A LENGTHY SESSION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22612, 2 July 1935, Page 9

A LENGTHY SESSION

THE AMERICAN CONGRESS PRESIDENTIAL WORRIES ' WASHINGTON, June 30. (Received July 1, at 8.30 p.m.) As the session of Congress continues into July, the Administration leaders have prepared a concentrated drive to expedite the remainder of the Roosevelt legislative programme, which has been so seriously delayed. Usually by this date the Congress has adjourned or is preparing to do so, but it now appears that it has one, perhaps two, more months of work ahead of it. The capital’s summers are notoriously uncomfortable, and as the weather gets hotter Congressional nerves are becoming more frayed, and some observers are predicting a record session, both in length and vitriolic debate. To-morrow the House will vote on the Utilities Regulation Bill, with indications that the President has only about an even chance of being victorious in his determined fight to have “ unnecessary ” holding companies abolished by 19(0. Meanwhile the Banking Reform Bill is going through slow legislative machinery, with the possibility of an anti-administration revolt to eliminate the provision vesting Central Bank authority in the Federal reserve, which in turn would largely be put under the control of the President. The committee hearings of the new wealth 1 taxes, which President Roosevelt insists must be passed this session, cannot start for at least a week, and how long the debate upon it will require cannot be even guessed. To add to the Presidential worries, it has now been revealed that the calling off of the coal strike is contingent on the passage of the so-called Guffey Coal Bill, which is designed, to stabilise industry , through co-operative agreements between' workers and operators, but this is being fought vigorously by many leading mine owners.