Word: rea
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...16th major veto in seven years, his fourth in 1959. The other three this year: REA, wheat, tobacco bills...
...careful to care for his walking wounded. When Indiana's William Bray gave in to Halleck and voted to sustain the Rural Electrification Administration veto, he feared that it would cost him his career. After the vote he told Halleck he was finished-there were just too many REA supporters in his district. Halleck got on the telephone, called Republican leaders in Bray's district (Martinsville), told them to rally behind the worried Congressman...
Mission Accomplished. The bill breezed through Congress according to schedule: 60-27 in the Senate, 254-131 in the House. Ike promptly vetoed it-exercising his thumbs-down right for the first time in the Democratic 86th Congress. Last February Ike had told a hostile REA meeting in Washington that it was time for prospering REA to give up its subsidy of low-rate Government loans (TIME, Feb. 23). In his veto message he explained that REA had all but fulfilled its mission-96% of the nation's farms have been electrified, more than half of them through REA...
Back on Capitol Hill, Speaker Sam Rayburn and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson saw opportunity: REA was one of those rare issues where Democrats of the South would likely stick together with other Democrats around the compass. They decided they could muster the necessary two-thirds vote to override the veto and doubly defeat the President. Republican Leader Everett Dirksen and Ike's other lieutenants in the Senate were in glum agreement; with the help of six farm-bloc minded Republicans (Kentucky's John Sherman Cooper. South Dakota's Francis Case and Karl Mundt, North Dakota...
...teeth of immense home-front opposition. Telephones buzzed and wires poured in from rural constituencies, urging passage of the bill. Worried Republicans from farm districts pleaded that a nay vote would be political harakiri, but Halleck sternly told them that it was a case of Ike or REA's Ellis-take your choice...