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Show Few Legislators Authors Of Bills They Introduce By BAUKHAGE Piews Analyst and Commentator. WXU Service, 1616 Eye Street, N.W., Washington, D. C. A bright young railroad executive who has his cum laude in law from a idiucu ujuvciaiij1 was sitting with me in Burt's the other day. Burt's is a sort of greenroom for radio ra-dio folk and others who move and speak and have their being In what Is euphemistically referred to as Washington's Radio Ra-dio center. Inspired (or infuriated) by many of the few who say so much to so many, my friend launched forth Into a tirade on the responsibility respon-sibility of the publicist. "You can't play baseball according accord-ing to football rules," he said, shaking shak-ing a menacing fist at me, "and that is what Washington officials are doing. You studied political science 30 years ago. I studied it only 20 years ago. And you know perfectly well that the present generation is not following the rules laid down by our founding fathers. You ought to tell the public about it. "Now maybe the principles of our government are wrong. I am not defending de-fending them. But I am saying that we are deserting them. Rule of the majority, a republican form of government gov-ernment operated by the representatives represent-atives of the people, is a travesty, when legislation is jammed through by minorities. And I mean bureaucrats as well as lobbyists." This happened when the senate was neck-deep in the final debate over the OPA and my friend claimed congress was revolting revolt-ing against what he called the high pressure methods of the administration. adminis-tration. Since the congress was tearing tear-ing the administration measure to shreds at that moment I pointed out that while it was true that congress was sore at Stabilizer Bowles for what they caUed propagandizing, the example was not a very good one. So he proceeded to develop his theme with specific references all too familiar to me and my colleagues col-leagues of the microphone and typewriter. type-writer. Town Seethes With Lobbyists You, too, are familiar with the power of the "pressure boys" as my friend Kenneth Crawford called them in his revealing book by that name. Crawford estimated there were 6,000 active lobbyists in Washington Wash-ington when World War II started. There are many more now. Speaker Speak-er Rayburn said the town was "seething" with them. We all remember the seven-digit sum of money contributed to a campaign cam-paign fund which came out of the members' dues of one great labor union. True, the head of the union later quarrelled with the president whom he had helped elect because the president refused to take his orders. Nevertheless, this example illustrates what "big money" attempts, at-tempts, and sometimes succeeds in doing. We know, too, that when the entire en-tire economy of the country was locked to a dead center by strikes in two essential industries, coal and transportation, and that when the government itself gave orders, those orders were disobeyed. Minority Mi-nority rule was operating then. Minority Mi-nority groups nullified the wishes of the duly-elected representatives of the people. My friend, with all his vehemence, ve-hemence, with his allegiance to management, made no claim that the demands of the railroad men, the coal miners, were unjust. He merely said that in order to obtain what they considered justice, the powerful leaders of the organizations organiza-tions to which they belong were able to play baseball according to football foot-ball rules temporarily at least. The theory that the creation of the laws of the land has been taken from the hands of the elected representatives repre-sentatives of the people was put forth by Crawford in "The Pressure Boys" seven years ago when he said: "It is improbable that a single sin-gle important law enacted in the last 10 years has been written by its congressional sponsor or its nominal author. Administration bills are prepared by New Deal experts ex-perts in executive departments. Legislation independently inaugurated inaugu-rated is almost invariably prepared pre-pared in the office of a lobbyist. Congress maintains a legislative drafting service which writes bills for committees, but it seldom is called upon by individual legislators for assistance in writing any minor pivate bills." LaFollette Bill Would Revamp Thomas Mechlin, writing on this subject in the current Virginia Quarterly Review, touches on the subject of readymade legislation. He tells how a lobby "gets its own staff together and knocks out a bill which the front office would like to see made a law eventually. It then runs the draft over to a large law firm which has one of its members in congress. Although the congressman con-gressman cannot personally represent repre-sent the client, the method used in submitting the proposed legislation through the 'body' of the firm takes care of that. ... If the lobby is well-organized, it will exploit high-powered high-powered publicity from then on out." I am constrained to admit that much in all of these assertions is true. But I would like to mention three hopeful signs on the horizon, minuscule though they may be. Two were measures introduced but not acted upon in this session of congress. con-gress. They will be presented again and have a good chance of passing. One is the LaFollette measure for revamping congress, one provision of which increases the technical assistance as-sistance available to members. The second is a bill introduced by Representative Sabath of Illinois, which provides for an all-inclusive investigation of lobbies. Most congressmen con-gressmen don't like lobbyists and Sabath's bill, as Mechlin admits, was a crystallization of this feeling. The third indication was a resolution resolu-tion introduced during the OPA fight by Senator Taylor (D. of Idaho) authorizing the publication publica-tion of a document on how each senator sen-ator voted on every measure. He said that the people are becoming more aware of their political responsibilities, re-sponsibilities, that politics is no longer solely in the hands of politicians, politi-cians, ward-heelers and lobbyists. Congress is sensitive to the need of a restoration of majority rule, but the only real hope lies within the majority itself. Unfortunately the giant sleeps. South Dakotans See Swearing-in Two recent visitors to Washington, Washing-ton, Mrs. Evelyn Baker and Mrs. James Magee of Custer and Belle Fourche, S. D., can tell their friends back home in the Black Hills region that while they were here they took in three events which might set the tone for all such future events. The ladies, winners of a radio contest con-test to honor women who did their bit during the war years, visited Washington during the week when three top-drawer government officials, offi-cials, all close friends of Harry Truman, Tru-man, were sworn into new jobs. The swearing-in of a cabinet officer offi-cer used to be a rather modest affair. af-fair. The swearinee, his family, a few friends, and his office staff, a few of the press, usually gathered in his new office, and the whole affair af-fair was over in about the time it t---, for bride and groom to say "I do." i.ue, Fred Vinson and Lewis Schwellenbach did travel to Capitol Hill for their inaugurations as u js-ury js-ury and labor secretaries respectively. respec-tively. But those events occasioned no such hoopla as did the ceremonies cere-monies which made Monday Tuesday Tues-day Wednesday Washington news one late week in June. Mrs. Magee and Mrs. Baker and five thousand other spectators, plus the navy band, gathered on the White House lawn to watch Mr. Vinson Vin-son take over his new office as chief justice of the United States; they saw - John Snyder's big moment made bigger when President Truman Tru-man strolled from the White House to the treasury portico to watch his St. Louis crony take the oath as head of the treasury department; and they observed tall, young-looking John Steelman's swearing-in as reconversion director, a ceremony which took place in the rose gardens gar-dens of the White House. Having observed these impressive impres-sive occasions, the Black Hills visitors visi-tors could appreciate the widely-whispered widely-whispered remark of Undersecretary Undersec-retary of Navy John Sullivan. (Sullivan (Sul-livan got his swearing-in done quietly quiet-ly and traditionally on June 18.) As Sullivan congratulated John Steel-man Steel-man after the rose garden ceremony, cere-mony, he asked, "Well, are you the last of the June brides?" |