The Congress: Blades for Aid

At a White House dinner last year for an African chief of state, Senate G.O.P. Leader Everett Dirksen rumbled to a member of the visitor’s Cabinet: “Well, now, what are you people here for?” Dirksen, who expected the usual pleasantries about seeing “your great country,” was shocked to hear the minister reply instead: “Money.”

That excess of candor was partly responsible for the near emasculation last week of the Administration’s $3.4 billion fiscal-1967 foreign aid bill. Convinced, as a result, that the time had come to tighten up on U.S. largesse abroad, Dirksen began his own investigation of the program. In his new doubts about foreign aid, the Republican leader was joined by a dither of Democrats who in the past have been ardent champions of aid, but now tend to echo William Fulbright’s contention that assistance to far-off nations can lead to U.S. involvement in unplanned wars—meaning Viet Nam. Fulbright, who as Foreign Relations Committee chairman was nominally in charge of shepherding the bill through the Senate, charged last week that “we carry the big stick, and foreign aid is the carrot.” Added the Arkansas Democrat: “I thought we had outlived Teddy Roosevelt, but to judge from recent pronouncements by the President and his Secretary of State, we are moving in the direction of a policy of ‘manifest destiny’ in Asia.”

“Asian Doctrine.” Fulbright went on to charge that the Administration, without asking the “advice and consent” of the Senate, is trying to establish an “Asian Doctrine” comparable to the Monroe Doctrine in the Western Hemisphere. Despite the enthusiastic support of non-Communist Asian nations for ambitious U.S.-planned development projects in the area, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee intoned: “One wonders whether anyone ever thought of asking the Asians if they really want to join the Great Society.”

Furious, President Johnson had Press Secretary Bill Moyers announce the sharpest rebuttal that his Administration has delivered to a congressional critic from either party. “The President told me,” announced Moyers coldly, “that he finds it very difficult to follow exactly what the Senator is saying in respect to the Government’s Asian policies, because it is difficult to square what the Senator says in his speech with what the Senator has said before.” Predictably, Fulbright joined in beating down, by a vote of 48 to 35, a White House-backed amendment that would have extended most aid for two years, instead of one, to facilitate longer-range planning.

“Mendicant’s Cup.” Now it was Dirksen’s turn. Offering his own amendment to slash $250 million from the Administration’s requested Development Loan Fund authorization, Dirksen emphasized that he was not suggesting cutting funds for Viet Nam: “Everything that is necessary to Viet Nam would be in no wise affected.” Backed by a liberal-conservative array ranging from Oregon’s Wayne Morse to Georgia’s Herman Talmadge, Dirksen’s amendment sailed through, 59 to 34, as did seven other amendments by the Republican leader designed, as he put it, to “apply discipline” to aid administration.

From the Senate the battered bill goes to a conference with the House, which only the week before had passed a more liberal measure extending aid for two years without any appreciable cuts. From all indications, the program is still in trouble. The inescapable fact remains that, after the expenditure of $117 billion in U.S. aid over the past two decades, a significant number of Democrats and Republicans in both houses are skeptical of the aims, methods and results of foreign aid in 1966 and beyond.