The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn TV Hearings and Congress's Duties One of the favorite jokes about the McCarthy hearings was: "This never would have happened if Eisenhower were alive." No matter...
...Senator Gore carried the main argument in favor of meeting the President's request for extension of the agreements...
...No point was too minute for a thorough going-over...
...Later, the Democrats proposed a resolution to call Mr...
...Motions were made to raise the provisions for the Bureau of Standards, for supervision of migratory workers, for enforcement of the Food and Drug Act, for the training of apprentices...
...Welch's questioning, he went over and over the conversations between Army men and representatives of the McCarthy Committee...
...He was supported and supplemented by the ablest men on the Democratic side, Humphrey, Kefauver, Johnson, Fulbright...
...He kept repeating that Stevens and Adams had tried to deflect the Committee investigator to the Navy or the Air Force...
...A strange thing is happening in Washington, and one of its saddest phases is the eclipse of the Congress of the United States...
...The arguments against them amounted to little more than the notion that the agencies had taken big cuts last year...
...But when the time came to vote, most of the Republicans and five or ten Southern Democrats would rise with mechanical regularity and furnish a negative majority...
...Because the young man in his student days had briefly belonged to the National Lawyers Guild, he was denounced as being tainted with Communism...
...Welch burst out: "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty and your recklessness...
...Then the Senator from Wisconsin spoke of "Sanctimonious Stu" and Senator Symington advised his colleague to see a psychiatrist...
...Take June 8 and 9 as typical days...
...The Labor Committee, which reported out the bill, had reduced this figure by $16 million...
...Senate the few statesmen on the floor and a couple of fellows in the gallery listened to a comprehensive discussion of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements...
...In the right-hand one, I would set down what practically nobody saw or heard or cared about in the halls of Congress...
...The arguments in favor of these amendments were detailed and convincing...
...The total recommendation, therefore, was $300 million less than the Department has been working with this year...
...Clifford...
...While this was going on in the hearing room...
...To anyone who knows how the various bureaus have had to struggle, these cuts open up a bleak prospect...
...At the committee hearings, Roy Cohn was in the witness chair...
...Meanwhile, the House resolved itself into a Committee of the Whole to consider HR 9447...
...At the end of this day, the great show reached its dramatic climax...
...McCarthy made an attack on a young member of Welch's law firm who was not present and had nothing to do with the case...
...the proposed appropriations for the Department of Labor...
...The Democrats, supported by a thin line of liberal Republicans, began an effort to raise the appropriations to the figures presented by the President...
...My point is that this horrible thing could happen because people were not looking...
...Arguments had no effect...
...The Times and a few other papers carried reports of this notable debate, but so far as the public was concerned it fell dead...
...As the debate went on, I sat in the gallery and watched a weird sight...
...I am not thinking of any theoretical struggle between the Legislative and Executive Branches...
...Without the help of the parallel, I shall do my best...
...No matter what the outcome is, President Eisenhower will suffer most...
...In the left-hand column, I would list what the nation saw and heard in the Caucus Room...
...The Administration requested $1.9 billion, or $285 million less than the appropriation for 1954...
...Few people know or care what has been happening in the Senate or the House of Representatives...
...And there, in the obscurity which reigns behind the McCarthy show, the measures recommended by the President are slowly being done to death...
...his absences, his girls, his meals...
...For no reason at all, the Peress case was dragged in...
...The next day was largely devoted to a detailed account of the doings of Private Schine during his time at Fort Dix...
...It was at this point that Mr...
...in the practically secret session of the U.S...
...Yet, he doggedly refused to acknowledge that Secretary Stevens tried to "rat on" or "turn traitor to" the sister services...
...Under Mr...
...I have in mind such immediate and practical problems as the fate of the President's legislative program and the closely connected matter of the fall elections...
...and on the TV screens all over the country...
...I wish I could display my two stories in side-by-side columns...
...To show what I have in mind, I want to produce a couple of parallels...
...and therefore they could take little cuts this year...
...Early on June 8, Senator McCarthy insisted that Clark Clifford be called as a witness...
...For more than two months, the eyes and ears of the nation have been centered on the Senate Caucus Room...
Vol. 37 • June 1954 • No. 26
