THE CONGRESS: Dogging Issues

Bags packed and business backlogged. Congress shifted restlessly from foot to foot, waiting to take off on a ten-day Easter recess. Holding the members back: an eleventh-hour squabble between houses over terms of a bill authorizing $275 million in emergency funds for state public-assistance programs. Breaking down their differences—after a threat by Nevada's "Molly" Malone to talk until the snow was nine feet deep on Pennsylvania Avenue—House and Senate finally escaped Washington until month's end.

Three biting issues, aside from budget-cutting, were likely to dog them as they faced constituents. The three and their prospects:

Civil Rights. Though Southern Senators have bottled up legislation for a month in James 0. Eastland's Judiciary Committee, a break is in sight. Last week Senate Minority Leader William Fife Knowland delivered a G.O.P. ultimatum: no out-of-town trips for judiciary members until civil rights reaches the Senate floor. Reacting hastily, the Democratic leadership promised to report out the measure by May 20. Prognosis: after passage in the House and a last-stand Southern filibuster in the Senate, civil rights will be passed this session.

Federal Aid to Education. Though the Eisenhower Administration and schoolminded liberal Democrats have compromised on a bill authorizing $2 billion in aid to states over the next five years, the congressional atmosphere for a school bill is stifling. Not only is New York's Adam Clayton Powell Jr. threatening to tack on again his kiss-of-death integration rider, but congressional budget-cutters are eying with whetted axes the $400 million that would be appropriated for school construction next year. Prognosis: poor, almost hopeless.

Natural Gas. Still blackened and chastened by the explosion over high-pressure lobbying on the gas bill that prompted President Eisenhower to veto their bill last session, congressional Democrats are cautious. Though the President last week endorsed a new bipartisan measure now —, before Congress as agreeing in general "with the criteria that I announced as necessary in a bill which I would approve," Democrats are holding back. Said Acting Majority Leader Mike Mansfield last Week: "There will be no gas bill this time unless and until the President takes and maintains the leadership for it all the way." Prognosis: doubtful.