THE CONGRESS: Work Undone

The fifth month of an ordinary session would find Congress, well past the warm-up stage, in a healthy sweat of legislative action. Last week, beginning its fifth month, the Senate met on Monday, adjourned until Thursday, met briefly then and quit for the week. Outside of giving final approval to the Treasury-Post Office Appropriations Bill and providing $5,000,000 for Federal participation in the New York World’s Fair of 1939, its most newsworthy activity was listening to a speech by Idaho’s Borah against fascism.

The House met more frequently, no more effectively. Its week’s work was to pass, over faint cries for Economy, a $2,500,000 bill for Federal aid to reforesting farmers.

Its predecessors having achieved Recovery and the New Deal being safely settled in power for another four years, the 75th Congress, elected last November, was slated to be a Reform Congress. It met Jan. 5 with full steam and a clear track. By last week the Senate had averaged less than three hours’ work per day, meeting on only about half the available days. The House had done little better. Between them they had passed just two major measures—the Neutrality and Guffey Coal Acts—and both were revampings of earlier statutes. Even in the matter of routine appropriations they had finished only four bills, with ten yet to go. Experienced observers were predicting last week that outside of the necessary money bills and some decision on Court rejuvenation, all the rest of the major constructive measures set for action this session—wage & hour regulation, low-cost housing, executive reorganization, crop insurance, lessening of farm tenancy, and many others— would either go by the board or be whipped through in slapdash form at session’s end. The causes of the stall were clear: the legislative machine had been jammed by President Roosevelt’s Supreme Court monkey wrench, gummed by the perplexities of Economy. But for all the disaffection created by the Court issue, and for all its readiness to differ with the President on ways to Economy, Congress had apparently been led so long and so firmly that it lacked either will or ability to order its ranks, proceed under its own power. Now the drift from White House domination had progressed so far that Washington seriously wondered whether Congress would respond when the President returned from his fishing to resume command.

Increasingly displayed last week was a Congressional disposition to quit altogether during the summer months.

Said Senator Norris: “Congress can’t do good work when everybody is suffering from the heat. … I would have Congress adjourn until the latter part of September or the first of October.”