Word: capehart
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Bulldozer. Indiana's Capehart had been a symbol for decontrol for nearly two years. His Capehart amendment (permitting price hikes to cover all cost increases from the beginning of the Korean war to July 26, 1951) shot price ceilings full of holes and aroused the wrath of the Truman Administration. Harry Truman said it was "like a bulldozer, crashing aimlessly through existing price formulas, leaving havoc in its wake." Little wonder, then, that Capitol Hill was startled this year when Bulldozer Capehart proposed that Congress give the President power to freeze wages, prices and rents for 90 days...
Fascinated Democrats and dismayed conservative Republicans watched agape as Capehart judiciously steered the bill through the Senate's Banking & Currency Committee, of which he is chairman. Actually, his position was not inconsistent. The day after the Korean war began in 1950 he had proposed an immediate price-wage-rent freeze. His proposal was snubbed; controls were not imposed for seven months. In those seven months the wholesale price index rose by 15%, the consumer's index by 6⅔%. These increases, Capehart argued, left no foundation for sound controls. He fought Truman's belated program every step...
This year, pushing his bill along, Capehart has repeatedly pointed out that if there is a new, great emergency he wants prices frozen immediately to prevent a repetition of the 1950 inflation...
...When Capehart's committee completed its work on the bill, Illinois' Democratic Senator Paul Douglas, an old Capehart antagonist, proposed that the committee vote its thanks for the chairman's fine work. Said Douglas, with admiration in his voice:"You could not serve under a better chairman. He's fairminded, decent, generous." The Salesman. On the Senate floor last week, one of Capehart's dismayed old friends, Utah's Republican Senator Wallace Foster Bennet, an ex-president of the N.A.M., argued that the U.S. should never again have economic controls except as "the last...
...this instance we Republicans have a responsibility. We have a Republican President, and we control both houses of Congress. If during our tenure of office a grave emergency strikes, we, and we alone, will have to deal with it."Political responsibility has changed Capehart in many ways. In his new role as a committee chairman and top-ranking member of the Senate majority, he works harder (twelve to 15 hours a day; 3,000 letters a week), but he is more relaxed and his desk is neater-it is arranged in well-defined piles, not in the huge, disorderly mounds...