Washington

ON THE WORLD TODAY

AT the Treasury no stock is taken in the talk of a slump in the immediate future. Prognostications to that effect are believed to be as harmful as they are wrong. They cater to those psychological forces which are just as potent in influencing the economy as economic forces. It is believed that they foment the non-cooperative attitude of Russia. Moscow is averse to any bargaining until the “inevitable” depression has hit America. In that event the Russians feel they might pick up advantages as at a fire sale. Indeed, they think that America might then withdraw from Europe.

The Administration is wedded to the theory of the compensatory economy — that is, the release of buying power by tax reductions when a tail spin is indicated — but thinks we are still in a state of inflation. The latest government figures for employment indicate that except for “frictional” unemployment, due to seasonality and necessary adjustments in a system of free enterprise, the country is fully employed.

To be sure, there are bad spots, as in the falling off in construction. But it is felt that with wants and effective demand far from satiated, the ironing out of these bad spots will come without a slump. Only one of these bad spots causes genuine alarm. That is the world’s dollar poverty. Our exports are now running at the astounding rate of 16 billion dollars a year. This cannot be kept up for the simple reason that neither the dollars nor the goods and services are available to pay for exports of such dimensions.

Imports this year will be around 8 billion dollars, and the 8-billion-dollar gap is being met out of dollars borrowed or saved. With the free supply dwindling fast, even in Canada, there is bound to be a crisis sooner or later unless remedial measures are taken, and such a crisis would have an impact throughout the American economy.

Remember 1920? In that year there was a break in the cotton market as a result of the cancellation of foreign orders, and the plight of the cotton growers in the South was passed on to everybody who sold anything to the South.

Lend-lease for peace

Harold E. Stassen has called for a return to a monster lend-lease program. He would earmark a tenth of our national production for abroad for ten years. That would be roughly equivalent to the maintenance of our present export trade, but it would directly serve reconstruction and would be devoted to projects of which we approve.

Eventual repayment would come in a variety of political and economic forms. Of major interest is Mr. Stassen’s emphasis on critical materials of which we are short as a result of wartime sacrifice or exhaustion. He would list these materials so that, when Europe has been restored to production (mainly, according to Mr. Stassen, by revival of coal output in the Ruhr), we could command a quota of these materials.

The Stassen plan created a vast amount of interest in the Capital. It is realized that the foreign exchange crisis must be fended off somehow, but the magnitude of the Stassen prescription staggered most people. There was, of course, the usual criticism of a political nature. Stassen’s rivals for Republican favor called it “premature.” The State Department was silent, though there are indications to show that some big integrated plan is in the making. The hint had already been given by Under Secretary Acheson.

Government by lobby

Lobbyists have become an essential feature of our government. They have been called the “invisible government.” Yet there is nothing invisible about their operations. You will see them in the corridors of the Capitol every day, buttonholing or conferring with the legislators. Their aid is indispensable, and Representative Estes Kefauver goes so far as to say in block letters in his current book, A Twentieth Century Congress, that “Congress cannot function today without lobbyists.”

There are a number of contributing causes: the confusion and planlessness of the business of drafting laws, the complexity of present-day problems, the increasing role of government in our life, and the lack of enough expert aid at the Congressman’s elbow. The legislators are so overburdened with work that lobby-inspired bills get by for want of adequate research and study time.

Newcomers with a passion for good government are always appalled by this sloppiness. They are dismayed at the easy dependence on lobbyists by the old-timers. It is so convenient to let some lawyer or trade association do the donkey work in drafting new legislation. But the spectacle makes the freshmen itch for reform.

It would be invidious to try to pick out the most influential of the lobbies. There is certainly no counterpart for that genius of the Anti-Saloon League, the late Wayne B. Wheeler. But there are scores of the ablest men in industry and labor who devote their talents to influencing legislation. Their activities have been exposed in at least two investigations. One was the Caraway inquiry; the other was the famous public utility probe conducted by the Federal Trade Commission.

Who is a lobbyist?

All that came out of these investigations was a bill requiring lobbyists to register. This was put into the law under the La Follette-Monroney Act of last year. The trouble lay in definition. A lobbyist is a person who devotes a “major portion” of his time to influencing legislation. But how prove that lobbying takes up most of a person’s time? It is so easy to demonstrate the contrary that relatively few lobbyists have complied with the registration requirements of the La Follette-Monroney Act.

The real remedy for the power of the lobby is, of course, to put the Federal legislature in a position to rely on its own resources. Already a start has been made in this direction by the La Follette-Monroney Act. Congress has strengthened the bill-drafting service in the two houses, enlarged the legislative reference service of the Library of Congress, and given the committees more aid through the provision of expert staffs.

Representative Kefauver thinks this is just a beginning in enabling Congress to become independent of lobbyists. The problem as he sees it is to give the legislators more time as well as more help to do their work. Thus he would limit debate in the Senate, do away with the intolerable burden of non-legislative duties, and improve the liaison with the Executive branch of government.

By this last suggestion he does not mean that Congress should rely on experts in Executive employ. There is too much of that already. In a way, reliance upon the Executive is just as bad as reliance upon the outside aid of lobbyists. What is needed is the time that is now wasted in haggling with the Executive in matters that might be adjusted by a better method of liaison.

