Word: congress
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...provided that federal wartime subsidies (paid to keep consumer prices below OPA ceilings) should also be tossed in the weighing pan, together with the cost of hired farm labor. This parity formula would give better prices to livestock and tobacco raisers. But it might not work for everything. So Congress thoughtfully provided that for the next four years, if the old formula provided a higher support price for any basic crop, that was what the farmer...
...refusals, Congress often showed better sense than Harry Truman in his requests, and sometimes it saved him later embarrassment. When he asked for an anti-inflation program (including wage & price controls, Government authority to build steel plants) at a time when deflation was obviously in progress, Congress brusquely threw it overboard, lock, stock & barrel. His demand for $4 billion in new taxes was similarly ignored; so was his request for $800 million for universal military training...
...then that the Administration devised a new strategy suggested by canny old Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn: 1) keep Congress in session, let it talk itself out, hold its nose to the grindstone, and blame Republican obstructionism for Congress' inaction; 2) let Congress know that if it got down to work on what was left of the Truman program, it could go home...
There were some failures. The 81st Congress had meanly failed to liberalize D.P. legislation. It had approved six executive reorganization plans submitted by Harry Truman, but ignored the basic reforms outlined by the Hoover Commission. It had failed to authorize funds for President Truman's Point Four program for foreign investments...
...touchstone of the Taft-Hartley law, the 81st Congress was closer political kin to the 80th than it was to Harry Truman. By the touchstone of what his political opponents had said he could or could not achieve, Harry Truman had won quite a bit, though it was not nearly as much as he had asked or as he had promised to get. Said he, perhaps mindful of the do-nothing days of early summer: "You know, I'm happy about the record of Congress. It accomplished more than I expected...