WHAT PRICE CONGRESS

In adopting a ten per cent rise in income taxes by recently reversing its action on the Couzens Amendment, the Senate has done something which will give many thousands of thinking people grounds for apprehension. An added fifty-five million dollar burden of discouragement saddled to the backs of the American tax-payers is an appalling thing to think about, heralded as it has been by the new bonus expenditures. And it is interesting to note that this blanket tax increase was put through on the same day as the adoption of the Finance Committee amendment to impose a processing tax on cocoanut oil imported from the Phillipines, despite the fact that such a step is a direct violation of the Phillipine Independence Act recently passed.

The ten per cent rise in income taxes is the grievance of the hour, but the bonus legislation and the simultaneous Phillipine legislation should be considered along side of it. For these three acts of Congress, considered in relation to one another, illustrate the startling level of weakness into which this body, so vital to democracy has returned. The bonus legislation over the President's veto has been branded as cowardly by most of the reputable newspapers in the country. The present tax levy is, of course, the direct result of this lobbied legislation; and the adoption of the Finance Committee's Phillipine amendment, which is at best a violation of faith, is the direct result of selfish pressure being brought to bear by the farm interests.

Contrary to popular belief, Congress has never been more important to national welfare than at present. It is the great bulwark of what is most valuable in our inherited American government. That three such telling exhibitions of obtuseness should be displayed at such a time is indeed disheartening.