Word: sam
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
MASSACHUSETTS' JOHN MCCORMACK, 67, was elected Democratic floor leader the same month -September, 1940 -that Mister Sam became Speaker (during the two Republican Congresses since then, Rayburn became floor leader, McCormack Democratic whip). Boston-born John McCormack, a cigar-munching teetotaler, was left fatherless at 13, shined shoes, ran errands, earned his way through night law school, was elected to the House in 1928. He is a hard-knuckled politician from one of the hardest knuckled of all political schools: Massachusetts' Twelfth Congressional District. More than half Irish, the Twelfth takes in ten dingy, crowded...
House as an institution. "The House is the greatest jury on earth," says Sam Rayburn. In his capacity as chief juror, he soon decided that Wilbur Mills was a real comer. He brought Mills along, got him elected to Ways & Means in 1942, saw him become chairman last year...
Indeed, the whole direction of the Congress can be changed by the committee assignments. The House has long behaved much more responsibly than the Senate on reciprocal trade -mostly because Mister Sam has a flat rule against electing anyone to Ways & Means who is not "safe" on the subject. This year, as the result of a deliberate Rayburn-Mills effort, the Education & Labor Committee, for many years controlled by a mossback conservative coalition, has a moderate-liberal majority, may soon become more than a society for discussing the iniquities of Walter Reuther...
...that the U.S. Senate so often restores the budget cuts he has made. "The Senate piles everything on earth on these bills." he grumps, "and they always wait until the last minute to do it." Cannon always wants the House to insist on its cuts in conference committee. "Sam Rayburn says, 'Hell, we've got to get out of here.' I always say we can't accept this change. But Sam always says we've got to get the hell out of here...
...rules, seem to balance each other. In 1950, when Appropriations Committee Chairman Cannon pushed his pet "one-package" appropriations bill (all main appropriations in one lump sum so the world could see the awful enormity of it all) through the House, an irate member complained bitterly to Rayburn. Mister Sam only shook his head. "I can't do a thing with Cannon," he said. "He's the most powerful man in the House." Yet the very next year, Chairman Cannon could not even get his one-package bill reported out of his own committee. Muttered he gloomily: "Sam packed...