Word: rayburns
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Promptly at high noon, as he has done many hundreds of times before. House Speaker Sam Rayburn swept through the door of the Speaker's lobby and onto the floor of the House. This time something new happened, a violation of custom for which old Capitol Hill newsmen could recall no precedent: in a grand gesture of affection and respect, both Congressmen and spectators stood up and applauded the old man as he started up the steps to the Speaker's rostrum...
Cursing & Conniving. The question facing the House was whether to adopt Rayburn's resolution calling for the addition of three new members (two Democrats and one Republican) to the Rules Committee, the channel through which most major legislation has to pass before it can get to the floor of the House to be debated and voted on. In that simple question, a mere housekeeping detail on the surface, much was at stake: Sam Rayburn's own prestige, the balance of power between liberals and conservatives in the House, and the congressional prospects of Kennedy Administration legislative programs...
...four Republican members plus Mississippi's William Colmer. Because most major bills require positive action by the Rules Committee, the six conservatives were able to use a 6-to-6 deadlock to stall any legislation they disliked. By adding two new Democrats and only one Republican, Sam Rayburn expected to tilt the 6-to-6 standoff to an 8-to-7 majority. So much was at issue in the shift that the fortnight before the showdown saw the House's fiercest struggle for votes in many a year, a struggle that ultimately involved personal pressure from...
...waverers who could not be safely counted on either side reached a nerve-fraying intensity. One shaky Southern Congressman switched back and forth half a dozen times within the week. A freshman Congressman got an offer of a dam for his home district if he would vote with Rayburn. A pressure campaign organized by the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Farm Bureau Federation and other conservative lobbies deluged Congressmen with letters and telegrams urging them to vote against the Rayburn plan. With matching ardor, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the civil rights lobbies tried to swing votes to Rayburn...
Into the Fight. The day before the scheduled showdown, it appeared that the outcome might be decided by a margin of three votes, or even less. "That's too close for comfort," said a Rayburn lieutenant. Mister Sam decided to postpone the floor battle until this week. "The New Frontier," jeered Charlie Halleck, "is having trouble with its first roundup...