Busy Pre-Election Session Of Congress

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27874, 24 January 1956, Page 18

Busy Pre-Election Session Of Congress

FRANK OLIVER]

by

[Specially written for the N.ZJP.A.

WASHINGTON, January 22.

Washington is always a bubbling cauldron in January, and it seems to bubble even more fiercely this year because of the clouds of steam. Everyone is letting off steam. The cauldron bubbles because the Administration lays down its legislative programme and offers its Budget, that suggestion of income and expenditure which Congress always knocks to pieces and puts together again in its own way. Then the Opposition attacks the proposals of the Administration and the air is full of charges and counter charges. Everyone in January has something to say and says it whether he is listened to or not. Social life in January is hectic, for in Washington there are never more than two subjects discussed at lunch, cocktail and dinner parties—thg weather and politics. People who are bored by politics simply hate Washington. People who love them think it is the most stimulating and fascinating place in the world. This January seems more fascinating and stimulating than ever, for as well as the usual contents of the political cauldron, there are additional unusual flavourings and more steam escaping. As one commentator said, the Secretary of State (Mr Dulles) built himself a booby trap, carefully measured it for size, and jumped right in it. There are rifts on policy within both parties in Congress and the bipartisan front in foreign policy begins to show a few cracks. To any newcomer, Washington must seem a strange place, a mixture of the Tower of Babel, a madhouse, a fun fair and a revivalist meeting.

In some areas things are beginning -to clarify and one such area is foreign aid, which the President and the Secretary of State consider a vital weapon in the cold war, but which some Cabinet members do not like and which important people in Congress will fight bitterly.

Mr Dulles still expresses confidence that long-range aid in some form will go through. But he exhibits more optimism than most, and there are strong rumours that the Administration is already looking for a route of retreat from the stand expressed in the State of the Union message. After all. admittedly the cold war is important, but so is re-election next November, and the greatest measure of party unity is important for the Republicans.

No Congress, of course, will appropriate money for use beyond its own life of two years, but what Mr Dulles hopes for is something similar to the Marshall Plan legislation—the adoption of the principle of continuing aid, leaving successive Congresses to appropriate the money annually. “Out of the Window” However, it must be stated that even this project looks to be doomed to defeat and the idea of getting Congress to name a specific sum for expenditure on foreign aid over a period of 10 years is already completely out of the window, according to Washington’s political experts. Competition between the parties to give the taxpayer a little relief before he votes in November will be terrific. The Administration wants no such cuts, and it points to the national debt, the limits of which Congress always reluctantly raises. A reduction of the debt is earnestly sought by the Administration, but it will have to be shouted very loudly if it is to penetrate the legislators’ deaf ear turned in that direction. Mr Everyman can sit back in the reasonably comfortable assurance that from one party or both he will get that most prized of all gifts in all countries, a drop in the income tax, and Mr Everyman is doing just that — sitting back and waiting for the gift to fall into his lap.