Ike Faces Congress
CALDWELL, WILLIAM
IKE FACES CONGRESS The President has made a shrewd bid to capture November's Congressional elections By William Caldwell Washington, D. C. President Eisenhower's legislative program, as presented...
...Ike recommended that Communists convicted under the Smith Act be considered to have "forfeited their citizenship...
...Whether it represented a statesmanlike approach to America's real problems is quite another matter...
...The District is not a state, and therefore has neither Congressmen nor Senators...
...In the Senate, the Republicans rule as a minority (by the grace of Senator Wayne Morse, the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Richard Nixon, and the cool calculation of Democratic leaders who prefer to have the GOP assume responsibility for Congress's record...
...In the House of Representatives, the Republican majority is four votes...
...He recommended, rather vaguely, new emphasis on slum clearance and continuation of some public housing...
...No one seems to know...
...This proposal stemmed, in essence, from the old bill proposed by New York's Senator Irving Ives and Representative Jacob Javits as an answer to the Federal health insurance recommended by former President Truman and former Federal Security Administrator Oscar Ewing...
...The alliance will hold firm on foreign policy, but any Republican domestic program which requires Southern Democratic support has to be tailored to Southern Democratic wishes...
...although they are undoubtedly popular with the voters, they will likely fail at this session, too Perhaps the outstanding domestic proposal made by Eisenhower was in the field of health...
...The second important change in the Congress since the Truman Administration is in the committee chairmanships...
...Other Eisenhower proposals aimed at the ear of GOP committee chairmen were the promises of a "revised public-lands policy," the reduction of Federal grant-in-aid welfare programs, and insurance of long-term mortgages (rumored at 40 or 50 years) for low-income housing...
...Thus, the President's State of the Union message seems to have solved the peculiar problems raised for his administration by the nature of the present Congress...
...Now, however, the key committee chairmanships are in the hands of the Republican Old Guard, the men who represent rock-ribbed Republican areas...
...But there are two significant changes in this Congress...
...Will he recommend that the votes of Washington-ians be counted with the votes of Virginia or Maryland...
...Eisenhower's proposals as a shrewd bid to simultaneously retain Republican unity, enhance bis popularity with the electorate, and carry through Congress the minimum "must" legislation needed to carry on the Government of the United States...
...The second program, embracing the President's foreign policy and budget, is designed to be passed by the bipartisan center coalition which dominates the Eighty-third Congress...
...These men, most of whom supported Senator Taft, do not represent the Eisenhower Administration, or at least they do not represent that Administration as it describes itself to the public...
...It was, indeed, a highly political address...
...Originally conceived as a strategy for blocking extreme New Deal and Fair Deal measures, the alliance has now lost most of its purpose, so far as domestic legislation is concerned...
...The sum of these proposals might persuade the GOP chairmen in Congress to pass Eisenhower's basic legislation...
...Although he realizes that Secretary Benson's scheme of "flexible" price supports will never pass intact, Eisenhower has endorsed this scheme in a lengthy message calculated to warm the hearts of all those who resent Federal "interference" with the laws of supply and demand in agriculture...
...At the same time, the President promised drastic tax "reform" designed to "encourage initiative, enterprise and production...
...None of them stands much chance of passage by Congress...
...It was, in many ways, a typical Eisenhower performance...
...Nobody quite knows...
...If it reaches the floor, it will have to be passed with strong Democratic support: Too many Republicans just could not stomach any health program that goes beyond the straight AMA line...
...Because of the great power wielded by these men, Eisenhower must have their support on most crucial legislation, especially in the areas of foreign policy, defense and the budget...
...Eisenhower skirted the difficulties attending the creation of a European Defense Community, and the perilous state of the truce in Korea...
...If global responsibility has been sidetracked in favor of party politics, it must be remembered that, although this is an atomic age, it is also an election year...
...Eisenhower's advisers who put local politics first have won the day...
...In the first place, the alliance between the Republicans and Southern Democrats is not quite so solid as it once was...
...rather, they constitute its extreme right wing...
...No matter how the Democrats got behind it, the program would bear the Eisenhower label and gain votes for the Republicans...
...foreign policy during the last year...
...And, beyond this, many Northern Democrats wonder if Ike's plan would not prejudice later, more drastic, action in the health field...
...we propose liberalized tax treatment of depreciation, research and development expenses, and retained earnings...
...IKE FACES CONGRESS The President has made a shrewd bid to capture November's Congressional elections By William Caldwell Washington, D. C. President Eisenhower's legislative program, as presented to Congress thus far, is in reality three separate and distinct programs...
