THE CONGRESS: Victory in Defeat

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As Senate cloakroom whispers had it last week, the bill sponsored by Massachusetts' Jack Kennedy to regulate $30 billion in pension and welfare funds was safe labor legislation. It had labor's blessing; it would be the only labor bill this session; it would rectify at least some of the fraudulent labor-union practices exposed by the McClellan investigating committee. On these grounds an ample bloc of Democrats and liberal Republicans banded under Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson to push the bill through. But they reckoned without California's William Fife Knowland.

Knowland not only has stern ideas about labor, he is also running for governor of California on a police-the-unions platform. With little prior warning to Democrats or the Administration, Knowland prepared to tack onto the measure a 14-amendment "labor bill of rights" that would, among other provisions, allow the recall of union officers upon a 15% membership petition, and postpone strikes when 15% objected.

Lyndon Johnson worked fast and furiously to head off Big Bill. He got Arkansas' able Lawyer John McClellan to warn against writing hasty legislation on the floor, an old Senate bugaboo. And he got Jack Kennedy to promise to schedule three additional weeks of labor hearings, with the extra promise that additional labor-regulation bills will hit the floor by mid-June. The Johnson coalition held firm, voted down Knowland's amendments, but Knowland had won a victory for labor regulation by guaranteeing that the Senate will have to go on record this session on harder-hitting bills than a routine pension and welfare bill.

While the Senate wrangled last week: ¶The House Foreign Affairs Committee, in a token cut that was anticipated by the State Department, lopped $339 million off the $3.9 billion foreign aid authorization bill.

¶The House by voice vote passed and sent to the Senate a bill extending school construction aid in "federally impacted" areas.

¶The House refused (207 to 161) to allow sailors to eat oleo with their meals as soldiers and airmen already do, except in some overseas areas or when butter surpluses are depleted. Dairy-bloc Congressmen lead a successful fight to keep intact a Navy Ration Act put through by Theodore Roosevelt to provide bluejackets with 1 6/10 ounces of "butter" a day, to prevent scurvy and beriberi.