Foreign Aid: Doctors in the House

In an eleventh-hour effort to save the President’s $3.37 billion foreign aid bill from its knife-wielding critics, House Speaker John McCormack took to the floor last week to plead the Administration’s case. “This is the time when we should continue with strength,” he urged. “This is not a time for us to evidence weakness.”

To many in the House, the times suggested sharp cuts in U.S. aid commitments abroad. The huge costs of the war, urban turmoil at home, and the President’s request for a new 10% surcharge on income taxes all convinced scores of Congressmen that some part of a looming $29 billion federal deficit could be offset by performing major surgery on foreign aid programs. The Senate, for its part, had already slashed the bill by some $750 million.

Aligned to oppose the bill was a coalition of conservative Republicans, Southern Democrats and, paradoxically, sometime internationalist supporters of foreign aid whose aversion to the Viet Nam war has converted them in some measure to a form of isolationism. For four days, Democratic floor managers steered the bill through an obstacle course of debate and dozens of amend ments, virtually all of them designed to trim foreign aid funds or tie strings to their use. On the fourth night the House went into marathon session.

Squeeze & Scare. By fairly handy margins, the opposition chipped away with one amendment after another. One proposed by Indiana’s Ross Adair cut $72 million from the Alliance for Progress. Alabama’s John Buchanan easily trimmed $25 million from the contingency fund, which is used to meet unforeseen emergencies. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mendel Rivers successfully moved to pare $60 million from military-assistance funds. An amendment sponsored by Illinois’ Paul Findley bumped Poland from its cherished status as a favored nation in trade matters.

Moaned Florida’s Dante Fascell, one of the bill’s managers: “I feel like the man who tried to prevent disaster by putting his finger in the dike—only to have somebody come along and saw off his arm.”

Not until 3:10 a.m. did the roll call for final passage begin. By then, more than $500 million had already been chopped away from the Administration’s bill. At 3:33 a.m., the legislation squeezed by on a vote of 202 to 194. As close as the vote was, opposition leaders had no intention of defeating the foreign aid bill entirely. Their aim was to scare the Administration, and that they did most successfully.