SESSION NOT OVER

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 283, 27 August 1935, Page 9

SESSION NOT OVER

Congress Disagreement REVIEW OF LEGISLATION Washington, August 25. After one of the strangest Parliamentary tangles iu its history, Congress failed to reach the expected adjournment on Saturday night. The wrangle centred around the third Appropriation Bill and a Senate amendment calling for mandatory loans of 12 cents a pound on cotton and 11 cents a pound on wheat. Agricultural Administration Act officials fought vigorously to prevent Congressional jostling with the newly-announced plan of a loan of 9 cents a pound for the 1935 cotton crop, with a subsidy guaranteeing growers a 12 cent return. The House must vote on the Senate amendment in the coming week.

Previously Congress had sent a uumber of measures to the White House for the President’s signature, including the Neutrality Bill, the 250,000,q00-dol-lar Tax Bill, the Utilities Bill, and the measure banning gold clause damages suits after January 1. The President, in a surprise message to the Congressional leaders, asked for legislation next session to preserve such social and economic advantages as have been gained in the National Recovery Act and other emergency legislation.

The neutrality measure places a six months’ mandatory embargo on arms shipments to belligerents, makes unlawful the carrying by American ships of arms and implements of war to any port of a belligerent or to a neutral port for transhipment to a warring nation, and gives the President discretion to restrict the use of American waters by belligerent submarines, and to restrict travel by American citizens in war zones and on the ships of belligerents. A compromise was reached on the major issues of the Utilities Bill, but the President and the power interests contended that it achieved a big measure of abolition of holding companies. The President demanded that it should provide a far-reaching system of Governmental regulation of both holding and operating companies in the power industry, with securities, and that power commissions be empowered to supervise the flotation of securities, sales of power, and financing and operating methods in general where strictly inter-State activities are not concerned. Most important of all, he calls for the abolition of holding companies in general, with a compromise proviso that two holding companies may be erected upon one system of adjacent operating companies. The abolition section will become effective on January 1, 1938. The President withdrew his objection to the short period of grace during which gold clause suits could be brought, believing that the price level would be so stable that no one could prove damages against the Government.

The Tax Bill increases the surtaxes on bigger individual incomes, boosts the taxes on estates, raises the gift levies, and stiffens the corporation taxes. The Bill included no inheritance taxes.