Do-nothing Congresses, then and now

Remember “the do-nothing Congress?” Not the one currently at home on vacation rather than in Washington on vacation, but the original “do-nothing” Congress.

Its proper name was the 80th Congress but it was better known as either the do-nothing or “good-for-nothing 80th Congress,” depending on Harry Truman’s mood and perspective as he rode its do-nothingness to his great upset election victory in 1948.

That was 33 Congresses and 65 years ago but do-nothing and good-for-nothing Congresses come readily to mind these days and I’m here to report the 80th Congress’s title is in serious jeopardy. 

There is, in fact, really no contest. In the realm of doing nothing, today’s 113th Congress is incomparable. 

First, the numbers. The 80th Congress passed 906 laws; the 113th, which has a little over a year to go, has passed only 22 as of vacation time. It won’t come close to 906; it may not even reach three digits.

Nor will it come close to matching the endurance and importance of some of the laws passed by that much maligned postwar Congress. In 1947, its first year, the 80th Congress passed aid to Greece and Turkey, better known as the Truman Doctrine, and the Taft-Hartley Law. 

Taft-Hartley, reviled by labor and its Democratic allies as “the slave labor act” was never repealed by the many Democratic presidents and Congressional majorities that came along later. Even Truman found it useful a dozen times in dealing with postwar labor unrest in the remaining years of his presidency.

Then in 1948, which was not only an election year, but a presidential election year, the do-nothing Congress passed the monumental Marshall Plan, which saved Europe from communism. As a bonus, it passed the nation’s first Water Pollution Control Act. 

Nothing the current Congress has even proposed is comparable to the Marshall Plan, Taft-Hartley and the Truman Doctrine. Obamacare was passed by the previous Congress; an immigration law could be very important but there isn’t one. Doing something about jobs could be vital to the nation but the nation doesn’t seem to be on Washington’s conscience this year. But it did pass a bill naming a bridge in St. Louis for Stan Musial and another, setting the diameter of a commemorative coin for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The 80th Congress was controlled by Republican majorities in both houses while the White House was in the hands of a Democrat as it had been for four terms. That Republican majority was intent on making a name for itself as it looked forward to running everything for the next four to eight years. (Connecticut, unlike the purple state it is today, had only one Democrat in Congress, Sen. Brien McMahon, along with liberal Republican Raymond Baldwin. All six House members were Republicans.) 

The president was the unelected Truman, completing the fourth term of the great Franklin Roosevelt and scheduled to be defeated in November of 1948 if, indeed, he had the temerity to run. Many Democratic leaders hoped he wouldn’t, including Connecticut’s new state chairman, John Bailey, who wanted the nomination in 1948 to go to Gen.Eisenhower.

Republican conservatives, recovering from the totally discredited isolationism they’d practiced before the war, desperately wanted to eliminate its isolationist reputation for all time.

On the domestic side, the country was interested in buying cars and refrigerators after four years of wartime austerity, not strikes that delayed their manufacture, so the Republican majority easily passed the restrictive Taft-Hartley Act with enough votes to override a presidential veto.

The party’s newly discovered anti-communism led it to cooperate with anything the president proposed to halt its spread to western Europe, first with an expensive aid package for Greece and Turkey, then with the monumental Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, a plan devised by Truman but wisely named by him for his secretary of state, the wartime chief of staff, Gen. George Marshall.

But in Harry Truman, the Congress was politically overmatched and when he said it was good for nothing, it was and when he called it into a special session during the campaign, it did nothing and proved his point.

 Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at dahles@hotmail.com.