National Affairs: End of an Old Fight

Since 1923, five Presidents have tried in vain to get Congress’ final approval of a new Cabinet post for the Government’s welfare functions. Last week President Eisenhower made his try, asked Congress to let him convert the vast Federal Security Agency (37,000 employees) into the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. His plan would make Federal Security Administrator Oveta Gulp Hobby his tenth Cabinet member.

The President’s proposal got a warm bipartisan reception in both Houses of Congress, even though it was essentially the same as a plan sent up by Harry Truman in 1950. (Like Truman’s, Ike’s plan was based on recommendations of the Hoover Commission.) Truman was turned down because Republicans, many Democrats and the powerful American Medical Association mistrusted his Fair Dealing Federal Security Administrator Oscar Ewing, the man who would have got the Cabinet job in 1950. Congress suspected that Truman and Ewing would use the proposed Cabinet job for further expansion of the bureaucracy and the establishment of a socialized health plan; Eisenhower’s stand against expansion of federal power and his well-known antipathy to socialism helped him to overcome the opposition that stopped Truman.

At week’s end, A.M.A. summoned its house of delegates into special session at Washington’s Statler Hotel to give an opinion of the Eisenhower reorganization plan. To reassure A.M.A., Eisenhower and Secretary-to-be Hobby went over to the meeting themselves. In an off-the-cuff speech, the President said he had found, in the past few years, that “I have certain philosophical bonds with doctors. I don’t like the word ‘compulsory.’ I am against the word ‘socialized.’ ” He was sure that the Government could do more for the national health if it cooperated with the doctors instead of trying “to be the big Pooh-Bah in this particular field.”

After the presidential party had gone, A.M.A. President Louis Bauer reminded the delegates that the door of the White House and the FSA had already been opened to A.M.A. “for the first time . . . since it was organized.” Past President John Cline noted that A.M.A. had progressed, since the election,”from the No. 1 position in an Administration doghouse to the point where the President and the majority leader of the Senate [Bob Taft] addressed us today.” All opposition to the Eisenhower proposal caved in, and A.M.A.’s delegates gave the Department of Health, Education and Welfare a unanimous endorsement. Congress is expected to follow suit within a few weeks.