 State of the Union Message which received substantial applause at the time—the proposal to deprive convicted Communists of U.S...
...Nor has his standing appreciably suffered because of this...
...At best, it will give the country a one-year extension of the Reciprocal Trade Act, which seemed insufficient even while foreign aid was still flowing freely...
...One rather ironic example of this is the House vote which saved the Administration's tax bill...
...Nor should Republicans have much luck with the charge, already heard from a White House aide, that the Democrats prevented the Eisenhower program from being enacted...
...Most of them agree that national issues, at least at this time, are not going to be decisive in November...
...It did, of course, make handsome concessions to the business community, which tried to make up for its inability to deliver sizable blocks of votes by providing gaudy merchandising...
...But the question is never spoken...
...The majority of the President's 196 personal requests for legislative action (not counting nominations and appropriations) are still stuck in committees whose chairmen seem in no great hurry to report them out...
...201 Republicans agreed, voting "nay," but 10 voted "yea...
...Considering the present state of free-world solidarity, the temptations of East-West trade in Europe and Asia, and the sharp drop in exports of many key farm and industrial commodities, this is a failure indeed...
...Neither party can take any bow for the performance...
...Somehow, it never quite does...
...This hazy mandate produced a legislative program which, whatever its merits or demerits, could fairly be called a somewhat stultified version of the Government programs this country has pursued over the past two decades...
...It would be nice to conclude that the coming elections will clarify the Eisenhower mandate, determine where the country stands on specific issues, and indicate just where it wants its popular President to go...
...Considering their plight, it appears remarkably shortsighted of the Eisenhower "team," in Congress and out, to have done so little in the way of developing a closer working relationship with the Democrats...
...With some justification, the McCarthyites consider the Eisenhower program merely an extension of Truman's approach to foreign and domestic problems...
...The Eisenhower program and the performance of this administration will enter into the voters' choice only insofar as they affect local interests and prejudices...
...The President has not only failed in his efforts to develop enthusiasm for his legislative proposals in Congress, he has only lately attempted to arouse the general public and develop grassroot pressures strong enough to overcome Republican resistance...
...The proposal to let 18-year-olds vote also lost its luster once it was realized that the matter is entirely up to the state legislatures anyway...
...Although the recommendations themselves were already a compromised version of the Randall Report, there isn't a chance in the world of getting action in Congress this year...
...Almost as much has already been rejected...
...It seems, however, that only the National Committees are really disturbed over the question of which party is to blame for the failure of Congress to deliver on the much-advertised Eisenhower program...
...The Democrats don't believe that these blessings will eventually trickle down to the consumer...
...The President's admonitions to get on with his legislative program reverberate in almost empty Senate and House chambers...
...Only a very small portion of the President's program has so far been approved by Congress...
Vol. 37 • June 1954 • No. 25
