REACTIONS TO SPEECH

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28435, 15 November 1957, Page 15

REACTIONS TO SPEECH

Fight Likely In Congress

(Rec. 11 p.m.) WASHINGTON, November 13.

Immediate reaction from some Congressmen to President Eisenhower’s warning that a “very considerable” increase in Federal expenditure would be required to meet the Russian challenge served to warn the President that he might meet considerable opposition in Congress. Senator Joseph O’Mahoney (Democrat. Wyoming) said he did not agree with Mr Eisenhower when he said that the foreign aid programme could not be touched.

Mr John Heselton, a Republican member of the House of Representatives, said Mr Eisenhowers “calm and constructive counsel” Should inspire prompt response based upon wisdom, courage, and devotion. The top Republican on a House Commerce Sub-Com-mittee on health and science, Mr Heselton. said he was drafting legislation aimed at carrying out the President’s recommendations on science and education.

He said. the President's proposals were “in sharp contrast to the welter of conflicting, panic-, stricken panaceas, drastic reformsand crash programmes urged in some quarters.” The Senate Democratic leader. Senator Lyndon Johnson (Texas* eaid that he would withhold comment until he had an opportunit}’ to review the text of the speech Senator Wallace Bennett (Republican. Utah), said he thought the President’s address “was a calm, wise speech to stem any feeling we should immediately go off in all directions at once.

“It was realistic in that it Showed we can’t create scientists overnight as though by sticking great sums of money into a machine,” he added.

Senator John McClellan (Democrat. Arkansas), said that if the President’s two “chins up” addresses were intended to be reassuring “there is still something lacking.” But Mr Sam Rayburn. Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, said he thought the President’s address “was a very good statement of our needs and what we will have to do.”

Mr Rayburn said: “I think we had better get to the work at hand as quickly as possible.”