ustxtxb_obs_1960_07_29_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

Over $133 Million Insurance In Force Jnek,f,46,ew Aie INSURANCE COMPANY P. 0. Box 8098 Houston, Texas HAROLD S. MET Vice-President and Director of Agenda. Ralph Lauds Ticket, Plans Education Bill Democrat “if he can’t approve at least half the platform. “Having a native son on the ticket helps it in Texas. Why, it helped the Republicans w i t h Eisenhower, and he was carried across the Texas border before he could say ‘Texas.’ A native sork s -that will help the ticket a lot,” Yarborough said. What about Deep South states like Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia? “Well, he’ll help them more than anybody else they could’a put on there,” the junior senator replied. Yarborough telephoned Johnson before the latter senator left Austin for Acapulco last week and tendered his active support for the ‘Kennedy-Johnson ticket Omnibus College Bill Preparing for the shortAession of Congress after the Republican convention, Yarborough said he will concentrate on education, aid for the aged, and Padre Island legislation. ‘Bob Bray, Yarborough’s press aide, tossed in the fact that Sen. Joe Clark, D-Pa., and Yarborough asked Arthur Flemming, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, to confer with the labor and public welfare committee on a bipartisan approach to federal aid for higher education. He is doing so, and Sen. Clifford Case, R.-N.J., Clark, and Yarborough are principal sponsors of an omnibus bill on this subject for the short session, Bray said. , Federal aid to edUcation had already passed the Senate and awaits action in the House, so the Senate can do nothing more on this subject, Yarborough said. In the meantime, he is co-sponsoring this “four-pronged composite bill for higher education.” The four “prongs,” each one now a separate bill: 1.Loans and grants for college classrooms. Previously vetoed by President Eisenhower, this proposal is expected to re c eive approval next time because of Flemming’s participation, Yarborough said. 2.Loans to junior colleges for classroom construction. 3.”Sen. Johnson’s bill for guaranteed loans for college students.” 4.A fund for a federal survey of “what is really the situation in higher education.” This survey would ask, “How much are we doing? Are we doing enough?” Yarborough said. “There are a great many exponents of the ‘hard theory’ of higher education now. Students should walk to school barefooted and sleep on a little straw at night: Oldsters Losing Available Funds pensioner. Winters said the s$65 maximum average to which these figures apply can include medical care for the aged. “We expect next session to get most of that for medical care,” he said. The state constitution would have to be amended in order to increase the average benefit toward $65 a month by direct payments, Winters explained, because of the constitutional welfare spending ceiling. However, in November, 1958, Texas voters approved a constitutional amendment ‘authorizing payments for medical aid to the aged. The 1959 legislature did not appropriate funds for this purpose and could do so in 1961 by simple statute. “That would give us a lot of money. It would help us a good deal,” Winters said. if they’re not milking cows, if they’re not chopping cotton, they’re not being educated,” rarborough said this theory runs. “There are all kinds of antediluvian theories like this, while behind the Iron Curtain, the Russians are putting up their students in dormitories, not letting them take time out for work or tractors except maybe in the summer, paying their room and board to see that they’ve got time to study and develop the brainpower of the country. “We’re spending four and a half per cent of our gross national product to educate our people. The Russians are spending 12 per cent,” he said. Reporter Federal aid passed the Senate, and “both Johnson and I voted for it,” Yarborough said. “It was strongly attacked in the debates because it gave too much money to Texas$62 million a year, more than any other state. This was simply ‘because . . . how much a state gets was based partly on how badly do you need to improve your schools. Texas only got the most by needing it the worst.” In Texas, Yarborough said, the legislation was criticized on the theory that Texans were ‘being taxed to finance other states’ schools. “Texas got more money than any other state on a pro rata basis,” he, said. Inept State Government Sen. Russell Long, D.-La., and Yarborough are preparing legislation for the short session to give old age pensioners some increase. “Texas doesn’t get as much from this as it does from federal aid to education because it won’t help its old people by matching federal funds,” Yarborough said. “Texas is losing millions and millions of dollars a year, leaving federal money unclaimed becauie we won’t match the federal government. “The State of Texas has such an inept state government . . . there might me some other states losing as much as Texas, but I don’t know about them,” Yarborough ,said, checking himself from one of the free-swinging assaults on conservative control of the State Capitol which characterized, not only his campaigns for governor, but his first year or two in the Senate. What about Yarborough’s own “Cold War GI Bill” extending educational benefits to recent veterans? “That’s been pending in the House since July, 1959. The chairman of the veterans’ affairs committee has kept it bottled up in the House,” he said, slamming directly at Congressman Olin Teague, College Station. “Senator Kennedy told me that in his West Virginia campaign, this bill was the best issue,” Yarborough said. “It was brought up nearly everywhere, and was a major issuewhether these young people would have an opportunity to go to college or whether they’re screened out by financial considerations,” Yarborough said. ” Yarborough, who has trod a careful line on civil rights during his Senate ‘ careera line somewhat in advance of Sen. Johnson’s, but well short of the .all-out liberalsbelieves that liberalS are mistaken if they assert race discrimination is the only or the principal issue in American politics. “The main issue is the fiscal problems of the governmentfamilies being squeezed out,” he said. “There is a great move on now to sell people the idea of borrowing money to send students through college and have a mortgage over ’em the rest of their lives. They say you can borrow money under FHA, why not college students, too? That writes off the ‘high school education. That’s a throwback, that’s a reversion, that’s a turning the back on the American s ideal that every person should have an education to the extent of his ability to assimilate it . . .” When it was observed that these remarks might be taken to apply to Sen. Johnson’s bill to authorize loans to college students for college educations, Yarborough declined to acknowledge any such connection. He said that he intended to seek to extend the loans available under the .National Defense