Mind Of Congress Only On Vietnam
(From
FRANK OLIVER. N.Z.P.A.
Special Correspondent ]
WASHINGTON, March 14.
Congress is being accused of being in slow motion. It has been in session for two months and its record is not impressive. It isn’t that the legislators are lazy. It is simply that they can not get their minds off the Vietnam war. They find it difficult to worry about the war and legislate at the same time. In the two months since they reassembled Congressmen have received an enor-
mous quantity of proposed legislation from the White House, and it has been looked at and then tossed aside for the time being. The “New York Times” said: “Congress is apathetic towards virtually all legislation not bearing directly on the war in Vietnam and increasingly resentful over Presidential demands for new action in the domestic field.”
Congress seems to many to be a fair reflex of the nation, worried sick about a mounting land war in a faraway land with little rocm left in its mind to worry about things at home.
People believe absolutely that the President is speaking the truth when he says he has no intention of ever engaging in a land war with China. What they worry about is whether it will come in spite of his intentions to
the contrary, which is why they are listening with keen interest to what is being said about China before the Senate foreign relations committee. The prediction was that this so-called China debate would have little appeal for the public but the newspapers are carrying lengthy coverage, even newspapers in the far corners of the country generally referred to slightingly as “the sticks.” In short, the mood of the country is a very serious one.
Recently the country went through one of the most sordid murder trials in recent years. A few years back it would have filled columns and columns throughout the seven weeks it lasted But its newspaper coverage was very muted. News agency officials expressed the belief that the fact of the limited coverage was because “more significant
things go on in the world to-1 day” and “Candy” (one of the two defendants) “just couldn’t compete with the Vietnam war.” That war overshadows everything else and it hangs like a shadow over Congress, which cannot get its mind to focus on such things as air and water pollution, the need for a transportation department and the reform of the nation’s electoral college in Presidential elections. These and a dozen other important things await Congressional attention but indications are that attention will not be focussed until the war clouds lighten at least a little. One newspaper correspondent says that the magical phrase of last year, “The President wants it,” is falling on deaf Congressional ears this year and Mr Johnson may have to settle for much less than he wants unless the war
takes a turn for the better. Veteran observers of Congress see signs of Congressional revolt and of a marked show of independence. This showed recently when Congress passed, against all White House pressure, a very expenive G.I. Bill of Rights which may, in the words of one commentator, “bust the President’s budget wide open.”
The President wanted something for the veterans but not something as costly as the bill that went through Congress. The bill as passed is widely regarded as a Congressional way of showing its sympathy for the men fighting and dying in the Vietnam jungles in a war the aims of which are still far from clear to many. The bill was not hampered either by some statistician’s finding that it is costing this country more than 300,000 dollars to kill each member of the Viet Cong.
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Bibliographic details
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Press, Volume CV, Issue 31009, 15 March 1966, Page 17
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623Mind Of Congress Only On Vietnam Press, Volume CV, Issue 31009, 15 March 1966, Page 17
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