The Congress: The Late Great

In Lyndon Johnson's proud prejudgment, historians will record it as "The Great Congress." And so they may. But few would claim that the 89th's finest hours came in 1966. After a historic first session that passed 105 important bills, the Congress generally thumb-twiddled its way through its second session, only to burst into a fevered eleventh-hour blur of action that added little to its luster.

By voice vote both houses last week slammed through minor bills en masse. Probing questions about important legislation were often brusquely slapped down. When the week began, only seven of 13 annual appropriations bills had been passed; when it was over, all had been hustled through the assembly line. On one key measure, the Senate voted in the absence of 30 members, most of whom had left to fight home-state campaign battles. Lamenting the proportionate absence of deliberation on the Senate floor, Vermont Republican George Aiken remarked: "I've never seen the Senate act more irresponsibly."

Limbo. A signal example of hastily considered legislation was the bill that created the U.S.'s twelfth Cabinet agency, the Department of Transportation. Swayed as much by the exigencies of leaving town and lobbyists' pressures as by legislative logic, the Congress in effect ignored sea transport, voted to keep the Maritime Administration out of DOT and leave the agency in its present autocratic limbo within the Department of Commerce. The President strongly disapproved of Congress' inaction on the Maritime Administration, but he signed the bill at week's end.

Both houses also zipped through the $58,067,472,000 defense-appropriations bill, which includes—for no ascertainable reason—a rider that gives the President the unrequested power to activate some 1,000,000 military reservists without first declaring a national emergency. Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen even managed to insert an amendment in a public-works bill that authorizes the President to impound 20% of the funds Congress allows for domestic programs because of the "unpredictability" of the war in Viet Nam. The Senate approved it, even though it was simply a Dirksen exercise in oneupmanship. If the House agrees, the President, who has always had the power to withhold congressionally appropriated funds, will in consequence have more trouble repeating his favorite alibi that larger expenses are the fault of Congress.

Along with all its last-minute lapses, the 89th last week managed to come up with final votes on only a few other major measures—notably a $4.1 billion public-works measure and a $186 million bill to expand official efforts to combat air pollution. Preliminary floor action was taken on several other significant bills, but in every case, final resolution was left until this week—which is expected to be the 89th's last.