Congress in Labor
JANOS, LEO
WASHINGTON-U.S.A. Congress in Labor By Leo Janos Congress is now in its ninth month and either oblivious to its delicate condition or keeping the labor pains to itself. Veteran observers...
...Many complain that the legislation was carelessly prepared by the Treasury...
...It depends on whom you talk to and what you are prepared to believe...
...In short, legislative predictions are a pastime fit only for masochistic gamblers...
...In honor of one of the few bills to be passed thus far, the Republicans are calling this "the Boiled Peanut Congress...
...the public's reaction to most of the proposed legislation is not at all clear...
...A House aide who participated in the bill's mark up complains: "There were plenty of dangling clauses when we got to it...
...This guy called me up and raised holy hell...
...Behind the scenes, White House aides are talking up the 88th...
...Many liberals are convinced that if it does not include a public accommodations law there will be real trouble within the Negro community...
...looking very much like an overworked Latin teacher, waves his large hand in the direction of the cannonading critics and asserts that "all this doom and gloom is premature...
...The Speaker is often singled out as the principal cause of the House's sloppy performance...
...Leo Janos is a freelance journalist now living in Washington...
...has thus far shown no disposition toward telescoping the hearings...
...The old guard liberals are willing to give up its ghost...
...The tax cut faces a Senate hearing in mid-November, and already roughly 200 people have asked to testify...
...They could be right...
...But if you study the record when it's finally completed, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the results...
...The general belief is that the civil rights package will pass some time next year and contain meaningful voter guarantees, a provision for a permanent Civil Rights Commission, a trade union anti-discrimination law, establishment of a Federal conciliation service for local communities, and added enforcement for school desegregation, This is the "belief"-and it is generously mixed with two parts prayer and a jigger of old-fashioned hope...
...It was an innocent remark, really, by a few unsophisticates...
...The Administration is privately optimistic about several pieces of legislation...
...But others will tell you that he is cool and tough, has good relations with the Southern Democratic bloc (unlike Sam Rayburn who contemptuously burned his bridges with the Southern Republicans, as he called them), and deftly uses the considerable talents of his chief lieutenants, Majority Leader Carl Albert of Oklahoma and Whip Hale Boggs of Louisiana...
...The House Republicans are determined to hobble the tax cut with an amendment cutting off its second stage in 1965 if the President either exceeds a $98 billion budget or allows the national debt to climb over $303 billion, and they are given a good chance of succeeding...
...They maintain that they have had a number of serious problems unexpectedly thrown into their laps-civil rights, the railroad dispute, the test-ban treaty-and some extremely technical and specialized pieces of legislation to consider...
...According to many offended Congressmen, it hasn't...
...The moderates are cautiously sanguine...
...Of course, the President has sent a large bundle up there and that always makes his percentage of passed legislation look a little wobbly...
...For instance, one of our groups wrote a strongly-worded letter to a Congressman who has been on our side for years...
...As matters now stand, the 88th Congress appears to be headed toward a political nether land and will please no one except the most moderate of the moderates, who did not care very much to begin with...
...A knowledgeable newsman describes it as "the worst session I've seen in 14 years, and I've seen some gems...
...But the wise man feels hope when so many others are united in pessimism...
...The zodiac on that blessed day will undoubtedly show the constipated turtle...
...There are also two versions of the McCormack story...
...You've simply got to wear the silkiest gloves in town when you're dealing with the Hill...
...Minority leader Charlie Halleck (R.-Ind...
...better even than the 87th...
...His aides say he will definitely not support it...
...He expects the 88th to be one of the finest sessions in a long time...
...The wary Negro spokesmen have thus far avoided treading on any Congressional bunions, and fear that the publicity surrounding some of these incidents may adversely affect the thinking of legislators...
...But, they sadly admit, there is little likelihood that enough Republicans can be mustered to make the vote even close...
...It looked like we had the votes in beating off Republican amendments, so he pushed...
