The people's voice. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1939-1969, 1942-11-27
ON THE
CAPITALS CUFF
Bv VIRGINIA GARDNER


/ spent three hours the other day
in the senate press gallery listening
to the filibuster on the anti-poll tax
bill just to get mad enough at those
particular senators so that I'd always
remember their names.
There's going to be another fight in
congress before long. 1t won't be so
dramatic and it won't be so easily
understood.
1t will be on taxes. Taxes are i'm
portant to the war effort-the way
they're imposed, who they hit hardest
and who they let escape-just as the
anti-poll tax bill is
But it's tough to read about taxes
People skip over dull tax stories, and
senator's remarks which purposely
confuse, and then they wake up and
read about a SO so-called Victory
tax already passed.
But let's look at some of the brains
steering the astutely planned filibus-
ter maneuvers. Well find some of
them are the leading brains behind
all the reactionary tax proposals.
They're also, quite logically, among
the cleverest and most consistent
labor-baiters in congress.
If the trade unions, AFL, CLIO and
railroad brotherhoods, get as mad
about the forthcoming tax fight as
they are about the anti-poll tax bill,
a sales tax may be prevented
Maybe Secretary of the Treasury
Henry Morgenthau Jr. will find that
the administrations opposition to a
sales tax is so strengthened that the
reactionary bloc will have to agree to
some decent tax legislation
Sen. Walter F. George 3D., Ga.) is
chairman of the senate finance COM
mittee, and one of the leading poll |
takers. George called the last tax
bill, which left undisturbed the hold |
ers of tax-free municipal and state
bonds (Which Morgenthau had wanted
taxed "a very notable contribution +
to the tax system"
That it failed by $6,OOO,O 100000 to
meet the Treasurys demand for a
minimum tax in wartime, meant little
to George. And when Morgenthau
came back to the hill wanting that
additional $6,O0O,OOO,O0O he would get
a sales tax, George announced cynic-
ally
George, one of the senate's most
powerful figures, was chairman of the
senate foreign relations committee
and ranking member of the finance
committee when Pat Harrison of
Texas, chairman of the finance COM
mittee, died. Wall Street was in a
other, until George resigned as chair
man of one committee so he could
step into Harrison's shoes.
In 1888, a year after he led a fill
buster against the anti-Iynch bill, this '
friend of the Georgia Power Co and S
Commonwealth & Southern had a bad
time getting reelected. For in that c
year the President asked his defeat as l
a Bourbon.
Another old hand at filibustering
and at squeezing the little fellow and I
aiding the corporations in tax pro- q
grams is Sen. Tom Connally ID, Tex. !
With his silver hair cut just long I
enough to tuck over his collar in the
back, his black bow-tie and spectacles
worn on a long black ribbon, Connally O
appears to be a benevolent, harmless t
old boy. He is neither benevolent or q
harmless but a real force in the SEN Il
ate. =
He has authored some vicious anti '
labor legislation and he will be out h
in front demanding a sales tax the l.
phoney Ruml plan and other soak r
labor tax legislation before long. s
Sen. Harry F. Byrd d., Va, pink il
and hearty gets a great kick out of
hearing the crude rawlings of Sen c
Theodore G. (The Nam Bilbo, 3D., G
Miss as he filibusters away and vici- il
Ously slurs negroes, whom he always Il
calls "niggers." O
Byrd chuckles away admiringly, but s