Word: limiteds
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Lights burned far into the night and messengers scurried about like ants at a midsummer picnic as Congress hurried to adjourn. Then, into the usual closing-week crisis, President Eisenhower injected a red-hot issue: he asked Congress to raise the federal debt limit from $275 billion to $290 billion...
Byrd took the floor for one of his rare speeches. "A debt limit of $275 billion," he said, "is as much or more than this country should be called on to stand . . . An increase in the debt limit at this time would be misunderstood...
...following morning, 13 Senators and Representatives were invited to breakfast at the White House. Then, for two hours and 15 minutes, they listened to Humphrey and Dodge, armed with charts and graphs, lay down the "hard, cold fiscal facts." Said Humphrey: "If Congress refuses to increase the debt limit, we just will run out of money, and we can't pay our bills, and that is all there is to it . . . I think it would just cause a near panic...
...were inclined to agree with New York's Representative Frederic Coudert that the Administration had put Congress in "a cruel and bitter dilemma." The party that for 20 years had fought a mounting federal debt was in the position of asking for an increase in a statutory debt limit that had stood for seven years...
Nevertheless the House promptly approved a bill to increase the limit. But the Senate balked. More than five hours of briefing and pleading by Humphrey and Dodge changed few, if any, minds in the Senate Finance Committee. North Carolina's Clyde Hoey bluntly told Humphrey that, if the Administration had known on July 1 that an increase in the debt limit was necessary, it should have told Congress on July 2, not waited until the last minute. Senators were sore about the delay, especially since they suspected that the Administration had deliberately waited until appropriations bills were passed...