Focus on Washington

In its first major victory on a domestic issue this year, the Johnson Administration defeated a strong Republican push to change the nature of federal education grants. To win, however, it had to compromise in several important areas. The Administration’s proposal was a simple extension of present federal aid to education, which is geared to categorical grants through some thirty separate school aid programs. The GOP proposal, pushed chiefly by Rep. Albert H. Quie (Minn.), would have substituted bloc grants to the states, allowing them to use the funds where they thought they were most needed. Quie’s amendment lost, 197-168.

The Administration had sensed the strategic importance of this vote, and took to the telephone—getting loeal school administrators and religious school leaders to pressure Congress in support of the bill. Quie complained that “Johnson has got the big city superintendents thinking they will get less money under my plan, and the rural people thinking they’ll be cheated. He’s got the private and parochial people afraid they’ll lose out, the civil rights backers afraid of less action against segregation, and the segregationists afraid my plan will cause more rigid enforcement.” But to win the Administration also needed substantial support from the Southern Democrats in the House, who—with 83 members from the eleven Southern states—constituted the balance of power on the issue. Rep. Edith Green (D., Ore.) and others therefore proposed a number of amendments which, when they were passed, brought a majority of the Southerners to the Administration’s aid. Mrs. Green’s amendment provides that federal desegregation guidelines be applied equally to all states, rather than just to the Southern states—as now practiced by federal officials. The House also approved an amendment by Rep. L. H. Fountain (D., N.C.) which assures that a school district accused of practicing segregation will have a public hearing before federal funds can be cut off. In all the heated fighting, fewy members of Congress spoke out in principle against federal aid to education. The only question was how the spoils were to be divided.

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In its first major victory on a domestic issue this year, the Johnson Administration defeated a strong Republican push to change the nature of federal education grants. To win, however, it had to compromise in several important areas. The Administration’s proposal was a simple extension of present federal aid to education, which is geared to categorical grants through some thirty separate school aid programs. The GOP proposal, pushed chiefly by Rep. Albert H. Quie (Minn.), would have substituted bloc grants to the states, allowing them to use the funds where they thought they were most needed. Quie’s amendment lost, 197-168.

The Administration had sensed the strategic importance of this vote, and took to the telephone—getting loeal school administrators and religious school leaders to pressure Congress in support of the bill. Quie complained that “Johnson has got the big city superintendents thinking they will get less money under my plan, and the rural people thinking they’ll be cheated. He’s got the private and parochial people afraid they’ll lose out, the civil rights backers afraid of less action against segregation, and the segregationists afraid my plan will cause more rigid enforcement.” But to win the Administration also needed substantial support from the Southern Democrats in the House, who—with 83 members from the eleven Southern states—constituted the balance of power on the issue. Rep. Edith Green (D., Ore.) and others therefore proposed a number of amendments which, when they were passed, brought a majority of the Southerners to the Administration’s aid. Mrs. Green’s amendment provides that federal desegregation guidelines be applied equally to all states, rather than just to the Southern states—as now practiced by federal officials. The House also approved an amendment by Rep. L. H. Fountain (D., N.C.) which assures that a school district accused of practicing segregation will have a public hearing before federal funds can be cut off. In all the heated fighting, fewy members of Congress spoke out in principle against federal aid to education. The only question was how the spoils were to be divided.