National Affairs: Porlc-as-Usual

With virtuous vigor Franklin Roosevelt last week vetoed a $320,000,000 defense-highway appropriation bill. Reason : he had asked for only $125,000,000 to correct critical deficiencies in the strategic network of military highways; pork-hungry Congress had blown up the measure; worse, had changed the bill's idea. The $320,000,000 was not to be distributed according to defense needs but by the hoary Federal-aid formula — based on population, area, etc. The Senate happily overrode the President's veto, 57-to-19, well over the required two-thirds majority. The House just barely upheld the President by what amounted to a mistake : the overconfident pork-lovers got two votes less than the required two-thirds. The President was vindicated: no pork in defense highways.

Next day the scene shifted to the House Rivers & Harbors Committee, the traditional headquarters for Congressional pork-lovers. The headquarters has lately seen lean times; all the fat cuts have gone to the military and naval committees. Moodily the committee contemplated a project of which it is suspicious: the President's pet, the $285,000,000 St. Lawrence Seaway. The committee had stalled, still was far from a decision. Then the President suddenly wrote a friendly letter to Chairman Joseph Jefferson Mansfield, saying he would not oppose including the Seaway in an omnibus appropriation bill. This was the signal the wolves were waiting for; the door to the icebox was flung open. All of the Presidentially refrigerated cuts of pork were dragged from the hooks, even the long-dead $197,000,000 Florida Ship Canal. The smell of pork was rich over the Capitol.