Nation: The Congress: Work Done

By a vote of 263 to 153, the House last week passed and sent to the Senate one of the key programs of the Great Society: President Johnson’s $1.3 billion education bill to provide federal aid to primary and secondary schools. The measure would grant $100 million for textbooks and library books, $100 million for supplemental education centers such as labmobiles, and $1 billion-plus for public school districts to spend as they see fit. For a district to qualify, 3% or more of its pupils would have to be “needy” (from families with less than $2,000 income)—which takes in approximately 90% of the nation’s school districts.

The bill would permit church schools to receive some of the new books, and parochial students to “share” in the additional education facilities, but would give no direct payments to private institutions. In this way, the Administration hopes to satisfy Catholics while not outraging constitutionalists.

Last week Congress also:

> Confirmed in the Senate President Johnson’s nomination of Washington Lawyer and former Treasury Undersecretary Henry H. Fowler, 56, as Secretary of the Treasury, replacing Douglas Dillon.

> Passed in the Senate a bill to make in terstate traffic in “black-market babies” for adoption a federal crime, punishable by up to five years in prison.

> Approved in the House Armed Services Committee $14.8 billion for new aircraft, missiles and ships, along with a proposal to change the name of the Military Air Transport Service to the Military Airlift Command.

>Received from President Johnson a plan to reorganize the 175-year-old Bureau of Customs, by eliminating its patronage jobs and supplanting its 113 field offices with six regional offices, for an ultimate saving of $9,000,000 a year.

> Eliminated in the House Appropriations Committee a Department of the Interior request for $1.1 million with which to purchase 5,000 acres on the Texas coast to give the 42 surviving whooping cranes more leg room—at $13,000 per leg.