PROGRESSIVE

...Rule XXII will be their target...

...PROGRESSIVE "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" A Golden Opportunity rriHE 86th Congress, which convenes ¦¦- next month, will have an extraordinary opportunity to rescue American government from the dangerous drifting which has characterized the Eisenhower Administration during its six years of power...

...The progressive forces, their ranks now greatly strengthened by new blood, will have a golden opportunity to assert their dominance in the party and shape it into a genuinely liberal force in America...

...He had not yet vetoed legislation to provide assistance for the economically distressed areas of the nation...

...Here, too, may well be resolved the first decisive phase of the bitter conflict between Northern liberals and Southern reactionaries in the Democratic Party...

...The silent executioner of this all-important section of the bill was Rule XXII supporting the very real fear that should Part III be retained, the entire bill would be filibustered to death...

...However, the ability of Congress to fulfill its heavy legislative responsibility in this area and to give executive departments the necessary new authority is critically endangered unless the fight to end the filibuster is successful and we can bring majority rule to the Senate...

...In their statement asserting their determination to wage an all-out fight for amendment of the present rule, the four Senators said: "The closing down of certain public schools in Arkansas and Virginia in an attempt to nullify the Supreme Court's decision ordering desegregation make it imperative that Congress and the Executive, as well as the courts, act to secure equal protection of the law for all our citizens...

...The overriding reason people voted the way they did, in our judgment, was their mounting concern over the lack of leadership in Washington, their conviction that for all the President's talk of moderate progressivism, the Administration was committed to no affirmative course in domestic affairs and was stumbling perilously close to the rim of disaster in foreign affairs...

...He had not yet gone back on his word to fight economic recession with the resources of the federal government...

...The four Senators addressed their statement directly to the newly elected members of the Senate...

...The President's lament that he did not see "where there is anything that these people consciously want the Administration to do differently" ignored the solid fact that many of the victorious liberals campaigned mili-tantly for legislation rejected by the Administration—federal aid to education, liberalization of social security, modification of the Taft-Hartley Act, an improved housing and urban renewal program, more effective farm legislation, affirmative action in the field of civil rights, plugging tax loopholes, and reappraisal of American foreign policy, to cite but a few...

...And traditionally, it is the gravedigger of much effective civil rights legislation...

...But the voters made it resoundingly clear that they do want things done differently...

...Here, clearly, will be the first major showdown of the new Congress and the first test of the newly elected liberals...

...He couldn't understand, he said, how the country could give him a majority of "well over nine million votes" in 1956 "and only two years later there is a complete reversal . . . I do not see where there is anything that these people consciously want the Administration to do differently...

...In other words, 64 Senators—66 after Alaska's Senators arrive—must be on the floor and must affirmatively vote for closing debate or a filibuster can continue forever...

...Eisenhower hinted after the election that he might seek a coalition of regular Republicans and Southern Democrats in an effort to head off the legislative proposals of "the radical wing" of the Democratic Party...

...In 1957, Congress passed the first civil rights bill in more than 80 years, but Part III of that legislation, which would have empowered the Attorney General to seek court action to safeguard minority rights in these very public school integration fights, was struck from the bill in a close vote in the Senate...

...It has never been possible to obtain the 64-Senator vote to close debate on any civil rights bill, and there is no reason to believe that it will ever be possible in the future...

...The two years that had elapsed between the President's triumph in 1956 and his party's overwhelming defeat in 1958 produced many reasons for the "complete reversal" of which he complained...

...Existing Rule XXII is used both as a tool and a threat under which vital legislation has been defeated, delayed, or compromised by the will of the minority...

...His crowds during the campaign were far smaller than ever before...

...Countless Americans were disturbed during the campaign to hear the new Ike sound like the old Nixon as he talked recklessly of "radicals" and "socialists" among the ranks of the liberal Democrats...

...He, and his Secretary of State, had not yet led the nation to the brink of war in the Middle East and the Far East...

...Still embracing the Nixon line that the Northern Democratic liberals are "radicals," Mr...

...In fact, it was precisely to do this job that the country, from Maine to California, voted so overwhelmingly for liberal candidates in the great Democratic surge of November 4. In his first comment after the election President Eisenhower plaintively expressed his bewilderment over the outcome...

...The first significant test will come in the Senate on the very first day of the 66th Congress...

...in the Baltimore Armory, for example, more than half the seats were empty when the President of the United States rose to speak...

...The people still "like Ike"—-the man—but not his policies...

...The Texas leadership of both houses of Congress, Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson in the Senate, and Speaker Sam Rayburn in the House, are crafty masters at the art of disarming newcomers of their militancy and persuading them to forget the campaign pledges which elected them to office...

...Two years ago the President had not yet betrayed his promise to fight for funds for school construction...

...It is here, of course, that the people may be robbed of their election day victory, for a bipartisan coalition of the kind the President has in mind could crush the mandate of the newly elected progressives...

...Four Senators, Paul Douglas, Illinois, and Hubert Humphrey, Minnesota, both Democrats, and Clifford Case, New Jersey, and Jacob Javits, New York, both Republicans, have served notice that they will move on opening day to change the rules of the Senate in order "to curb the 'veto power' of the filibuster and make the Senate a more effective body...

...It is clear from the record of the recent past that Northern liberals will have to exercise the greatest vigilance and mobilize their full resources to prevent the Southern Tories, in alliance with conservative Republicans, from hi-jacking the victory they won at the polls...

...The same fate awaits similar legislation at the next session [unless] the blockade which the filibuster places in the way of majority rule in the Senate on this and other vital national issues is removed...

...This Senate rule, adopted in 1949, permits the closing of debate only if two-thirds of the total Senate—not two-thirds of those present and voting—vote affirmatively to end debate...

...In the process they may drive the Southern Tories out of the Democratic Party, but this in the long haul could strengthen rather than weaken the party by stamping it indelibly as the liberal party...

...He had not yet been shown to be so complacent over the Soviet Union's prodigious strides in science and engineering—so forcefully dramatized by the first and second sputniks...

...He had not yet fully revealed his lack of leadership in the field of civil rights, especially in the disaster at Little Rock...