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Show Congressman Burton Tallies Work Accomplished by 90th Congress By Rep. Laurence J. Burton The first session of the 90th Congress is now history. It is too early for any objective analysis of its successes and failures, not -withstanding the fact that every pundit in the country has tried his hand at it. Some say the Congress should be faulted because it failed to support the President in all of his legislative goals while others are critical be-; be-; cause the Congress went along ! . with the President as much ' as it did. Like the old saying goes, it depends on whose ox is getting gored. One thing is certain: the record of this Congress will be the subject of long, partisan and heated discussion during the important impor-tant election campaign that Is about to begin. And like most such discussions, there will be a lot of blarney mixed in with the truth. This is what the Congress did or did not do in 1967, together to-gether with my personal observations ob-servations on several of the decisions made: (Depending on your own political orientation, orienta-tion, you'll have to decide for yourself how much blarney by comments contain!) THE TAX INCREASE. The House Ways and Means Committee, Com-mittee, chaired by Wilbur Mills (D-Arkansas), came away from hearings unconvinced uncon-vinced that a tax hike is needed. Instead Mr. Mills and a majority of his colleagues collea-gues told the President that the best way to get the federal budget into balance is to reduce re-duce spending. This is a point of view that I share. The matter still is not resolved, however, and further consideration consider-ation will be given to the tax increase proposal when the Congress reconvenes in January. Jan-uary. If a tax increase is needed, as the President and his advisers ad-visers insist, it seems only fair to me that those in Congress Con-gress who voted down the line for the new spending measures that are the cause of the big budget deficit now vote to I support higher taxes to take care of it. But, interestingly enough, many of the people who supported the costly new programs are the same ones who now refuse to vote for the tax increase. In other words, they want the programs, pro-grams, but they haven't the courage to insist that the voters pay for them. It seems to me there is a real lesson in there somewhere. For my part, I have generally been " ' allied with the "economy bloc" that has voted to keep the budget within reasonable balance. I feel no obligation to support the tax increase, and do not intend to do so. FOREIGN AID. A new foreign for-eign aid bill was passed, but with the lowest appropriation ever $2.3 billion. Hooray! I'm only sorry that it wasn't cut more. The whole program, in my opinion, needs to be reevaluated and much of it scrapped. Too much of our foreign aid money has simply sim-ply been thrown away. FIREARM CONTROL. No decisive action taken yet, although al-though bills for this purpose have been approved by subcommittees sub-committees of both the House and Senate. Tremendous pressure pres-sure is being applied to get approval of legislation of this type. I am opposed to these bills because I do not believe they will keep firearms out of the hands of criminals. On the contrary, they will only render the victims defenseless, and create vexatious hardships hard-ships for law-abiding sportsmen. sports-men. CRIME CONTROL. A weak, but better than nothing, crime control bill was passed by the House. It is still pending on the Senate side. SCHOOL AID EXTENSION. An appropriation of $9.2 billion bil-lion was authorized for aid to elementary and secondary education. I supported the measure. In my view, dollars that are wisely invested in education are among the best that we spend. SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS. BENE-FITS. A 13 hike in Social Security benefits was enacted. This means higher payroll taxes. Because of inflation, an increase was necessary. POVERTY PROGRAM. The Congress voted $1,773 billion for extension of the War on Poverty. This is considerably less than the Administration requested. I voted to cut the figure back to $1.6, the same as last year's appropriation. CONGRESSIONAL ETHICS. The House refused to seat Adam Clayton Powell; the Senate censured Thomas Dodd. Committees are at work on a much-needed code of ethics. ITEMS AT RANDOM. The following additional pieces of legislation were enacted: an investment credit bill; a measure to end the nationwide nation-wide rail strike; extension of the draft; "clean meat" and "clean air" bills; a federal and military pay raise; and a postal rate increase. The Senate ratified the Soviet Con-sular Con-sular Treaty and the Outer .Space Treaty. I |