The Congress: Work Done

Moving with uncommon dispatch, the 88th Congress last week:

— Approved, by a 333-to-5 House vote, a $1.2 billion military pay boost, which the President quickly and “with great pleasure” signed into law (see box). Effective as of Oct. 1, the raise is the first for servicemen since 1958, gives its highest-percentage increases to younger officers and noncoms as incentives to keep them in uniform. For those who are risking their lives in such cold war hot spots as Viet Nam but are technically ineligible for combat pay, there will be an added $55 a month in “hostile fire” pay. No sooner had Congress acted than Defense Secretary McNamara ordered an end to special overseas-duty pay of $8 to $22.50 a month for some 375,000 enlisted men, most of them stationed in Western Europe, Japan and Hawaii. Another 225,000 men, serving in areas with “undesirable climate, lack of normal community facilities, and inaccessibility of location,” will continue to draw the special pay.

— Rejected, by an ll-to-4 vote in the Senate Finance Committee, a motion by Illinois Democrat Paul Douglas calling for a speedup in committee hearings on the Administration’s $11.1 billion tax-cut bill. Douglas, who asked that hearings begin this week and be limited to four weeks, cried that the motion’s defeat was a “crushing blow” to the tax measure. Other Senators thought that the motion had been no more to begin with than an ill-conceived effort to pressure Finance Chairman Harry Byrd and an affront to the chairman’s traditional prerogative of scheduling hearings. At week’s end Byrd had yet to set a date for public hearings.

-Approved, by voice vote in the Senate, a resolution giving former Presidents the right to speak on the Senate floor. Urged by many a U.S. Senator and Representative since 1944, the resolution in effect offers the Senate floor as a forum for the counsel of the three living ex-Presidents—Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower. The resolution, however, limits ex-Presidents to speeches delivered “upon appropriate notice,” falls far short of other long-standing efforts to declare them “Senators at large” with full rights in voting and debate.

-Increased, in the House, stationery, postage and telephone allowances for Representatives, despite some fiery denunciations by Iowa Dollar Watcher H. R. Gross. The Representatives voted themselves a $600 increase in stationery allowance (to $2,400 per year), an extra $100 a year for airmail and special-delivery stamps, and an 11% increase in telegraph and long-distance-telephone allowances. Republican Gross failed in his efforts to force roll-call votes, but did set off some verbal fireworks. After a scathing attack by the lowan on congressional spending, including junkets abroad, North Carolina Democrat Harold D. Cooley snapped: “You sit back here and snipe year after year. If you don’t want to go, why don’t you just shut up?” Retorted Gross: “I’m going to continue to snipe at all junketing organizations. So just keep your feet braced.”

— Passed, by voice vote in the Senate, a measure suspending the “equal time” requirement of the Federal Communications Act, as applied to presidential campaigning, for 60 days before the 1964 election. In effect, the measure would open the way for a repeat of the Kennedy-Nixon type of television debate by ensuring that a network that offers free time to the major-party candidates would not also be obligated to provide free time to a host of minor candidates. The Senate measure now goes to a final vote in the House, where a 75-day suspension had been approved last June. The bill left some Republican Senators with misgivings. Said New Hampshire’s Norris Cotton, a supporter of Barry Goldwater: “Perhaps I should be pretty chary about this legislation because there is a substantial body of evidence to indicate that Vice President Nixon may have lost the 1960 election as a result of the great debates.”