Congress Gives Foreign Aid Bill Rough Passage

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27986, 5 June 1956, Page 6

Congress Gives Foreign Aid Bill Rough Passage

I Specially written for the NZ.PA. by

FRANK OLIVERI

WASHINGTON, June 3. Foreign aid is having the rough Congressional passage everyone predicted for it. It could be rougher, for the Administration tactics in support of its programme are, to say the least, peculiar. The basic trouble is that the programme does not appear to legislators or the public to be *as essential to American security as it was a decade ago. Urgency and drama have disappeared from the scene with the erosion of time and (let’s face it) the melting smiles from v the Kremlin. Add to this the fact that European countries are reviewing their military programmes and it becomes easy to see why Congressmen ask themselves, why not wait and see what this world-wide military revaluation produces. ; A long series of witnesses has been produced to back up the Administration case for continued substantial, aid and for authority to plan such aid over a fairly long period. But the feeling is growing among Americans who, like other people, .prefer to be optimistic rather than pessimistic, that our side is winning fairly comfortably. iv/r^ ur^ recent Florida orimary. Mr Adlai Stevenson suggested that the Soviet policy in its new guise is more of a threat than ever, and a tabulation of Florda’s 40 daily newspapers shows that 36 scoffed at him. Therefore, the President should not have been surprised to return to Wash-

ington to find that the House of Representatives had cut just over 1,000.000,000 dollars from his 5.000.000 000-dollar programme, for in the existing state of public opinion and feeling, legislators would be riskr ing the political-guillotine at the hands of the electorate to pass untouched the appropriation asked for by tbe Administration. The amount appropriated seems less important to the general public than that a substantial slash of 1,000,000,006 has been made. Now' General Alfred Gruenther has made an eloquent, persuasive argument before the Senate Committee in favour of the restoration of the cut made by the House, arguing that the Soviet smiles and happy talk do not justify cuts in Western military capabilities. Senators said that they found him persuasive, but whether they will vote the entire appropriation is doubtful, and even if they did, it is very doubtful whether the House would accept it. Soviet economic penetration in various parts of the world is making only a nominal impression on the legislature. This is clearly indicated by the fact that a secret poll of House Republicans bv their leaders is reported to have found half the Republicans in the Lower House stronglv opnosed to the President’s plan for the United States to join the international organisation to promote world trade and onlv 25 per cent, were in favour of the plan.