THE HEART OF THE MATTER
PROGRESSIVE "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" The Heart of the Matter When the Eighty-sixth Congress convened in January, 1959, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson...
...This measure rejects the concept o? social insurance for medical care...
...Senator Kennedy can do much to resolve these doubts, we believe, by announcing to the nation his determination, if elected, to break the iron grip of the Tories in his own party...
...Samuel H. Beer, Harvard political scientist, urging action to crack the power of the coalition by liberalizing the rules of Congress...
...It provides only for Federal assistance to the states to increase medical aid for the aged who are on relief and others who can prove their poverty...
...Johnson has long shown his gifts in the tactics of maneuver...
...Essentially a political broker, he trades skillfully in concessions and specializes in compromise...
...Kennedy's record of liberalism is solid in its own right, but as the new leader of his party and its candidate for President he owes it to the liberal majority to proclaim his intention to break the stranglehold of the reactionary minority...
...Rather than accept this reduced version, Kennedy let the legislation die in the hope that Democratic victory in November would heighten the prospects for passage of the more liberal proposal...
...Two of his progressive colleagues have already spoken up...
...Senators and Representatives returned to Washington with gleaming new platform pledges minted only a few weeks earlier at their national conventions...
...The Democratic Presidential nominee, he said, should publicly lay the blame where it belongs and call openly for the break-up of the coalition...
...The humbug involved in Dirksen's action is easily detected: he had voted against both proposals only a few months before...
...We shall honor that mandate...
...It was Johnson whose stature suffered most...
...Republicans blamed the Democrats and Democrats the Republicans...
...This pledge can be implemented only by rules changes which assure that sabotage will not occur at any stage of the legislative process...
...The Democratic leadership had marked four bills as constituting a minimum program of action...
...By their action the Democrats partially succeeded in preventing the intra-party squabble they had feared, but they failed miserably in their other objective—to pave the way for favorable action on aid to education, minimum wage liberalization, housing, and broadening of social security to provide medical care for the aged...
...Americans for Democratic Action, which supports liberal Democrats but will back liberal Republicans when it finds them, recently issued a statement through its chairman, Dr...
...Nixon stayed out of sight, hoping he would not have to break a tie that would put him on record...
...Kennedy's principal goal in the bobtail session was enactment of legislation that would increase the minimum wage from $1 to $1.25 per hour and broaden the law's coverage to include 4,000,000 additional workers...
...Civil rights legislation was not considered at all—despite the fact that both parties had just adopted the most liberal civil rights planks in their history...
...f Action to assure that after each House has passed legislation on the same subject, it will have the opportunity to resolve its differences with the other in conference, and that the conferees will truly represent the majority will of each House...
...Both were right...
...Kennedy worked ably and earnestly against hopeless odds to achieve his objectives, but he displayed little of that driving militancy for which some had hoped...
...The two other "must bills"—Federal aid for the construction of schools and a comprehensive housing program—were done to death by the strangling tactics of six members of the House Rules Committee...
...Beer emphasized, "that even a liberal mandate in the election will not mean the enactment of a liberal program unless those who receive it are committed to restoration of the democratic process in Congress...
...It was a flop in that sense too...
...Senator Everett M. Dirksen of Illinois, the Republican leader, slyly sought to embarrass the divided Democrats by introducing a measure that would have established a permanent President's Commission on Equal Job Opportunity and provided Federal funds to assist areas desegregating their public schools...
...The housing bill had passed the Senate and cleared a House committee, but six members of the Rules Committee— two Democrats and four Republicans—would not let it go to the floor for action...
...The proposed changes are: % The selection for committee assignments of only those legislators committed to carrying out those portions of their party platforms over which the committee has jurisdiction...
...But these new promises were soon struck down in a smog of partisan oratory and buried six feet deep in hypocrisy...
...We are convinced," Dr...
...The Democrats, moreover, weakened their position among many Americans who, while recognizing the fraud of the Republican strategy, were disturbed by the decision of the Democrats to deny consideration of civil rights...
...It would have provided comprehensive medical benefits, under social security, for those over sixty-eight...
...The liberal landslide of 1958 had become the reactionary rout of 1960...
...Dr...
...It was the Bourbon coalition of Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats that destroyed the hopes of 1958...
...I think it is clear the South does not want to belong to a national party...
...The school construction measure had passed each house in somewhat different form, but the Rules Committee vetoed the will of the majority by refusing to let it go to conference for adjustment of differences...
...Only one Republican, Senator Clifford P. Case of New Jersey, voted with the forty-three Democrats...
...In the bobtail session the situation called for standing firm and fighting it out on issues...
...In all the history of the Senate never has one party won so many seats at a single election as we have won...
...We have by our majority here an obligation to lead...
...His almost legendary reputation as a majority leader who gets things done took a severe jolting...
...In every significant contest during the Eighty-sixth Congress it was either the defection of Southern Democrats to the Republican cause or the crippling conduct of Southern Democrats in the key committees of the House and the Senate that betrayed the progressive mandate of the 1958 elections...
