The Congress: The Two Wars

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The bill, proclaimed Ways and Means Chairman Wilbur Mills, "is intended first and foremost to provide additional revenues to help sustain our operations in Vietnam." The House was unmoved.

It was not, for a change, reservations about the war that worried Congressmen but the fact that President John son's proposal to raise an extra $6 billion in taxes contained no proposals to cut back on domestic spending. As a result, the measure ran into unexpectedly stiff opposition.

Republican Whip Leslie Arends warned that "unless we stop spending, we will have additional tax-raising bills before us." A G.O.P. resolution came within 20 votes of knocking out the bill's key provisions, which will reimpose the 7% tax on new cars and the 10% tax on telephone service. In the end, the measure was passed by 246 votes to 146, but even most members who voted aye did so reluctantly.

In a less rebellious mood, the House next day approved, 350 to 27, the Administration's request for $415 million in emergency foreign aid funds for South Viet Nam, Laos, Thailand, the Dominican Republic, and other countries that might need them. The Great Society also needs funds, and the Administration pressed ahead with several of its cherished projects:

FOOD FOR FREEDOM. Before the House Agriculture Committee, Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman defended the proposed $3.3 billion-a-year Food for Freedom program with the arresting claim that U.S. food exports "will save more human lives than have been lost in all the wars in history."

CONSERVATION. To ensure Americans "a sane environment," the President presented to Congress the most exhaustive conservation blueprint ever devised. He requested an initial $10 million for a new Redwood National Park in California, plus funds for additional parks, seashores and hiking trails.

ANTIPOLLUTION. Urging a massive assault on water pollution, the President cited "one ultimate goal: to clean all of America's rivers." Johnson proposed that local, state or interstate compacts be formed "to clean and preserve entire river basins, from their sources to their mouths," and that the Federal Government supply 30% of the funds needed to establish sewage-disposal units along their banks.