Congress' Week

Congress was breathing heavily last week, but had still not come to grips with any of the session's big problems.

A Senate Banking and Currency subcommittee, headed by Washington's Harry P. Cain, produced the pale shadow of a "rent-control" bill which would decontrol all rooming houses, and all cities with more than 1% vacancies, and authorize landlords and tenants to enter into leases at any figure agreeable to both. The full committee took one look and hustled the monstrosity out of sight until Feb. 16.

The most fun the Republicans had all week was listening to caterwauling Democrats, squirming under the President's civil-rights program with its proposed elimination of Jim Crowism on railroads and buses. Screams of rage and threats of revolt poured forth from Southern Democrats. Roared Mississippi's Senator James Eastland: "This proves that organized mongrel minorities control the Government." From the House floor, Georgia's Gene Cox chanted: "Sounds like the program of the Communist Party."

But then the Republicans quit laughing and grasped a sticky problem of their own--the congressional ceiling on the budget. Early in the week, the House demonstrated the difficulty of cutting budgets in election years. It whooped through two bills increasing veterans' allowances for education and on-the-job training, which added an estimated $500 million to the budget. The G.O.P. majority of both houses then plunked for a cut of $2.5 billion in Harry Truman's $39.7 billion budget.

From the White House, Harry Truman remarked with a pious twinkle that the Republicans had promised to cut last year's budget (by $4.5 to $6 billion), had ended up authorizing expenditures totaling $200 million more than he had asked.

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