The Congress: Also, the Subject of Sex

The 88th Congress, after an eight-day adjournment, returned for its second session — only to be confronted by most of the major legislative items over which it had dawdled during its first session.

One was the civil rights bill. Hearings on the Administration-sponsored measure started in the House Rules Committee, whose canny old chairman, Virginia Democrat Howard Smith, 80, opposes the bill in its entirety. Peering owlishly above the top of his spectacles, “Judge” Smith labeled the bill “as full of booby traps as a dog is of fleas.” He hooted happily at Brooklyn’s zealous Emanuel Celler, whose House Judiciary Committee had already cleared the civil rights bill. It had, said Smith, been “railroaded” through the committee.

Celler: That’s a rather strong word. We don’t railroad anything.

Smith: Would you prefer strong-armed?

Then, taking a new tack, Smith complained that while the bill guarantees against discrimination on grounds of race, it does not forbid discrimination on grounds of sex. Celler answered with the old saw about the French tourist in New York, who when asked what he thought of the Empire State Building, replied that it reminded him of sex. “Why?” asked his guide. “Everything does,” said the Frenchman.

Celler vowed he could not recall that sex had ever before been an issue in the civil rights bill. Remarked New York’s Republican Representative Katherine St. George, the reason might be that sex was “just a dim memory” for the 75-year-old Celler.

Still, Smith has promised that a bill will emerge from his committee and go to the House floor by the end of this month. When and if it passes the House, it faces an inevitable Senate filibuster by Democrats.

For that reason, President Johnson last week placed tax-cut legislation ahead of civil rights in the order of congressional business. And Virginia Democrat Harry Byrd’s Senate Finance Committee stepped up its work on the tax bill. Among other things, it approved the two-step corporate income tax cut from 52% to 48% and dumped an Administration-sponsored, House-approved provision forbidding the deduction of state and local gas taxes, automobile-and driver-license fees from federal returns. Estimated annual revenue loss: $330 million. In his State of the Union message, President Johnson called for tax-cut passage by Feb. 1. A March date seems more likely.