The 86th at Work

As spring crept up on Washington, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson declared Congress' work farther along than for many a session. If nobody drags his feet, promised Texan Johnson, the Senate could join the more efficient House in two weeks of Easter vacation. Last week a few Congressmen took to sparsely populated House and Senate floors to talk up at the press galleries, but in the patient drone of committee rooms the heavy legislative load moved along smoothly. Items:

¶ The Administration bill to make Hawaii the 50th U.S. state, sailing through one day's rehearing in Senate Interior and Insular Affairs Committee and a week's end vote by Democratic Policy Committee, headed for the Senate floor and probable passage this week. In the House, the twice-passed companion bill sat in Rules Committee, where Chairman Howard Smith, Virginia chief of the South's antistatehood forces, benignly admitted that this time it would probably get past his committee and onto the floor.

¶ Despite newspaper flurry over Congressmen's hiring relatives (see PRESS), the House Administration Committee approved (13 to 2) a bill expanding each Representative's staff by adding a $14,162.04 Administrative Assistant. Maximum annual cost: $6,174,000.

¶ Pennsylvania liberal Democrat Joe Clark took the Senate floor to recommend a balanced budget—liberal Democrat style. He proposed to raise both taxes and spending by $4 billion, strike the balance at $81 billion. Demanding higher outlays for defense, education, urban redevelopment, housing, airports, water resources, public health, welfare, and foreign aid, Clark argued that the new money could be raised by tougher enforcement of income-tax laws, stiffer rules against business expense deductions, higher taxes on capital gains and dividends, lowered depletion allowances (from 27½% to 15%) on oil and gas wells. Nowhere did Clark suggest where costs could be cut.

¶ Wisconsin's David-sized Democrat William Proxmire cranked up another speech to be fired at Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson. "Democratic policy," said he, "is made entirely on an ad-lib, off-the-cuff basis. The initiative as well as the final decision is almost always resolved by the majority leader himself on the basis of his own judgment. The absence of a party policy gives the leadership a blank check to exercise any kind of off-the-cuff, improvising direction for our party he chooses. We are evading our obligation to be responsible. Unless we stop this trend, more and more crucial matters will be decided over the telephone, in the cloakroom or almost any private place where dissent can be silenced without public knowledge."