Word: starting
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Texas' Johnson, the adroit, trend-sensing Senate Majority Leader, started the session by delivering his own "State of the Union" message to fellow Democrats, pushed a liberal-spending, twelve-point program (e.g., "bold" housing program, depressed areas bill) that included several items clearly beyond his legislative role and inside the executive area ("breathe life into the newly created space agency," "a consistent policy for Latin America"). He got off to a fast start on a quicker-than-the-eye maneuver to limit slightly the Senate's filibuster Rule 22, hoppered his own civil rights bill as a necessary...
Perfect record or no, the President did not consider signing the bill, which still contained down payments to start 67 new civil-works construction projects not in the budget (eventual cost: $800 million) that he had objected to the first time. The only congressional change: a 2½% across-the-board cut in funds for all projects. This cynical gesture at economy, the President pointed out, would only impede "orderly work on going projects and result in an increase in costs instead of a saving...
Whooping it up, Democrats savored their first, sweet victory over "Government by veto." Some, however, detected a sour aftertaste. The President is not required to release funds for new projects, will probably start few of the obnoxious 67 projects. More important, in a strictly partisan decision, congressional Democrats dipped into the narrowly balanced budget to fund the oldest, most obvious form of political spending in federal politics. Cracked White House Press Secretary James Hagerty in a rare reflection of presidential cynicism: "The lure of the pork barrel was a little too much for Congress to avoid...
...Extended in a House-Senate compromise the Public Law 480 authority ($1.5 billion a year) to sell Government-owned surplus farm products abroad (often for soft currencies) for another two years. Authorized but not required: a start on an Administration-opposed food-stamp scheme for delivering $500 million worth of surplus to the U.S. needy...
...Sturgis and Spearfish (S.D.) and Newcastle (Wyo.) and in hundreds of tourist cabins in the Black Hills, the fighters worked through the night. Twenty miles away, outside the town of Nemo, another fire raged. Said one fire boss grimly: "If them two sons of bitches come together and start crowning [i.e., spreading among the treetops], it won't stop till it gets to Custer, and we'll all look like Custer's men after the battle." At midmorning next day, the men were still fighting. Two Forest Service planes-a converted 6-24 and a Navy torpedo...