Tax revolt packs punch at 4th term
Resignation of Barkley viewed as a major party rift
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
Washington –
The political compact between President Roosevelt and his handpicked Senate Democratic Leader has blown up with a boom that will echo right through this year’s fourth term debate.
Senator Alben W. Barkley’s break with the President is no minor fracture. It could start Congress on a rampaging rebellion which would make recent uprisings seem feeble. It might carry that rebellion right onto the floor of the Democratic National Convention.
In defense of Congress
But while Republicans and plenty of Democratic political hats are still in the air in celebration of a major breach in the administration breastworks, it remains a fact that Senator Barkley did not bolt the New Deal nor disavow its record.
Senator Barkley balked and bolted because President Roosevelt has been dealing roughly with Congress. The division between the Senate Democratic Leader and Mr. Roosevelt so far has not reached the question of a fourth term.
What Senator Barkley said yesterday in protest against Mr. Roosevelt’s veto of the 1944 tax bill is what Congress has been telling itself for some months – that the President has become harsh and abrupt in dealing with Congress when it failed to carry out his proposals.
Nor does it impugn Senator Barkley’s motives in any way to recall that Kentucky last November swung sharply from its Democratic moorings and, further, that this swing was interpreted as unfriendly to the Roosevelt administration.
May win votes
Senator Barkley was last elected to the Senate in 1938 with the active assistance of Mr. Roosevelt, who went into Kentucky to support his candidacy against that of A. B. “Happy” Chandler in the Democratic primary. Mr. Chandler subsequently got a Senate seat.
Now Senator Barkley is up again. If he seeks reelection, yesterday’s challenge to Mr. Roosevelt scarcely could lose him any votes and might attract more than a few to the Barkley standard.
Whether Senator Barkley dropped a blockbuster in resigning from the Senate Democratic Leadership or merely a canister of political events develop, he could become the rallying point for a Congressional Democratic effort to organize against the Draft-Roosevelt movement, which is now far advanced.
Smoldering fire
This Congress has been moving rapidly toward a political explosion of protests against what some legislators regard as Mr. Roosevelt’s effort to impose his will on the legislative branch.
Last month, the President indicted Congress on charges of “fraud” in devising a soldier vote bill. This week, he accused the House and Senate of enacting tax legislation which would impoverish the needy and enrich the greedy.
Congress was fighting mad.
But few expected the explosion to come on the leadership quarterdeck.
Even fewer believed that Barkley will follow other notable bolters, into political opposition to the President’s renomination. The list is long – John N. Garner, James A. Farley, Harry H. Woodring, John L. Lewis, to name some who were once White House intimates.
But there is a whirlwind of speculation on the effect Senator Barkley’s defection may have within the New Deal-Democratic Party where he has been a notable figure.
Senator John H. Overton (D-LA) said:
Senator Barkley’s speech places in jeopardy Mr. Roosevelt’s renomination for President. It should have a salutary influence upon arresting the alarming increase of authority in the Executive branch which is rapidly tending toward a dictatorship in the United States.
Rep. Wesley E. Disney (D-OK) said:
This is an anti-Congress fight. This was an anti-Congress [veto] message designed for the 1944 campaign.
Senator Harry S. Truman said he was “backing Barkley to the limit.”
Former Secretary of War Woodring, a Kansan, is attempting to organize anti-New Deal Democrats against a fourth term. He said Senator Barkley was moved by resentment against Mr. Roosevelt’s “contemptuous” attitude toward Congress.
Senator Ellison D. “Cotton Ed” Smith (D-SC) found Senator Barkley’s rebellion the occasion to propose a third-party coalition of “real” Democrats with Republicans. But Senator Smith warned, too, that Southerners could not vote for anyone with a Republican label. Yet he was hopeful and remarked:
If we can get “Dear Alben” away from Roosevelt, we can get anybody away.
There was on Capitol Hill some disposition to agree with that latter sentiment.
These may be merely partisan, anti-Roosevelt statements. But there appeared to be something deeper than that when Senator Barkley spoke yesterday. The chamber was full, with a standee line of House members against the walls. Republicans sat relaxed and smiling. The Democrats were grim.
Speaks for Senate
But it soon became evident that Senator Barkley was no longer talking for the Democrats or as their leader. He was speaking for the Senate as a whole. As he proceeded, the grimness spread from Democrats on the left to Republicans on the right. Legs uncrossed and Senators straightened in their chairs.
Senator Barkley wept. He had dictated his speech in 45 minutes and his delivery was halting. It was being typed and hurried to him a page at a time as he spoke. Often, he outran the manuscript and had to pause.
Great friendships were being broken and others were being cemented again. There was Senator Kenneth McKellar (D-TN), 75 years old and a hater of no small attainments.
Last year, Barkley had ordered his old friend, Senator McKellar arrested by the Senate sergeant-at-arms and their friendship had not cooled – it had frozen. The arrest was ordered when Senators refused to come to the chamber to vote on an anti-poll tax bill.
But it was Senator McKellar from an adjacent seat who first saw Senator Barkley’s plight, and understood. Thereafter it was the senior Senator from Tennessee and not a knee pants page boy who brought the speech page by page from the typist to Senator Barkley’s desk. The Senate and the press galleries saw that and knew that a broken friendship was being resumed.
Even the visitors’ galleries sensed that something was up. Then Barkley was through. He has told them of his 31 years in Congress and that now he might be stepping down. Certainly, he might resign the Senate leadership. Whether he would run for the Senate again he did not say.
He finished:
The record will speak for itself. I would not change it. But there is something more precious to me than any honor from the Senate, from the State of Kentucky or from the President of the Republic. That is the approval of my conscience; my own self-respect.
What happened then has not been seen in the memory of the oldest Senate attaché.
Mark Sullivan said he had never seen the like.
The Senate cheered.
The Senate gave Senator Barkley a rising vote of confidence.
The Senate applauded long and loud.
That is, almost all of the Senate did. There were three dissenters.