Education Act to summer ‘school terms. This should encourage teachers to imprOve their qualifications, he said. Resisting any assumption that the Padre Island national seashore areas legislation is dead until next year, Yarborough said, “Lyndon Johnson has written a letter within the past week that he will work with me at the special session in hope of passing the Padre Island bill.” .Yarborough thought there was a chance of Senate ‘action in August, and believes such action must be taken before developers fencing off the beach “get people accustomed to a fenced-off beach.” Talks Foreign Aid Partly in the light of the Observer’s editorial observations about Yarborough and foreign policy, the junior senator discussed his recent positions on foreign question’s, generally opposing the interpretation that he has been ‘provincial. ‘I know there’s a lot of corruption in foreign aid. ‘A little of it has come out. I have not opposed foreign aid, but I’ve been trying to cut it to make ’em economical,” he said. He likened the program to a boy at school telling ‘his father he needs $500 a month. “He doesn’t need the $500 a month to study,”_ but if he gets it, he will find ways to take it. “They want $4 billion a year and won’t tell you what it’s for. Cutting it would make ’em more economical..I think that $4 billion a year is like $500 a month for a single boy in college.” The biggest part of the aid program has helped Western Europe develop a viable economy now competitive with this country’s, he said. “They are prosperous. National City Bank of New York is urging investors to put money in Western Europe, saying it ha twice the American rate of growth.” Yarborough continues to vote for the foreign aid program in general. What is the case for this program as he sees it? “The case for it,” he said, “is to relieve the people of those countries of poverty, ignorance, and disease, including starvation and malnutrition. Most of the people in the world go to bed hungry.” Despairing, they are easy prey for communism. “They are too weak to help themselves, they have no credit in the world market, and they do not have enough resources to do it for themselves,” he said. “They need education, food, and an economy on which their country can live.” The purpose of foreign ,aid is “to make those countries self-sustaining. “In Western Europe, we’ve done that. Germany has the biggest gold reserves of any country in the world except the United States and Russia. England, France, and Italy have come back economically. Italy is beating the U.S. with their typewriters, adding machines, office equipment.” By keeping these countries away from communism, foreign aid has done its work; in Italy, foreign aid alone prevented a communist coup, he said. How does he propose to clean out ,corruption in foreign. aid? “Our best hope is to put a new administration in office. How can you ask the fox to overhaul the henhouse?” Yarborough asked. Bray volunteered that Yarborough has voted only for cuts in military assistance and, in April; for project-by-project approval of projects costing more than $1 million. “A number of the best known liberals in the country voted for thisDouglas, and Clark,” Bray said. Asked about civil rights, he said that section runs four pages, and he did not have them before him. He opposes the platform’s proposal to reduce “inequitable” depletion allowances. Quotas: Shrimp, Sugar On the issue of shrimp import quotas, Yarborough said that tariffs were not a part of the plan, in deference to “the good neighbor policy and the free flow of goods.” The program is aimed at Mexico, he said, but was in fact “agreed to” by the Mexican shrimp industry. The richest fish life in the world occurs, Yarborough said, in the Indian Ocean and the waters around Indonesia. Imports of shrimp from the loW-wage Southeast Asian countries, where AUSTIN The five members of the tax subcommittee of the Governor’s finance advisory committee seem to be leaning in’ five different directionstoward a payroll tax; a safes tax named a “transfer tax,” a business activities tax, a utilir ties-customer tax, and lower franchise and oil taxes. In discussion Saturday, they took these various tacks while planning their session Aug. 27 to write their report for submission to the main commission Sept. 8. Dr. George Hester, Southwestern University, favored the business activities tax as a compromise between taxes on gross receipts, net income, and payroll. John McKee, Ford Motor Co., Dallas, favored a transfer tax, “a new name for an old tax … the sales tax.” Hugo Loewenstern, Amarillo shrimp processing plants are now being built, threaten to “utterly” disorganize the markets in the Americas the United States, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela. “So a quota system was devised by. the shrimp industry of the Americas … aimed at preserving existing markets in the Americas, but not to cut out others. … This very quota provides for giving new markets some sharing, with. out utter disruption of the \(AmerHe called reports that the quota system was aimed at Mexico “utterly false.” As to his support for the Administration’s new authority to reduce the Cuban sugar import. program, Yarborough said: “The Administration stated they absolutely had to have that power, and that if the Senate had the information they had, they would grant that authority.” , He had talked with high-echelon people in the State Department, “and from what I learned from that, they needed that authority.” The Cubans were “dumping their sugar into the U.S. right now and ‘buying foreign arms with the money.” How and why had American foreign policy developed. in uch a way that the United States found itself hostile toward its Cuban neighbor during that country’s social revolution? “I think American foreign policy under the Republicans has been slanted as much as anything else to what we could get out of ’em,” he replied cryptically. The Texas Liberals What about the liberal situation in Texas?–What did. Yarborough have to say about the future of the. Democrats of Texas Clubs, for instance? “I’m not a member of DOT and dOn’t feel I’m qualified to speak on that,” he replied. “I am a loyal Democrat, and as a loyal Democrat, I think our position is strengthened,” he added. R.D. realtor, proposed a percentage of customers’ utilities bills, which he said would be “related to ability to pay and easier to collect than a sales tax.” W. W.’ Heath, Austin attorney, favored a payroll tax, half paid by workers’ and half by employers. French Robertson, Abilene oilman, thought a payroll tax might be all right, but he wanted lower oil and business franchise taxes, also. Loewenstern proposed the university and permanent school funds be cut in half, and the freed half be spent. “It irritates me that these funds can never be used,” he said. Heath, a University of Texas regent, said Texas is big and rich enough to get by without spending “the heritage our forefathers set aside for our children.” THE TEXAS OBSERVER ‘Page 3 July 29, 1960