...Senator John F. Kennedy, who had voted to table the Dirksen bill, sought to salvage what he could from a nasty situation by pledging to throw the power of the Presidency behind early Congressional action on the entire Democratic plank on civil rights if he is elected...
...Of what value are the inspiring planks of the new Democratic Party platform when one recalls that bills embodying many of these noble pledges have been killed, in this recent session as in others, by the choking tactics of the party's Southern minority...
...They had just adopted a glittering array of promises in the field of civil rights...
...Senator Paul H. Douglas of Illinois, in a recent telecast, appealed to Kennedy to go to the people and expose the "unholy coalition" in Congress...
...One need not necessarily accept them as the last word in reform to recognize that they are headed in the right direction...
...Sometimes the coalition mustered enough votes...
...But they knew that to permit debate on the Dirksen bill would involve the Senate in a destructive filibuster that could end only 1) by exposing anew the fatal split in the Democratic Party on civil rights, and 2) by consuming so much time that it would be impossible to act on the "must bills" they were presenting...
...The Democratic platform pledges action to assure that majority rule prevails in both Houses of Congress...
...All four were killed—although the Democrats have nearly a two to one majority in both Houses of Congress...
...The chronicle of the Eighty-sixth Congress is littered with pledges betrayed and obligations dishonored...
...Liberal forces lost again to the bipartisan coalition in the struggle over medical aid to the aged...
...These are some of the doubts that disturb many independent liberals as the 1960 Presidential campaign swings into its final month...
...The bobtail session of Congress, graced by the presence of the two candidates for President and one of the candidates for Vice President, was billed as an historic duel of political personalities...
...The Senate did not disturb his cozy evasion...
...I don't think the Democratic Party can long tolerate having this condition exist," he said...
...This is an issue on which Kennedy must speak up boldly...
...Senator Kennedy's continuing advocacy of liberal legislation is fine as far as it goes, but the most brilliantly conceived progressive program will avail us nothing if Smith, Byrd, Eastland, and Company continue to exercise their arbitrary veto power...
...The Eighty-sixth Congress concluded its labors last month...
...f Adoption of rules to assure that legislation will not be killed in legislative committee by filibuster or arbitrary action of the chairman...
...This is the heart of the matter for those committed to a program of liberal action...
...If he does, we suspect a great many liberals might shed their apathy and become active participants instead of indifferent bystanders in the Kennedy campaign...
...For this he showed few qualities of leadership...
...but always it won...
...He skillfully piloted the measure through the Senate, but the Tory coalition of Republicans and Democrats in the House held out for a bill that would increase the minimum wage to only $1.15 and extend coverage to only 1,400,000 workers...
...The measure was defeated 51 to 44 as nineteen Democrats, nearly all from the South, lined up with the Republicans...
...It left behind a record so dismal that both parties fell at once to wrangling over responsibility for the wreckage...
...often it was obliged to invoke the legislative instruments of paralysis which the rules of Congress provide...
...Militant White House support—so consistently lacking during the eight years of the Eisenhower Administration—could prove decisive in the quest for meaningful civil rights legislation...
...PROGRESSIVE "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" The Heart of the Matter When the Eighty-sixth Congress convened in January, 1959, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson accepted the mandate of the extraordinary liberal sweep at the polls two months before with these words: "This is the starting of a new era...
...The cheerless climax came at the bobtail session in August...
...The urgent problem of medical care for the great majority of our older persons was left untouched...
...Beer proposed five major amendments to the rules...
...Senator Joseph S. Clark of Pennsylvania has called for a sweeping reorganization of Senate Democratic leadership in the next session of Congress and has urged the adoption of a requirement that chairmen of Senate standing committees and a majority of the Democratic members of each committee—assuming that the Democrats control the Senate again—favor the party's platform planks relating to the legislation their committees handle...
...In the end, Congress passed a niggardly substitute patched together by the coalition forces in Senator Harry Byrd's Senate Finance Committee...
...Here are the guidelines to a program that would make Congress far more responsive to the will of its own majority and the will of the people than the present rules which vest ultimate power in the hands of a tight little tyranny...
...f Action to assure that measures reported by legislative committees will reach the floor for debate...
...f Rule revision to assure that a majority in the Senate will be able to bring legislation to a vote after a reasonable opportunity for debate...
...The Democrats voted, with only four of their number dissenting, to table the bill, a move which shut off debate for the session...
...What purpose is served in voting Democratic, many liberals wonder, if the tyranny of a Howard Smith in the House Rules Committee, a Harry Byrd in the Senate Finance Committee, and a James Eastland in the Senate Judiciary Committee can crush, time after time, the progressive program of the great majority of Democrats...
...Democratic leaders found themselves in a painful squeeze...
...The bill they supported, introduced by Senator Clinton Anderson, New Mexico Democrat, was a modified version of the Forand bill...
Vol. 24 • October 1960 • No. 10
