THE CONGRESS: Ahead of the Wind

• Share

That well-oiled political weathervane, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson, eased around gracefully last week to point north northwest toward the Democratic Party's election victories. The headlines saw more liberalism in the sharp rise of Democratic working majorities in both the Senate (up from 2 to 28) and in the House (up from 235 to 281). So Democrat Johnson, 48 hours after the count, stepped forth with a program for liberal expansion of federal spending and power by the 86th Congress. " Lyndon doesn't lean with the wind," cracked an admiring Senate colleague. "He leans ahead of it."

In a with-the-wind speech at the annual town-gown day in Big Spring, Texas (pop. 24,800), Johnson dashed off a list of likely congressional specifics: a depressed-areas bill, "an atomic merchant marine," bigger water development programs for the West, "a bold housing program," "jet-age" airport facilities, "courageous urban renewal," a mild antirackets labor law like Kennedy-Ives, outer-space exploration, "a consistent policy for Latin America," "bold, new, imaginative" foreign policies. He hinted at new attacks upon Administration hard-money policy ("We need to face up to the high interest rates which are slowing the needed growth of our economy"). Also on his target list in some form: Ezra Benson's farm policy, "which now costs 53¢ in federal subsidies for every dollar the farmer nets."

And Civil Rights? Texan Johnson did not mention certain other prospects for a new Congress that might think it had to live up to its liberal billing: automatic death for any natural gas bill, possible reduction of the Texas-cherished 27½% depletion allowance on oil income, an end to conservative and Southern hopes to limit the Supreme Court's powers.

Nor did he say much about his biggest headache: civil rights. Already Illinois' liberal Democrat Paul Douglas and Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey had teamed up with Republican Liberals Jacob Javits of New York and Cliff Case of New Jersey to poll all senatorial candidates on a plan to attack Rule 22, the South's license to stop all civil-rights legislation by filibuster. Douglas & Co. could count 41 votes for abolition of Rule 22 as the first order of Senate business, figured they were well within sight of a thunderous victory that would curl the hair of aging Dixiecrats.

Smoother Operation. Beyond civil rights lay other troubles for both Johnson and House Speaker Sam Rayburn: with the big Northern and Western majorities, such mossbacked committee chairmen as House Rules Committee Boss Howard Smith of Virginia are likely to find themselves under many an organized floor attack from their own party.

On the other side of the aisle, Republican ranks, though depleted, may find in defeat a new cohesion that will let them exploit Democratic splits. Ailing Joe Martin of Massachusetts will probably hand more of the House minority leader's power over to quick-moving Ikeman Charlie Halleck of Indiana; the Senate's probable new Republican leader, Old Guardist-turned-Ikeman Everett Dirksen of Illinois, will doubtless be a much smoother operator than bumbling ex-Minority Leader Bill Knowland.