This morning we had our regular Monday morning meeting with the Senate and House leadership. The principal subject for discussion was the proposed legislative program.
A tenative schedule was suggested by Senator Taft, who took the State of the Union speech as his basis and worked up a detailed program that he thought would best suit the calendar of the Congress.1 The subjects agreed upon as "must" legislation were:
1. Reorganization Bill--already passed.2
2. Appropriations Bills to reach the Senate not later than May 15.3
3. Hawaiian Statehood Bill.4
4. Taft-Hartley amendments.5
5. Limited extension of controls, allocations, etc., dealing with materials required for defense program and critical defense areas.6
6. Legislation related to submerged lands.7
7. Extension of Reciprocal Trade Act.8
8. Custom Simplification Bill.9
9. Extension of old age and survivors insurance, to cover groups presently excluded.10
10. Extension of bill for temporary aid to schools in critical areas.11
11. Adding of two Commissioners for the District of Columbia.12
This list of course is not an exclusive list, but does lay before the Republicans of both houses a general outline that will be helpful.
A subject that is coming up soon for decision involves the Reciprocal Trade Agreement with other nations. In our present law is a so-called "escape" clause, which provides that under certain conditions, the Federal Trade Commission may recommend an increase in our tariffs and upon the approval of the President, such increase go instantly into effect.13
The case presently to be decided involves brier pipes--just plain smoking pipes. It is inconsequential insofar as the volume of imports is concerned and the number of people engaged in the business of making pipes here in the United States.14 However, it is a very important case from the standpoint of establishing attitude and future policy, and I am informed by the Secretary of Commerce that the whole world--as well as the American Congress--will be watching the decision.
So far as fulfilling the conditions for the application of the escape clause, this particular case is clear cut. On the other hand, our whole policy of collective security among the nations of the free world depends on an ability of these other nations to make a living. This means that they must have the ability to export and since the United States consists of by far the greatest single market in the world, it means that we must be quite ready and willing to import items where these do not seriously damage our economy.
Specifically, the kind of items that we should like to import are those where a great deal of hand labor is involved and where these items are not essential to the workers in our economy, particularly in time of war. This type of essential item we would far rather make here at home. (I am not discussing here the essential raw materials that we need from abroad. In this category we need especially those items in which our own production is inadequate.)
Consequently, the question at issue is to decide between the letter and intent of the law on the one hand, and the clear damage that will be done to some of our allies by such compliance.
The law provides also that certain officials, among whom I think are the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Labor and the Director of Mutual Security, must all advise the President as to their convictions in such a matter, and I have a suspicion that without exception they will recommend that the tariff remain at the 50 to 75% rate that now exists.15 To avoid the increase would manifestly be to the best interests of the United States as a whole.
However, the entire Reciprocal Trade law expires in a very short time and we have to depend upon a Congress--part of which is not sympathetic to Reciprocal Agreements--to re-enact it. Consequently, to decline to grant the increase, when the case is so clear-cut as to comply with legal conditions, would probably provoke the Congress and might result in a failure to re-enact the Law.
On the other hand, approval would hurt the morale of our allies far more than it will hurt them economically.
Again, we come up against the whole question of the ability of a free government to continue functioning in spite of pressures from groups inside the body politic, where these pressures are created by immediate self-interest. Numbers of our writers of today believe, indeed strongly urge, that free government can continue to exist only as the central authority--in our case, the federal government--assumes a stronger and stronger role in directing the economic processes of the country. By exercising a stronger authority over the economy, these writers mean bureaucratic rather than purely legislative control. In this way they would hope to get away from the group influence, to which an elected official is so sensitive, while at the same time they would preserve the general forms of free government and individual liberty through the dependence of the bureaucrats upon the Congress for appropriations.
Thinking of this kind leads to a greater and greater dependence upon the so-called "Regulation" Commissions, most of them having a combination of legislative, executive and judicial functions.
The Congress has at times referred to some of these Commissions as an "Extension of Congress." This would be an accurate description if their functions were limited to legislative action and their decisions always subject to approval by the Executive. This is not the case, and I would not be surprised that a very strong argument could be made against the functioning of some of them, on constitutional grounds. In any event, in the degree that we depend more and more upon the Regulatory Commission, we are departing from the system laid down in our Constitution, a system that groups all functions into three categories and keeps these mutually independent of each other. Since America has always believed that this functional dispersion of power is equally important with the geographical dispersion accomplished by the reservation of all powers to the states and to the people, except where such power is especially granted to the central authority by the Constitution, it follows that in the degree that we depend upon the Regulatory Commission, we are threatening the individual liberties and the entire system of free government that they established.
Of course, we well understand that whereas in the early days of our Republic, the "liberal" was any individual who pled for less government in our daily lives, we have come to the point in the past thirty or forty years where the present-day liberal is the man who demands more and more government in our lives, claiming that only in this way can the mass of the individuals be protected against the greed and lust of the predatory few. Individuals of this school shout their undying hatred of the "practitioners of special privilege" but the fact is that the only special privilege that could possibly exist under the systems that they advocate, would be the high ranking bureaucrats of Washington.
Admittedly, masses of people have suffered under the injustices inflicted by people controlling means of production, not only in our civilization but in past ones. However, individual fortunes come and go; shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves in three generations is almost an accepted characteristic of modern civilization. But once an all-powerful and self-perpetuating government has fastened [won] onto the people, then exploitation of the masses will revert again to the kind practiced by the Hitlers and Napoleons of the past--and indeed, as it is practiced by Stalin today.
All of this, of course, is not provoked by a mere instance of the "briar pipe" case, but that case is indicative of what goes on in a democracy. It points up the need for the people to be constantly on the job of reminding all of us what these trends--or the accumulation of a sufficient number of these instances--can eventually mean. If we do this seriously and persistently enough, we should be all right.
