The potters herald. [volume] (East Liverpool, Ohio) 1899-1982, 1948-07-01

dent Truman put the Republicans
on the spot by calling the 8Oth
Congress back into session to clean
up it's great mound of unfinish-
ed business? That's the question
being asked this week, especially
after a weekend meeting of 15
Congressional, Cabinet and Demo-
cratic Natl Committee big shots
with President Truman.
Labor officials name three vital
pieces of business, two of them
spelled out in the COP platform,
on which Congress has done almost
literally nothing in its Is months
of law making. They are:
l. The -Ellender- Wagner
housing bill.
Federal aid to education.
3-Measures to bring down high
living costs.
Even conservative newspapers
were indignant over the death of
the TEW bill in the closing hours
of the session. Said the indepen-
dent Republican Philadelphia In
quirer: "The disgraceful failure of
the S0th Congress to provide a
comprehensive program for meet
ing the housing shortage can now
be corrected in only one way:
House and Senate should be recon-
vened by their leaders and kept in
session until they have discharged
their duty The TEW bill, pass
ed by the Senate eight weeks ago,
is the blueprint Of sound, vigor-
Gus attack on one of our most SER
ious problems. 1t should be revived.
If it isn't, the 80th Congress will
have let the people down."
Chairman Walter Reuther of the
CLOS Housing Committee has
urged Truman to recall Congress
directly after the two major par
ty conventions end. By then, he
warned. millions of Americans, es-
pecially veterans will realize that
they shave lost all practical pos
sibility of obtaining homes for
years to come as a result of the
clumsy but ruthless collusion be-
tween the real estate lobby and a
group of dictatorial political
BOSSES"
Reuther predicted that the home
building industry, too, "will wake
up in the next several days and
find that in the insensate hatred
of public housing by the builders
Washington lobby, the reactionary
crowd in Congress put stop order
on most of the private housing
that builders had expected to start
this summer"
The closing hours of the sessions
saw sharp objections to the only
bill that provides any federal funds
to aid schooTs-an appropriation OF
100000 to schools in sections of
the country where the population
increased sharply because of the To-
cation of war plants. Senator'S Ball
(R., Minn.) and Taft (R., Ohio)
both expressed objections to even
this fund.
The $6,OO0,O00 appropriated is
in contrast to the 100000, 900 pro-
posed in a measure okayed by the
Senate, which was blocked by La
Dor Committee Chairman Fred
Hartley (R., N. j. in the House.
AS for anti-inflation measures,
the Congress failed even to act on
the fiscal proposals made after
lengthy cross-country hearings by
the Joint Committee on the Eco
nomic Report.
On balance, the COP Congress
was spectacular failure. Except
for the bipartisan foreign policy,
which had the wholehearted sup
port of all sections Of the organized
labor movement except those dom
mated by Communists, there was
little TO cheer in the 80th sessions
activities. II did allow the Mundt-
Nixon nti-Communist bill to die,
as urged by both AFL and ClO. 1t
also rejected the universal mill
tary training proposals of the De
fensc Dept.
Here are its great achievements
in the fields of labor and social
legislation:
Passage Of the Taft Hartley
law.
2-Passage of the Portal o-Por-
tai law which, under the pretext