Nation: Some Enchanted Evening!

In ones and twos they came, until the galleries were filled with the festive rustling of satin and silk. A wave of perfume penetrated to the farthest corners of the House—but with none of the advertised effects on the male of the species. For despite earlier assurances that the members would be allowed to quit in time to take their wives to Lyndon Johnson’s Salute to the 89th Congress, their host had other plans for the House. From 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on the evening of the party came word that the Representatives should stay in session until they had passed the Administration’s highway-beautification bill. After all Lady Bird had set her heart on it.

Forgotten Bash. Corsages wilted, par ty gowns wrinkled, coiffures uncoiffed. The silence in the galleries grew more and more ominous; the menfolk below had plainly forgotten all about Lyndon’s bash. All the Republicans could think about was new amendments to the bill. For example, Kansas’ Bob Dole introduced an amendment to give the First Lady rather than the Secretary of Commerce the power to enforce the beautification bill. It got nowhere. Nor did a raft of other G.O.P. amendments. The more the Democrats tried to choke off the beautification debate, the angrier the opposition became.

Mindful of Lyndon’s pride in signing bills in the most appropriate possible place, Iowa’s H. R. Gross suggested sourly that the President might hold the beautification-bill ceremony on Route 290 outside Austin, in the shade of a billboard advertising the Johnsons’ TV and radio station. (The gibe was late; KTBC had removed the blurb last month.) Protested Illinois’ Donald Rumsfeld, who supported the bill: “The Democrats were allowing no time to debate constructive amendments. All we could do was get up and hiccup. That’s a helluva lousy way to legislate.”

The Last Hiccup. After the last hiccup sounded, around midnight, the House approved the bill, 245 to 138, and adjourned at 12:51 a.m. By then, most of the hundred waiting wives had flounced off indignantly on their own—some of them party-bound, but more headed for home. Bouncy little Carl Albert, the Democratic majority leader, announced: “The party’s still on.” Most of the Republicans were in too black a mood for celebration after the 14-hour session. Growled one G.O.P. member: “You wouldn’t find me dead near the White House.”

One consolation—to the President’s wife, anyway—was the bill that emerged from the bickering. Like the. version already passed by the Senate, it authorizes a federal-state campaign to landscape major roads, screen or remove junkyards from roadsides, and push back billboards so that people can see the scenery. It may even eliminate the ultimate uglification described earlier by Washington’s Senator Warren Magnuson. On Route 99, just south of Seattle, said he, the view of distant Mount Rainier is obscured by a Rainier-beer billboard with a painted view of Mount Rainier.

Last week Congress also:

» Completed action, by a Senate vote of 40 to 23, on a $3.2 billion foreign aid appropriation bill that trimmed only $241 million from the Administration’s original request. The bill, already approved by the House, now goes to the President.

» Passed, by a House vote of 219 to 150, a new four-year agriculture bill that would increase wheat prices an average of 150 a bushel, lower supports for next year’s cotton crop from 300 to 210 a pound, with compensatory federal payments to growers who agree to limit production. Overall, the bill aims at reducing the Government’s $4 billion annual price tag for farm surpluses by about $100 million. The bill was the product of a House-Senate conference committee, now goes to the Senate.