...The first program, which dominates the President's farm and tax proposals, is designed to retain the support of the rock-ribbed Republicans...
...All will be popular with masses of independent voters...
...To vote for Presidential electors, it would need to have some Congressional representation as a state, or else a Constitutional amendment would be required to give the District special status...
...The by-elections last year and subsequent polls have indicated Democratic gains in the coming Congressional elections...
...In a similar vein of unseriousness is Mr...
...The answer is to be found in the composition of the Congress...
...The fact is that the President has not yet taken the American people into his confidence regarding the critical new issues which have been raised for U.S...
...Since Eisenhower will present nothing radical, the "Dixiegop" bloc has nothing to block...
...Some of their proposals are indeed praiseworthy, some are half-baked...
...Pass or not, the Ives-Javits proposals adopted by Eisenhower will have powerful voter appeal for large groups who fear "socialism" but believe in Federal aid in meeting critical problems of human welfare...
...Eisenhower's recommendation to grant "national suffrage" to residents of the District of Columbia...
...Washington observers rate Mr...
...He offered no hints as to what his administration was considering if the Panmunjom and Berlin negotiations proved fruitless...
...Not so well, is the opinion of most Washington observers...
...Naturalized citizens convicted under the Smith Act can already be deported, as a result of the McCarran Act...
...Under Truman, most of these chairmanships were in the hands of Southern Democrats or old Northern machine-hands who, while they did not represent the Administration, did constitute the effective leadership of the center coalition which governed Congress...
...While the President's popularity remains high, more and more voters who elected him feel that a Democratic Congress would help, rather than hinder, his basic purposes...
...Nor are these chairmen representative of Congress as a whole...
...He avoided completely the serious problems posed by the political disintegration in France and Italy, the deterioration of morale in the Indo-Chinese war, the Communist infiltration of the Indonesian Government, the growth of neutralism in Japan, and kindred developments...
...They failed to pass under Truman because the Democrats were holding out for Federal insurance or nothing...
...To get this support, he has had to pay a price, chiefly in the tax and farm fields...
...Ike's other "unpassable" proposals have wide independent appeal for different reasons...
...Not all of Eisenhower's "unpassable" proposals, however, are quite so frivolous...
...Without very strong White House pressure, it is felt, the health program probably cannot emerge from committee without important substantive dilution...
...With an election coming on, it is very doubtful that liberal Northern Democrats would exert themselves to put across an Eisenhower health program...
...Is Eisenhower proposing either of these alternatives...
...The President also recommended extending unemployment insurance to 6.5 million workers, and old-age and survivors insurance to 10 million workers...
...Effective power in both houses lies with the middle-of-the-road Republicans and Southern Democrats, as it has ever since 1938...
...How will Eisenhower's health program fare in this Congress...
...This is what Eisenhower has done in his budget, in his hands-off policy toward education and civil rights, and in his modified revision of Taft-Hartley...
...The White House strategists chose several lines of attack on the conscience of the independent...
...The Ives-Javits recommendations never really pleased the lobby of the American Medical Association or the GOP Old Guard...
...Native-born citizens convicted as Communist leaders are already being deprived of certain civil rights, in the same way that felons are...
...These measures, and others like them, failed to pass the last Truman Congress...
...What would the President's proposal add to this...
...He did not say...
...The third program, including a raft of measures which stand little chance of passage, is designed for the voters next November...
...First, the President declared: "I am flatly opposed to the socialization of medicine...
...Perhaps the Administration prefers to keep its foreign policy secret...
...More likely, those of Mr...
...The proposal which drew the wildest cheers from the Congressmen who heard Eisenhower's State of the Union message was the proposal on subversives...
...With the failure of the White revelations to destroy Democratic prestige, the Administration has had to make another pitch for the independent, usually Democratic, voters who elected Ike...
...Why has Eisenhower found it necessary, in voluminous report upon report, to offer such multi-purpose proposals...
...They would not, however, elect a Republican Congress in November...
...After waiting for the whoops of the reactionaries to subside, he went on to propose a moderate conservative program: Government reinsurance to private and non-profit hospital and medical plans, coupled with Government encouragement of state and private hospital construction...
...The specific "reform" which undoubtedly endeared Eisenhower to the Old Guard was this: "For the business that wants to expand or modernize its plant...
...After the ball was over, however, Congressmen were hard-pressed to figure out what Ike meant...
Vol. 37 • January 1954 • No. 3