New laws and old habits

Doubtless these steps will one day be formulated in a new measure. The chief preoccupation of reformers of Congress at present is to realize in performance the partial reorganization effected under the La FolletteMonroney Act of 1946. It is clear from the hubbub in Congress that this reform is not being administered according to plan.

Old habits rise superior to new laws. Backsliding is to be observed in the establishment of special committees and the reappearance of secret hearings in violation of the spirit and purpose of the La FolletteMonroney Act. It is to be seen in the way that the streamlined committee system under the new law is spawning virtually autonomous subcommittees.

Perhaps it was naive to expect order out of accustomed chaos in spite of the legislative mandate. Legislators’ minds require to be brought abreast of the laws they themselves enact. But the chief handicap in making the transition is the absence of policy committees in Congress. This change wrould have equipped Congressional reorganization with steering gear. It was omitted from the lawr because of the bitter opposition of Speaker Rayburn. He said he wasn’t going to allow these “kids” to take away his prerogatives.

Speakers are traditionally jealous of their power, and in times past they have virtually been the czars of the popular branch of Congress. The nature of their dictatorial powers is indicated by the fact that it was Speaker Rayburn himself who deleted all reforms unpleasing to himself before allowing the La FolletteMonroney bill to come to the floor of the House.

The “larks” and the “owls”

The strenuous social life in the Capital leaves little time for thinking. People wrere wTell awTare of this during the war, when parties broke up before eleven. Secretary Marshall, a man of the most rigorous personal habits himself, nurses his time so that he may keep his brain in rested condition for decisions. He is what Dr. Harvey Cushing would have called a “lark.” That is to say, he works better in the morning, and by four o’clock he considers himself unfitted to make decisions.

The other branch of the human family Dr. Cushing called the “owls,” and you will see them still at it any time of night in the State Department. While they are at work, Secretary Marshall is doing his thinking at home, or relaxing with friends. He is seldom seen at parties and functions.

Kennan and State Department planning

Secretary Marshall has set up a separate planning division in the State Department. This branch will have no administrative work to do. It is headed by 43-year-old George F. Kennan, by common consent our most brilliant student of Russia. Kennan learned his Russian in the thirties while a language student in Berlin. He was posted to Moscow in 1934. Since then he has served two additional terms in the Soviet capital, the last being from 1944 to 1945, when he came home to lecture at the War College.

His dispatches from Moscow are said to have vied with General Marshall’s dispatches from China for insight and exposition. They showed not only a historical background, but also an understanding born of deep reflection on Russian psychology. Never didactic, he eschews the Communist apprbach to things Russian, but thinks in terms of Russian mystique and Russian expansionism. He knows there is such a thing as public opinion in Russia.

It is this opinion that we are seeking to reach through the Voice of America broadcasts. Kennan is enthusiastic for them. In his judgment, the men in the Kremlin fear more than anything else the comparison that their people might make with life abroad. His knowledge of Russia is supplemented by extensive experience in Eastern Europe, where he has served in Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Austria, and Czechoslovakia.

When Kennan came home two years ago, he was allowed to go on a lecture tour, so as to contribute his lore to public understanding. Wherever he went he wrote back his impressions to the State Department. And it is said his letters about the domestic scene were a match for his dispatches from Moscow.

Under Kennan there will be about a dozen foreign service officials who will think out our diplomatic strategy, though their immediate assignment is to draft some kind of continental plan for the resuscitation of Western Europe.

They will not live in any ivory tower. It is contemplated that they will gather testimony like any Congressional committee from specialists in private life. Experts will be called in as required. An innovation will be the man-bites-dog practice of asking the views of newspapermen with special knowledge. This is only one of many reforms of State Department practice going on under Secretary Marshall.

Our underpaid diplomats

Marshall’s chief headache is the constant loss of subordinates going back into the foreign service field or retiring into private life. There were about fifteen men in the Department when he came who could be called policy-makers. Eight of them either have left or are leaving.

Nothing can be done about the foreign service officials; after four years in the Department they are obliged by law to return to the field. But something can be done about officials not in the foreign service. That something is either to raise their salaries or to give them adequate allowances. Allowances are paid in varying amounts to foreign service officials and heads of missions abroad. But in Washington there is no such budget, and entertaining must be done — unless at the official Blair House — out of the official’s own pocket.

If salaries were adequate, this wouldn’t matter. But they are not. The Under Secretaries are paid $12,000 a year; Assistant Secretaries, $10,000. It was said, when the able Dean Acheson resigned as Under Secretary, that he could no longer afford to draw on capital in order to hold down his job. The same is true of at least two of the Assistant Secretaries. Secretary Marshall is thinking of asking Congress for a special fund similar to the President’s fund with which to eke out his staff’s remuneration.

THE MOOD OF THE CAPITAL

The mood of the Capital is beset by the clouds on the horizon made up of the Russo-Western clash. But it still lacks perspective. It is all very well to justify tax reduction on the grounds that the recession calls for relief in all income brackets. Some believe this argument. Others think with the Administration that the picture is overdrawn, and simply feel called upon to redeem their promises to the electorate. But it is another thing to expect them to reconcile tax reduction with the bill for reconstruction aid that is in the offing.

In default of fundamental thought about, foreign affairs — that is, how to stop Communist erosion of impoverished countries in Western Europe — the Republicans are getting aroused over Communist activities at home. It seems clear that there will be a special session this fall for consideration of comprehensive reconstruction as the best anti-totalitarian weapon.