Word: perilously
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...World's Shmoo." Taft and Malone were in a lonely minority. The only real debate came over an amendment which would retain the "peril-point" procedure added to the bill last year by the Republican 80th Congress. Under this provision, the Tariff Commission determines how far a tariff can be reduced without "threatening serious injury" to the U.S. industry concerned. The President can go below the peril point in negotiating reciprocal trade treaties, but if he does, he must publicly report his reasons to Congress...
...Republicans asked, Colorado's Eugene Millikin insisted, was to restrain those who thought the U.S. should be "the world's shmoo and who are always shaking themselves to pieces lest other countries have a bad opinion of us." The peril-point provision would simply allow Congress "to judge the extent to which our domestic producers have become the pawn of diplomacy...
...Veep's Prerogative. Democrats had their answers ready. The peril-point procedure, they said, would induce caution verging on stagnation in the Tariff Commission; how could anybody safely predict a peril point for years in the future? It was also an open invitation to every industry to bring terrific political pressures to bear on its behalf. "With the peril-point amendment," argued Majority Leader Scott Lucas, "we abandon our position as the economic leader in world affairs . . . We cannot say to the rest of the world: 'From now on the primary factor in our tariff system is protection...
...President came right back. He did not invoke the national emergency sections of Taft-Hartley, he said, because there was no "immediate peril" with so much steel around. His idea was to find a solution before matters reached a critical state. Said the President: "Surely you are not afraid to have your side of this dispute examined in the public interest." Again, Fairless & Co. refused the presidential request...
...designed only to secure practical results in the interests of a particular national and political system . . . The new social-political orthodoxy is . . . inimical to the free spirit of science. There is now a scientific party line in the U.S.S.R., and those who stray from it do so at their peril...