A Critical Congress

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30948, 3 January 1966, Page 9

A Critical Congress

[By FRANK OLIVER, N.Z.P.A. special correspondent.] WASHINGTON, Jan. 2. In a few days Congress will reassemble for the second half of this term and although its membership has not changed it will be a very different gathering from the one the President faced when he made his State of the Union speech a year ago.

A year ago the dominating issue was social welfare and social legislation. Now the dominating issue is war. This change has come about in the last few weeks, and it is predicted on all sides that the legislative bodies are intent in taking a hard look at policies in Vietnam. One newspaper comments that a year ago the Congress was amazingly docile, but now the lawmakers are much more critical of the President and his policies. In any event this is the year when Congressmen think more of themselves than of the Administration. The entire House is up for election in November, 1966, and they will be fighting not for or against a Johnson programme but to win election for themselves. It is being said in the press that, regardless of party, members of the House and one-third of the Senate membership will try to score what points they can off the Presi-

dent’s handling of the Vietnam war, its escalation, its rising casualty lists, its mushrooming cost. Vietnam will definitely be the issue in 1966. It is costing a lot, the war seems to be getting nowhere. There is irritation and impatience. As far as the war is concerned the President has lost some ground with his own party. There were always critics among the Democrats about the war. Their number is increasing. On the other side he has lost some support among Republicans. At one point they were pretty solidly behind him. Now the Opposition is critical. Some think the cost in lives is very high for what is being accomplished. Others think much more could be done if only the President would cut his “wild spending” on welfare programmes. One noted commentator says this capital has become a “single issue” city and the issue is Vietnam. The same writer says it may well be that when Congress meets again it may have a nearly single issue session. Wherever neople meet in Washington Vietnam is the principal topic and sometimes the only one. There will be a lot of debate over Vietnam in the Congress, and the President will be at a disadvantage this year. Fulbright’s Views Senator Robert Kennedy is now voicing reservations about Vietnam but more importantly the powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator

William Fulbright, is at odds with the President and Fulbright has a great deal of influence in the Senate. There is, says the press, a sort of cold war now between the President and the Senator. There is no doubt the President has been hurt by what the Senator has said both about the Dominican Republic and Vietnam. The Senator was absent from the official dinners given for Ayub Khan, Harold Wilson and Ludwig Erhard, absent simply because he was not invited.

The press is assuming that the Senator has been snubbed deliberately and at a time when, says one writer, the Senator’s co-operation in the coming debate on Vietnam may well be indispensable.

The President is not exactly inviting Congressional debate about Vietnam but that will not alter the fact that a lot of members in both Houses have a lot of say about Vietnam and will undoubtedly say it Congressional mail is reportedly heavy on the subject of Vietnam. No-one is saying how it is running in percentages hut it is admitted that the bulk of letters from voters express great concern about Vietnam and those words are not used when public reaction is favourable to whatever is being discussed. This is an added pressure on Congressmen and Senators to speak out. They are human and this is an election year. Korea Recalled

Democrats, says one paper, are nervously recalling that after only five months of the Korean war three safe and certain Senate Democratic seats went to Republicans and they believe it was the “mother’s vote” that sent those Democrats down to defeat —the mothers of those still fighting and of the dead and wounded. Among “hawks” there is rising criticism that money going into expensive welfare programmes should go into prosecuting the war. Senator Everett Dirksen has recently been voicing such sentiments. There is criticism that the President may be thinking of cutting welfare programmes to provide money to pay for the war and this leads to the argument that Mr Johnson is planning to make the poor pay for the war. It is reported that some members of Congress who voted enthusiastically for the welfare legislation of 1965 are now complaining about the cost of the resulting programmes.

“Work Cut Out” Comments one writer. “Johnson, the old master of legislative politics, has his work cut out.” Undoubtedly he has and people are waiting for the next public polls on the Vietnam affair. People wonder whether the President still has his consensus and express doubt that he has. Others wonder whether he now has even a majority when it comes to public support for the Vietnam war. Things have changed and changed considerably since Congress went on vacation in the autumn.