THE CONGRESS: Tiddly Week

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Reported last week by Chairman Bob Doughton's House Ways & Means Committee were Administration amendments to the Social Security Act. Their prime object was to scuttle the illusory "full reserve" ($47,000.000,000 by 1980) planned for Social Security insurance for the aged, try for a collect-as-you-pay system by upping immediate Federal contributions, reducing intake from payroll taxes. Recommended changes:

> Save employers and workers $275,000,000 in 1940, $825,000,000 in three years by freezing payroll levies for old-age insurance at 1% in 1940-41-42, instead of upping the rate to 11/2% next January 1as the law now requires.

> Begin monthly benefit payments next January 1 instead of in 1942, extend them to about 1,100,000 seamen, bank employes, people already over 65 and now employed who are not among the 42,500,000 presently eligible.

> Abolish lump-sum payments to the survivors of insured dead, substitute monthly pensions for widows and dependent children until they are 16 (18 if they remain in school. )†

^Permit the States to reduce their unemployment insurance contributions, if their reserve funds are at a safe ratio to their minimum annual outlays. In the 39 States whose reserves are in a condition permitting reductions, employers stand to save $200,000,000 to $250,000,000 in 1940. > Limit the annual income taxable for unemployment compensation to $3,000, which is now the maximum taxable for old-age insurance. Estimated annual saving to employers: $65,000,000.

Main obstacle to these amendments is the undying Townsend Plan. Last week smart Bob Doughton and his committee figured out a way to silence Townsendites for this session, hotspot some 60 Republican Congressmen (including Minority Leader Joe Martin of Massachusetts) who traded intimations of support for Townsend votes last year. Without reading the latest Townsend Bill, Doughton & Co. got the House Rules Committee to push it onto the floor this week, ban all amendments and force a roll-call vote. "I think you fellows just took this monkey off your backs," joshed Rulesman Martin Dies of Texas. Massachusetts' Republican Allen Treadway, who teased Townsenditcs in his district with half-promises, was pressed for his opinion of the Doughton scheme. "I have told you time and again that I didn't give a continental damn!" fumed Mr. Treadway. Dr. Francis Everett Townsend conceded that his new bill would immediately give oldsters only $50 instead of the long-promised $200 a month, knew that 100 (out of 435) votes for it would be a fair score, 125 good, 175 phenomenal.