Wednesday, October 16, 1968
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
17
Congressional achievements
Civil rights bill leads accomplishments
WASHINGTON (UPI)—House Democratic leader Carl Albert called it the second greatest Congress in history. Senate Democratic leader Mike Mansfield said if it wasn't great it certainly was good. Even Republicans conceded it could have been worse.
Less partisan observers said that good or bad, the 90th Congress in its two years accomplished a lot more than anybody thought at the start.
In addition to a civil rights and open housing bill, the Congress surprised observers by enacting controls on the sales of guns; raising taxes in an election year; launching a massive new housing program, and carrying on most of the health, education, social welfare and antipoverty programs laid down under the banners of the New Frontier and the Great Society.
Consumer Protection
Consumer Protection It passed a series of consumer health and protection bills ranging from truth-in-lending to clean meat and poultry.
Its actions in the field of conservation included creation of a Redwoods National Park.
In the end, it had one of its worst squabbles over when and how to adjourn. It was settled soon after noon Monday.
Bogged Down
There was a good deal the 90th Congress failed to do. And it frequently got bogged down by politics and its own internal problems, including repeated defections from the ranks of the Democratic majority.
In a crowning defeat for President Johnson, Senate Republicans and Southern Democrats blocked action on the nomination of his old friend, Abe Fortas, to be chief justice. A similar grouping in the House cut off funding for his wife's pet highway beautification program.
Foreign Aid Cut
Signaling somewhat of an isolationist turn in foreign affairs, Congress cut Johnson's $2.9 billion foreign aid request nearly in
half, an alltime low; ignored his proposal for expanding trade with Communist countries, and left to the Senate of the next Congress a decision on ratifying a treaty to halt the spread of nuclear weapons.
But Johnson left open the possibility he might call the 90th Senate back into session after the elections to resume work on the nuclear nonproliferation treaty to which he attaches high priority.
Backs War
On the other side, it gave solid backing to the Vietnam War despite some verbal protests, extended the draft, approved a consular treaty with the Soviet Union, and abandoned a series of protectionist bills which the administration opposed.
The 90th with its enlarged GOP minority, got off to something of an agonizing start when the House spent two months kicking out Rep. Adam Clayton Powell on charges of abusing his committee chairmanship, and the Senate spent three more months censuring Sen. Thomas J. Dodd on charges of mishandling campaign contributions.
Despite a lot of talk about improving Congress' image and performance, the net result was creation of a House Ethics Committee (the Senate already had one) that did hardly anything, and approval of House and Senate codes of ethics that simply required members to list their financial resources in sealed envelopes to be opened in case they ever were investigated.
Over GOP protests that continued right up to the end, House Democratic leaders kept locked up in the Rules Committee a Senate-passed bill to modernize congressional procedures.
Delay Modernization
The 90th did raise federal pay, increase social security benefits, hike to 6 cents the cost of mailing a letter, and institute a 10 per cent income tax surcharge due to lapse next June.
Get Off the Treck.
We're on the way to
The Red Dog. It's
$ Nite Friday.
Law and Order
For law and order, it provided new aid to improve local police forces, okayed court-approved wiretapping in criminal investigations, made it a federal crime to burn the flag or to travel around
inciting riots, forbade college loans to students who riot on campus, and established federal penalties for the first time for individual possession of LSD.
Although the Poor People's March on Washington was loudly criticized, Congress kept the war on poverty running, expanded food stamp and school lunch
programs, stiffened penalties for racial intimidation, and barred discriminatory selection of federal juries.
Sweetwater County, in western Wyoming, gets its name from the nickname of "sweetwater" prospectors called gold-bearing streams.
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THIS WEEK
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