National Affairs: Out of Control

By this week it was clear to every Congressman, as it must have been to Harry Truman, that the majority of U.S. Senators did not much care what the President wanted. The Senate had served ample notice, in a new and thoroughly emasculated price control bill, of its almost contemptuous disregard of his efforts to align the U.S. people against its position. The break between the President and Congress was just about complete.

This week Harry Truman's Administration leaders faint-heartedly scurried into maneuvers in the House to save what they might of the second OPA bill. It had been shredded of many controls the President thought were essential. The Senate had defiantly voted a bill that was worse, from his point of view, than the one he had vetoed. The Senate's 62-to-15 vote had said to him in effect: all right, if you don't like it, you can throw price control out the window again—veto it.

The President gave a strong indication that he would do just that if the bill came to him as the Senate had approved it. Said Harry Truman: It is in terrible shape; it couldn't be worse. Said the Senate's Republican strategist Robert A. Taft: "If it is vetoed again, Congress will pass a resolution extending rent controls and quit."

Rent control was just about all that had been saved out of what Harry Truman wanted. In five days and four long night sessions, southern Democrats and northern Republicans from agricultural states had helped each other get what they thought their constituents wanted. Out the window went controls on livestock, meat, poultry, eggs, all dairy products, grain and feed, tobacco, cottonseed and soybeans and their products. The Senate wrote in a reservation on petroleum; it was taken out from under price controls, but was left subject to control if the Decontrol Board certifies that supply is insufficient to meet domestic demand.

If the Administration leaders in the House were unable to wangle some strength back into the bill, Harry Truman would have lost not only his price control gamble, but also the remnants of his leadership's prestige in Congress. The remnants were not much.