...relations between McCormack and the President's Special Assistant, Larry O'Brien, are allegedly ideal...
...As one example, they cite the tax bill, presumed to be the thickest document of its kind in the history of Congressnearly 300 pages in submission and a House report which betters that...
...The Congress is like a woman," a civil rights lobbyist recently confided, "and demands special handling...
...And we have had some dandy wrangles between lawyers on phrases, let alone paragraphs...
...and Congress is rapidly becoming a cliché unto itself...
...their premise, it would appear, is that if you say something often enough it will eventually come true...
...John got blamed for the foreign aid vote," a colleague says...
...Veteran observers of Congressional parturition will tell you that a long vigil portends a rough delivery...
...You can't do anything about that...
...Friends of the Administration hotly deny that White House leadership is in any way responsible for Congressional sluggishness...
...All agree, though, that McCormack doesn't have the feel of the House that Rayburn did...
...Senator Harry Byrd (D.-Va...
...Y.) declares: "We're acting as if there were no need to worry, no crisis ahead, and could put off legislative decisions until tomorrow...
...Senator Everett Dirksen (R.-Ill...
...Don't expect much, they advise, mother's getting old and her plumbing is shot...
...The President is reported to feel that the session will not be a political liability if he can get through the nuclear test-ban treaty, a tax cut and a civil rights bill...
...has said more than once that, in the light of President Kennedy's proposals, a "Do-Nothing" session would be in the public interest...
...Yet Speaker John McCormack (D.-Mass...
...Congressman William Fitts Ryan (D.-N...
...whose Chicago office was recently surrounded by a few thousand demonstrators demanding that he change his mind on the question of the accommodation bill's constitutionality-is still at loggerheads with the Mansfield forces over this aspect of the bill...
...What is certain is that committee chairmen are becoming increasingly thin-skinned, rumpled and anachronistic...
...and all drafted legislation, it is asserted, has been thoroughly prepared...
...The 88th Congress will probably adjourn around Christmas...
...In fact, the word sluggishness so rankles New Frontiersmen that it may soon be purged out of the Administration's lexicon...
...The chances are that, like the 87th before it, it will fade into history with a cavernous yawn and that its fitting requiem will be a sigh of relief...
...Others, however, are calling Kennedy "an Eisenhower in tennis shoes,' a President who acts like a legislative crusader in public but privately compromises at the drop of a Southern growl...
...At the earliest, the civil rights bill is expected to reach the Senate in late October...
...It predicts passage of a mental health bill, vocational training, medical school construction, college aid, transportation rate changes, amendments to the Securities and Exchange Commission, area redevelopment and feed grain legislation...
...The five White House lobbyists working on the Hill are supposedly much improved this session...
...Why has Congress dawdled...
...But what happened was that a handful of Southerners voted with the Administration in the preliminary teller counts but switched on the roll call vote...
...Remember, there's millions of dollars riding on every sentence of that monster...
...It is an open secret that many Negroes are in agony over "zealots" who chain themselves to telephone poles and stage sit-downs in the offices of important Democratic mayors...
...Solicitor General Archibald Cox has been reassuring the bill's supporters that the Supreme Court would uphold hitching it to the 14th Amendment, but the Republicans remain largely opposed...
...They asked him to vote the way he has been talking...
...legislators are getting back home with less frequency and are forced to rely on second-hand pulsetaking techniques...
...What are the true prospects for the 88th...
...The Democratic leadership and the Treasury are feverishly trying to condense the hearings with one hand, and head off a Republican-sponsored rider with the other...
...Upon hearing his name, many people here automatically roll their eyeballs toward heaven seeking solace...
...The Texan was uncanny in knowing how a vote would go, but, without a Whip count, his successor would be helpless...
...One staffer tells anyone willing to listen: "I think we'll come out of the 88th a damn contented crew...
...Now, for much legislation there may be no tomorrow...
Vol. 46 • September 1963 • No. 20
