U.S. Senate ‘Failed In Duty’

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30975, 3 February 1966, Page 13

U.S. Senate ‘Failed In Duty’

[By FRANK OLIVER, N.Z.P.A. special correspondent.] WASHINGTON, February 2. The August Senate is again under criticism. It has failed, many believe, in its great duty.

AU the signs and portents were, when it reassembled, that there would be the great debate about Vietnam that so many people have been demanding over recent months.

In fact there has been no debate, not even the semblance of one. Now and then

a Senator gets up and makes a speech about the war in South-east Asia. Usually, however, he talks to an almost empty chamber; sometimes he may have a dozen listeners.

The speeches are “for the record,” the Congressional Record that is, the daily document that is sometimes compared with Hansard but has little relationship to that British institution in that a Senator who feels he may have said too much or perhaps too little or maybe the wrong thing has the privilege of the sub-editor’s blue pencil or the re-write man’s typewriter.

Anyhow there has been no debate on this issue which disturbs a whole nation looking through the murk for some signposts for the way to travel.. Even the President has been treating the Senate with a degree of disdain. A body of Senators who disagree with the resumption of bombing of North Vietnam wrote the chief executive and, in effect, asked why he was not seeking the advice and consent the Senate is supposed to give the President

He did not reply in direct terms but told them he was acting under the resolution of 1964 passed by the Senate to enable him to take what action he thought was necessary in Vietnam at that time.

He clearly implied that that resolution was just about all the advice and consent he needed and was not asking for any more.

Shock Cushioned

Whether the President wanted a debate in the Senate on Vietnam is anyone’s guess but the popular iguess is that he did not Anyhow he has transferred the debate to the Security Council and many are wondering why. One thing it did accomplish. It cushioned the shock the nation got when it learned that bombing of North Vietnam had been resumed. For it was a shock. It shocked every citizen I met that day with the exception of one hawk, and his concern was whether the resumption would be on a big enough scale. But the Senate says nothing about the bombing in the debate the nation expected and seems entitled to. A few days ago a news agency I poll contacted the Senate I membership and found that

of the 50 willing to express an opinion half of them opposed the resumption of bombing at this point. However, this was in conversation with newspapermen not in formal debate where what a Senator says goes down in the record.