NEGLECTED INSTRUMENT
Neglected Instrument THE first term of the 8_2nd Congress was sputtering to an end as this was written. It seems to us a charitable understatement to observe that adjournment will cause the country...
...they are ordinary mortals summoned to do an almost superhuman task...
...Yes, said the university's chancellor...
...It is virtually impossible to legislate adequate and timely protection for individuals smeared by a McCarthy, but the four Senators sponsoring the "code of conduct" for speeches on the floor have provided at least a means of formal reply by the accused...
...Given the system as it is, the average voter has no simple remedy...
...Six Democrats and five Republicans have joined forces to require minimum standards of decency and fair play in conducting Congressional investigations, and four of the Senators have also drawn up a "code of conduct" for speeches on the floor...
...The person would then have a chance to answer, either by having his statement read in the House or Senate, or by having it printed in the Congressional Record...
...Most of its members are neither fools nor knaves...
...The Committee's digest of the testimony ran to 158 pages...
...In this case we suspect the University of North Carolina can also be touched where it hurts the most—its treasury...
...Nothing could epitomize more accurately a session riddled with reaction than the last major act of the first term—passage of a tax bill which was an open grab-bag for every special interest and which made a shambles of the pious objective of "equality of sacrifice...
...Sometimes he finds an outlet for his frustration on Election Day, but in many areas of the country he has no meaningful choice...
...The University of North Carolina, bowing to the mandate of the federal courts, has admitted six Negro students to its hallowed halls...
...Attacking An Abuse AHOPEFUL if long overdue effort to clean up one of the worst abuses in Congressional practice has been launched by a bi-partisan group of Senators...
...Congressmen may not have time to read the bills and the reports, but they do read their mail...
...In theory the system should work tolerably well, for the committee chairmen represent the majority party, and much more often than not, the majority party in Congress is the party of the President too...
...Short of a genuine political realignment, based on the realities of 1951, the thoughtful voter has but one instrument with which to get results, and this he rarely if ever uses...
...But several weeks ago when some of the Negro students decided to see their alma mater struggle for gridiron honors, they were refused seats in the student cheering section and were consigned instead to seclusion behind the goal-posts...
...Most of the major chairmanships belong to the Southerners and McCarran, with the result that a handful of powerfully-placed Southern Democrats, working with the Republican opposition in the committees, find it possible to make the desires of the special interests prevail over the needs of the general welfare...
...2) they be allowed to give evidence, appear with counsel, file a limited number of questions for other witnesses, and present a rebuttal statement...
...And it is fitting that in the fall the whackiest of them all should come sizzling hot from the gridiron of a great university...
...3) no witness be compelled to testify as to his religious or political beliefs unless a majority committee vote holds the information is relevant...
...1 date which indu'stry itself had expected...
...In the Senate the tax bill was released by the Finance Committee at 2 o'clock of a Wednesday afternoon...
...It seems to us a charitable understatement to observe that adjournment will cause the country no pain in the light of the dismal record of the past ten months...
...The bill itself ran to 349 pages of fine print and the report that went with it ate up another 120 pages...
...The Congressional investigation is an enormously useful instrument for national fact-finding, but its usefulness has been crippled and its stature corrupted by political charlatans like McCarthy...
...The total yield of the new tax bill is estimated at somewhat more than $5,000,000,000, or about one-half the amount requested by President Truman to put the country's record-breaking rearmament program on something approximating a pay-as-you-go basis...
...Joseph McCarthy, Wisconsin Republican...
...The House Appropriations Committee took 3,000,000 words of testimony (enough to fill every issue of The Progressive for eight years) from 500 witnesses over a period of 11 weeks...
...It is here that ancient Congressional practice plays the people a cruel trick, for under the seniority system committees are led and dominated by old men who have clung to office for a quarter of a century or more because they represent the one-party states of the South or a state like Nevada with a total population less than that of' a single county in many states...
...Robert B. House, the Negroes are entitled to all the university's educational facilities, but no, he insisted, that does not include football games...
...You can acquire some faint appreciation of the problem with a quick look at what happened to the military appropriations bill in the House and the tax bill in the Senate...
...It would take as many pages as there are in this entire issue of The Progressive just to summarize the major provisions of the bill...
...Yet members of the House were given the 3,000,000-word record and the digest two days before they were required to vote on the bill...
...They propose that no lawmaker shall make any "derogatory remarks" about a citizen or resident of the United States from the floor without (1) notifying the person in advance, or (2) sending him a copy of the speech afterwards...
...White Cheers Only THERE'S a whacky note in the news these days that defies editorializing...
...The second session of the 82nd Congress can do much to recapture the dignity and worth of a once great institution by adopting the code of fair play when it convenes in January...
...Wanton assassination of character has become a fixed routine for a small group of Congressional Know-Nothings, led by Sen...
...If enough of us—and it would have to be more than a few— griped less and wrote more, we might be pleasantly surprised to find how many lawmakers could be as responsive to popular pressure as they are today to the dominant committee cliques and the lobbyists who work with and through them...
...Some of the predicted gains against segregation in the South are expected to result from the hard-headed disinclination of taxpayers to finance the "equal" facilities for Negroes required by the federal courts...
...The judges have said that the colored students are entitled to all the university's educational facilities...
...And yet the Senate was expected to, and did, begin consideration of the measure at 10 o'clock the next morning...
...But the majority party in our time is actually two parties, the Southern Democrats, with few exceptions, and the Northern Democrats, with one exception (McCarran of Nevada...
...II Clearly a system and tempo of this character place an extraordinary premium on leadership...
...But no criticism of Congress could claim to be honest if it didn't take into account the overpowering complexity of the job Congress is asked to do...
...For if, as Chancellor House avers, football is avowedly no part of the education system which is tax exempt, then it would seem to follow that football receipts, which add up to a tidy bit, are as taxable as the "gate" at avowedly professional football games...
...Most members of both houses can't possibly familiarize themselves with all the issues involved and must take their cue from the committee...
...Action-proof in their fox-holes of immunity, they have destroyed reputations and wrecked careers without giving their victims a timely opportunity to defend themselves...
...The eleven Senators sponsoring a code of decency in Congressional investigations recommended that (1) individuals or organizations under investigation be notified in advance of the nature of the inquiry...
...There is space here only to record that individuals with low and medium incomes were clipped for proportionately more than those with higher incomes, that the great corporations monopolizing the rich war contracts had their taxes increased no more than small business, that the capita] gains, depletion allowance, and family partnership loopholes were widened to permit even more flagrant tax evasion than under the present law, and that corporation taxes were made retroactive to April 1 instead of the Jan...
Vol. 15 • November 1951 • No. 11
