THE CONGRESS: Exit Gyrating

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Grey-haired old Charles Plumley, Vermont's lone Congressman, rose up in the House one day last week to make an announcement. Because of "the alleged scarcity of paper pulp," said Congressman Plumley, he was sending out no Christmas cards this year. And he then & there wished everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. He was cheered to the rafters.*

Such a friendly, nonpartisan act was a rarity in the session's frantic final week. Both parties played furious and sometimes shabby politics. There were parries and thrusts—over the listing of grain speculators (see Investigations), over interim aid for Europe and China, and over inflation controls.

Prodding & Patience. At week's start, the Republicans suffered a serious tactical defeat when they tried, under a gag rule, to ram a token anti-inflation bill through the House. But after House Democrats, in an unusual show of solidarity, had smashed the bill (TIME, Dec. 22), Ohio's Bob Taft did a statesmanlike job of picking up the pieces in the Senate.

Taft prodded the Senate Banking and Currency Committee into quickly reporting out an almost identical measure. It provided for extension of export and transportation controls, and empowered the Administration to limit the use of grain in distilling. It ignored all of President Truman's requests for such heavy weapons as rationing, wage and price controls, compulsory allocations. Allocations could be made only through "voluntary" agreements with industry. This meant, cried Minority Leader Alben Barkley, that the President would have "to go out huckstering among business" to get agreements.

Barkley's amendment authorizing compulsory allocations was beaten down.

With unaccustomed patience, Bob Taft waited out two days of Democratic infighting. In the end, even many Democrats approved the bill, which was sent to the House, by a 77-to-10 vote. House Democrats took another futile try at the Barkley amendment. Finally, 102 of them (and New York's Party-line Vito Marcantonio) lined up with 178 Republicans to pass the bill. Triumphantly, Bob Taft declared: "The President has power today to check nearly all of the principal causes of inflation if he really wishes to do so." This was taken by most Washingtonians in the partisan spirit in which it was offered. Even so—and despite cartoonists' jeers—a start had been made.

Thanks to Taft, Republicans could not be accused of having done absolutely nothing on the inflation front.