Democrats View Kennedy's Battle With Legislature

Kennedy's first year of legislative effort has been an "amazing success," Arthur A. Maass, professor of Government, told a roomful of Young Democrats last night.

"It is a miracle that so many domestic measures were passed in a time of world crisis," Maass said. In Roosevelt's later terms, he remarked, Congress reacted to international pressure by slighting domestic problems.

Maass seemed to regard the defeat of Kennedy's Education and Medical Aid bills as only minor setbacks. Looking from the positive side, he noted great progress on medical aid to the aged in recent years. "Four or five years ago, cries of 'socialized medicine' would have made any such bill impossible."

The other speaker at the HRYDC meeting was not so enthusiastic. Said Milton S. Gwirtzman '54, Legislative Assistant to Sen. Ben Smith: "Congress did not live up to the hopes and expectations we had last January.... Kennedy was able to sell himself, but not his program."

Gwirtzman encouraged HRYDC members to work more actively in support of the Kennedy legislative program. "It's no good electing Democrats if the fire isn't lit under them," he said.

In another comment on Kennedy's dealings with Congress, Maass criticized the President's unsuccessful attempt to take the power of annual aid appropriations from the hands of Congress.

The bill caused "tremendous opposition," Maass remarked, "which many interpreted as opposition to foreign aid."

A better way to get around the House Appropriations Committee, Maass suggested, would have been to eliminate its chairman, Rep. Otto Passman.