Word: 89th
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Most Democratic members of the overwhelmingly Democratic 89th (294 to 139 Republicans in the House, 67 to 33 in the Senate) viewed these accomplishments with understandable partisan pride. Rhapsodized House Speaker John McCormack: "This is the Congress of fulfillment, the Congress of our accomplished hopes, the Congress of our realized dreams. The Democratic Party has again found political and social immortality." More matter-of-factly, Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield observed last week: "Both the quality and the quantity of legislation were good. Of course, a great deal of it simply came to a head; previous Congresses deserve credit...
...Frenetic. Clearly, the 89th would have done greater justice to its own record if it had been allowed time in 1966 to review and refine the titanic body of legislation that it had mass-produced in 1965. Yet, despite the President's promise last fall that the Congress would have little else to do this year, the Administration handed Capitol Hill a formidable new workload at the very start of the session...
Some of the 1966 session's most significant legislation was rammed through in the frenetic atmosphere of an eleventh-hour, election-year rush to adjournment. Out of the last minute stampede emerged such major congressional acts as creation of the 89th's second new Cabinet-level agency, the Department of Transportation; a near-record $58 billion defense appropriation; a $3.7 billion anti-water-pollution bill; a $3.97 billion federal college-aid measure; a two-year $5 billion extension of the Food for Peace program...
...board tax hike. Yet all through the second session, Johnson kept urging the Congress to keep his domestic programs at low price levels. To many members, his pleas smacked of election-year politicking, but when the final dollar total for programs passed over both sessions was added up, the 89th had actually allocated $3.3 billion less than the President had requested. For the two years, the 89th had appropriated just under $264 billion, an alltime record...
Whatever its high-priced shortcomings or long-term accomplishments, the 89th never did anything very easily or very early. Even the seemingly simple act of adjournment came hard. As the session plunged into its final hours last week, Senate leaders found themselves lacing one last formidable obstacle, a tax bill to encourage foreign investment in the U.S. It had already passed the House, and the proposal itself was no serious problem. But it was loaded with so many assorted amendments (24 in all) that it was laughingly labeled "the Christmas tree bill." Tennessee's Democratic Senator Albert Gore opposed...