The Congress: End of the Honeymoon

Stumpy Charles Abraham Halleck strolled into the Speaker’s lobby of the House of Representatives wearing the sanguine smile of an Indian brave preparing to scalp a New Frontiersman. “I think we always had the votes to beat this one.” said the Republican House minority leader. “And I think we still do.” No matter how often the House Democrats counted the noses, no matter how hard they pleaded, cajoled and threatened, they could not come up with the magic number needed to pass President Kennedy’s must bill to boost the $1 minimum wage to $1.25 and broaden coverage. History was against them. The House had killed the same bill last summer, and since then the Republicans had gained 21 seats.

The objections were genuine, and they crossed party lines. Democratic states’ righters from the South were dead set against expanding coverage to firms operating in just one state. They joined Republicans and some Northern Democrats in believing that the bill would work some hardships on farmers, retailers, small businessmen—and would in fact prompt employers to cut down the work force, thus increasing unemployment at the unskilled level, where it hurts most. Argued Kennedy, in a pointed plea at his press conference: “I find it difficult to understand how anybody could object to paying somebody who works in a business which makes over $1,000,000 a year by 1963 $50 a week.” But even then the Administration was already shopping for a compromise.

House Democratic Whip Carl Albert of Oklahoma offered the compromise bill to reduce the number of newly covered workers from 4,300,000 to 3,600,000 and exempt firms doing more than 75% of their business in a single state. But dozens of pro-Administration Democrats were afraid to stand up and be counted. Down went the compromise by an eyelash 186-185. Then, by 216 to 203, the House eased through a Republican-Southern Democrat bill: raise the wage to $1.15 for presently covered workers, set a $1 floor for some 1,400,000 additional workers, all in interstate commerce.

Thus Congress handed President Kennedy his first major legislative defeat. That done. Charlie Halleck’s Republicans and the hard-shell Democrats figured it would be easier to rally future opposition to such equally contentious Kennedy proposals as the education bill and medical aid to the aged. John Kennedy’s honeymoon with the 87th Congress had been short and something less than sweet.

Passed last week by Congress: 1) a temporary Unemployment Compensation Bill, under which state jobless benefits will be extended by as much as 13 weeks, and 2) a compromise Feed-Grains Bill.

under which farmers who cut acreage by 20% will get increased Government support prices for the grain they raise, and support-price payments for half the amount that they agree not to raise.