(3 of 8)
Martin does not pretend to be a political philosopher. His conservatism is more a matter of temperament than of ideology. Day by day he deals with specific problems through the party machinery of representative government, and he is rarely tempted to bead any series of his opinions or decisions on a string of generalization. In a speech last year, he summed up his deep-grained pragmatic approach. Said Speaker Martin: "We [Republicans] are not reformers, not do-gooders, not theorists, not the advocates of any alien philosophies or political dipsy-doo. We are just practical Americans, trying to do a practical job to reach practical goals. We do not belong to that school of political thought which has for so many years pursued the fallacious proposition that if a little bit is good for us—ten times as much is just wonderful."
Following the clinical rule that too big a dose is harmful, Joe Martin's Congress this year delivered a legislative prescription that, though perhaps too sparing in spots, contains a little something for almost everyone.
The year's biggest threat to Joe Martin's prescription came on a Democratic move to send back to committee the massive tax-revision bill. The Democrats wanted to raise individual exemptions and wipe out the proposed deductions of dividend income. Rather than argue his case on the House floor, which he does infrequently, Martin called a caucus of G.O.P. Congressmen.
He told them this bill was a "corner stone" of the President's program and that no Republican could vote against it and claim to be an Eisenhower supporter at election time. Then Joe collected on more than 30 of the many I.O.U.s he holds, for favors he has done, like getting a creek fixed in one man's district, a patronage job for another's constituent, or a deportation order deferred for the constituent of still another. Result: anticipated defections, particularly in the Ohio and Illinois delegations, did not materialize. The Democratic maneuver, abetted by only ten Republicans, was voted down, 210 to 204.
The President's most thumping defeat in the House came on his public-housing request, but the Speaker salvaged enough to deliver a face-saver for the Administration. As Charlie Halleck explained the trouble, he could not ask Michigan's Jesse Wolcott, the committee chairman involved, to sponsor a public-housing bill, because "Jesse spent years barnstorming around the country denouncing public housing. So did I, for that matter." When the bill came back from the Senate for the settling of differences between the two Houses, Speaker Martin moved in with a compromise formula. It was accepted and last week the bill was adopted.