After two of the longest, most grueling sessions in memory, the 89th Congress feverishly wound up its business last week and adjourned. With its final key measure, appropriating $5 billion for various Great Society programsthe 50th major bill adopted in the current sessionCongress had in 1966 alone approved legislation that ranged from an anti-jellyfish measure to a new antipoverty law, and authorized expenditures of some $144.6 billion, second only to the $147 billion that it appropriated for a world war in 1942.
The 89th was the first Congress to address itselfin its legislative...