The Congress: End of the 88th

Democratic Leader Mike Mansfield rose in the Senate to propose that the Congress recess until after the Nov. 3 elections, then return to finish its work. A chorus of protest swept the chamber. In the House, California Democrat Chet Holifield cried: “This House should adjourn!” Congressmen cheered and clapped in agreement. In such a mood of rebellion, the lawmakers last week spurned the pleas of President Johnson and finally adjourned the 88th Congress.

The legislators were determined to get home to campaign. In their impatience to end it all, they angrily refused to approve two of Lyndon Johnson’s priority programs: a $1 billion project of federal aid to rejuvenate the economy of the Appalachian region and Social Security-financed medical care for the aged. Both plans had passed the Senate. Appalachia died because Democrats could not muster enough votes to get an authorization bill through the House. Medicare died in a Senate-House conference committee, mainly because of the opposition of House Ways and Means Chairman Wilbur Mills.

Rival Ambitions. In the bitter battle over medicare, Johnson also lost the whole Social Security bill to which medicare was attached. Passed by both houses, this bill would have provided $5 to $7 raises monthly for some 20 million persons on Social Security. It collapsed in conference when three Democratic Senators — Louisiana’s Russell Long, Florida’s George Smathers and Tennessee’s Albert Gore — refused to approve the bill unless medicare was included. Gore even threatened a filibuster. The three held out because each wanted to uphold the Senate position, thus gain more points in their rival ambitions to succeed Hubert Humphrey as Democratic whip. Also lost in the shuffle, to Johnson’s probable delight: a Senate-passed “sense of Congress” resolution that Supreme Court-ordered redistricting of state legislatures should be delayed — a subject that had tied the Senate up for five weeks.

The Record. Despite his last-minute defeats, however, President Johnson could look back with pride on one of the most productive congressional sessions in recent times.

The second half of the 88th enacted the most far-ranging civil rights bill in history. It approved an $11½ billion federal income tax cut, the biggest ever, as a means to spur the economy. It set up a program of federal-state cooperation in tackling the mass transportation problems that threaten to stifle metropolitan areas, set aside some 9,000,000 acres of wilderness for future recreation and conservation. It provided federal grants to build higher education facilities, created a program to retrain employees displaced by automation. It gave top executives in Government new incentives to remain in public service by sharply increasing their salaries. In addition to these bills, all originally proposed by President Kennedy, Johnson secured passage of his own legislative package to attack poverty through a variety of federal-state projects.

Johnson undoubtedly will make much of that legislative record—and with good reason—as he stumps for reelection. Yet such programs cost money, and there is one fact about the 88th Congress that Johnson is not so likely to bring up. In its two sessions, the 88th authorized the spending of more than $200 billion—the first to top that figure, even in wartime.