HITCH IN CONGRESS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 200, 27 August 1935, Page 7

HITCH IN CONGRESS

FINAL MEASURES ADJOURNMENT POSTPONED LAST-HOUR TANGLE. [By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) WASHINGTON, Tug. 25. After one of the strangest Parliamentary tangles in 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 JI- cent a pound on wheat. Agricultural Administration Act officials fought vigorously to prevent Congressional jostling with the newly-au-nounced plan, of a Joan 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 coining week. Previously Cong Tess had sent a number of measures to the White House for the President’s signature, including the Neutrality Bill, the 250,000,000dollar Tax Bill, the Utilities Bill, and the measure banning gold clause damage suits after January J. 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. Utilities Bill Compromise. A compromise framed 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 Government regulation of both holding and operating companies in the power industry, with securities, and that power coraniissicus be empowered to supervise the flotation of securities, sales of power, and financing and operating methods in general where strictly interstate activities are not concerned. Most important of all, he calls fpr 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 ou bigger individual incomes, boosts the taxes on estates, raises the gift levies, and stiffens the corporation taxes. The Bill included no inheritance taxes. At midnight both Houses went into recess, and they will probably reconvene on Monday for a few hours before the adjournment. BANKING AND CREDIT CENTRALISATION BILL. SIGNED BY PRESIDENT. • WASHINGTON, Aug. 24. Powerful centralised control over banking and credit and vesting unprecedented authority over the ebb and flow of credit in the reconstituted Federad Reserve Board and Open Market Committee, was made law when President Roosevelt signed the Banking Act, 193-5. Under the Act banks may lend ou collateral security not now regarded as eligible, but which they consider acceptable security. Real estate loans have been, liberalised. The existing law guaranteeing bank deposits up to 5000 dollars is made permanent. APPEAL TO YOUTH SUPPORT OF NEW ORDER DEFENCE OF BRAIN TRUST WASHINGTON, Aug. 24. President Roosevelt, in a radio speech, summoned the youth of the nation to “unite and challenge the old order ou behalf of the new.” He also defended the “Brain Trust,” declaring: “The Government to-day requires higher standards from those who would serve it. Let me emphasise that, serious as have been the errors of unrestrained individual enterprise, the freedom and opportunity that have characterised American development in the past can bo maintained if wo recognise the fact that the individual system of our day vails for the collaboration of all of us to provide at least security for all of us.” Political observers interpreted the address as a direct reply to Mr Herbert Hoover's recent criticism, that the New Deal was suppressing- individual endeavour.