THE CONGRESS: The Big Target

The clangor of political strife resounded in Washington last week—not Democrats attacking Republicans, or vice versa, but Democrats flailing at Democrats. With time running out on the first session of the 86th Congress, Democrats exploded with pent-up frustration at their inability to make a partisan record and get hold of an issue. Their No. 1 target: their own shrewd, well-tailored Senate majority leader, Lyndon Baines Johnson.

In a flurry of manifestoes and speeches, the party’s liberals roared out their annoyance at Compromiser Johnson’s policy of trimming Democratic plans to fit political facts of life—such as Dwight Eisenhower’s popularity, his veto weapon, and the appeal of his balanced-budget goal to the U.S.’s current conservative temper. Pennsylvania Democrat Joseph S. Clark, who sounded a call for a lot of bold new spending programs after the Democratic victory last November, stood up in the Senate and denounced the Johnson approach as an effort to “block that veto” by turning out “legislation which renounces or blurs or fuzzes or muddies the Democratic Party platform, policies and program. ‘Block that veto’ is a euphemism for ‘Give the President what he wants,’ whether or not we think it is good for the country.”

Why a Change? The people, said Clark, had given the Democrats “a mandate to write a Democratic program … I suggest it is our responsibility to write that kind of program and send it to the President today, next week, and every week until this Congress adjourns, and to come back and do it all over again at the second session.” To capture the White House in 1960, Clark said, the party would need to write a Democratic record. “If the people cannot detect any difference between the parties, why should they wish to make a change?”

Illinois’ Paul H. Douglas, another outspoken advocate of big-spending welfare programs, rose to “agree with the Senator from Pennsylvania.” Also chiming in: Wisconsin’s William Proxmire, Oregon’s Wayne Morse and Minnesota’s Hubert H. Humphrey, who promised the farm belt an entirely “new” Democratic farm program, which is now discreetly buried in Humphrey’s desk.

Democrats outside of Congress joined in the attack. Left-leaning Americans for Democratic Action charged that the Democratic leadership in Congress “surrendered before a shot was fired.” The A.D.A.-ish National Committee for An Effective Congress accused Johnson and House Speaker Sam Rayburn of “liberal talking, conservative legislating.” And in the latest Democratic Digest, National Chairman Paul Butler took the inside cover to urge the congressional Democrats not to let the veto threat scare them into “watering down our vital programs.”

Double Meaning. The Democratic attacks stung a man already smarting from the “Won’t-Do Congress” label pinned on him in early June by Republican National Chairman (and Senator from Kentucky) Thruston B. Morton. That slogan, which owes both its sharp sting and its promise of longevity to its neat double meaning—a Congress that won’t do anything and one that just won’t do—caught on across the U.S. and made Lyndon Johnson seethe. Keeping up his attack at every opportunity, Morton jeered last week that “the Democrats are retreating from many of the big spending bills which they put forward only a few months ago as indispensable to the welfare and future growth of the nation.”

Stung from both sides, Johnson whirred into action, steered through the Senate i) a wheat bill that President Eisenhower vetoed, 2) a housing bill that he is expected to veto, 3) a $365 million increase in Health, Education and Welfare funds, and 4) three Democratic amendments to a tax bill..On the surface, it seemed that Johnson, finding the liberal attack too rough, was hastily retreating from his decision that the Democrats could best build a fitting record with measures that approximate Eisenhower policy (TIME, June 29). Actually, he was only bobbing and weaving—and not managing to satisfy anybody. Items:

Wheat. After the House voted down a Senate-House compromise wheat bill, Johnson decided to go along with the

House version, setting the wheat-support price at 90% of parity, with a 25% cut in acreage allotments. Johnson was sure the President would veto the measure, but in that event wheat supports would just stay at the present level: 75% of parity, with no cut in acreage allotments. Before heading for Canada to take part in St. Lawrence Seaway dedication ceremonies with Elizabeth II (see THE HEMISPHERE). Dwight Eisenhower fulfilled predictions by vetoing the wheat bill. Said Ike, in one of his most cutting veto messages: “This bill prescribes for a sick patient another dose of what caused his illness. The proposed return to the discredited high, rigid price supports would hasten the complete collapse of the entire wheat program.” At the same time, the President vetoed as ‘ a long step backward” a bill to guarantee high-price supports for tobacco for at last three years.

Housing. The Democratic housing bill sent to the President calls for spending $1.4 billion over the next two years as against his request for $1.8 billion spread out over the next six years. Since the yearly spending rate is much higher than he wants, the President’s aides expect him to veto the bill. But if Ike does not like the bill, neither do liberal Democrats and for an entirely different set of reasons. Pennsylvania’s Joe Clark, for one, attacked it as too stingy.

Welfare. Spotting a chance to placate liberals a bit and slip a hard-to-veto item past the President, Johnson asked for and got a $365 million increase—half of it for medical research—in the Health, Education and Welfare appropriation. But the HEW boost, as Johnson knew, would doubtless be trimmed down in the House. So intent are congressional leaders on avoiding the “spenders”‘ label that in all of the other nine appropriation bills passed so far by both houses the President’s requests were consistently slimmed down, not fattened up.

Taxes. With corporation and excise taxes scheduled to shrink on July 1 unless Congress passed the one-year extension the President requested. Johnson held the Senate in session for 15 strenuous hours at midweek to get the bill through. What took up the time was a liberal Democratic drive to tack on amendments. The three that passed were the three that Johnson voted for: 1) repeal of the five-year-old rule permitting taxpayers to deduct 4% of their dividend income from their income tax; 2) abolition of the 10% travel tax; 3) increases in federal relief payments. Johnson was sure that the amendments would die in the House-Senate conference on the bill. They did.

By week’s end, Johnson’s flurry of legislation seemed to have left things pretty much as they were before. No serious damage had been done to the President’s prospects for a balanced budget. The Senate’s Democratic liberals were still unhappy. And Lyndon Johnson, the prideful leader with followers in revolt, the skilled compromiser with compromises under attack from two sides, was still a big, high-visibility target.