THE CONGRESS: Veto Overridden

President Truman fired off his first veto to the new 82nd Congress. It was promptly overridden by the House, which added that he used to feel differently about such things when he was plain Senator Harry S. Truman (D., Mo.).

The reminder came from Georgia's crusty Democrat Carl Vinson, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Earlier this year, Vinson heard that the Defense Department was seeking to lease two luxurious Washington apartment houses. He rushed through a bill providing that armed forces' real-estate transactions involving $10,000 or more must be cleared with the House and the Senate Armed Services Committees. The President vetoed it: the bill would cause delays, he said, and it was another case of legislative interference with the executive.

Vinson, who does more to push through the Administration's military bills than any other man, got his dander up. "You might pick up the paper tomorrow morning and find where the Army had taken over the Statler Hotel," he told the House. "Your responsibility as it stands today would be merely to foot the bill . . . It is the people's money that you are spending . . . This bill is where you can save millions of dollars." Vinson quoted from the 1944 report of the Truman Investigating Committee, which raised hob about the Army's hotel leases and concluded "The War Department should review the entire situation in detail and report to the proper legislative committees of the Congress . . ." An aroused House overrode the veto 312-68.

The Senate:

¶Voted at long last to provide 2,000,000 tons of wheat to famine threatened India through a long-term $190 million loan. It tacked on an amendment that India may repay in raw materials, but if so must include monazite, a fissionable material. Opponents of the amendment pointed out that India has a law against exporting monazite, and besides the U.S. has substantial supplies of it. Unmoved, Illinois' Republican Lawyer-Senator Everett Dirksen cried: "Always get your fee while the tears are hot."