Presidential Relations With Congress by Richard S Conley

Author:Richard S Conley [Conley, Richard S]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Leadership, Political Science, Political Process, General
ISBN: 9781351496834
Google: VSEuDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 39824886
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-07-12T00:00:00+00:00

Kennedy's "New Frontier" and Area Redevelopment

Upon accepting the Democratic Party's nomination as a presidential candidate in 1960, John F. Kennedy asserted that "The New Frontier is here whether we seek it or not. Beyond that frontier are uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered problems of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus." This inspirational proclamation of the New Frontier became the label for the young president's legislative agenda. But Kennedy was also a realist. He had won the narrowest victory in a presidential election in the twentieth century, which was marred by voting irregularities in Mayor Daley's Chicago and Lyndon Johnson's Texas. The configuration of forces in Congress was also not auspicious for an intrepid agenda. In his prophetic inaugural address in 1961, he noted that "All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. But let us begin."

Little could Kennedy have known at that time that his administration and his life would, in fact, be cut short at a thousand days by an assassin's bullet. Regardless, in Congress Kennedy began his legislative juggernaut by confronting the same forces that had existed in the previous legislative session in the closing years of Eisenhower's presidency, but now with the addition of almost two dozen Republicans in the House due to his "negative coattails." He ran ahead of not a single southern Democrat. The committee system was "stacked" with southern conservatives largely uninterested in sweeping domestic change. As Vice President Lyndon Johnson put it, referencing Democratic leaders, Kennedy "had the minnows but not the whales." The only bright spot was his successful effort to break the hold of conservatives on the House Rules Committee by expanding its membership from twelve to fifteen, which increased the chances that those agenda proposals that did emerge from the committee process might receive a floor vote. But powerful figures, like chair of the Ways and Means Committee Wilbur Mills, would nevertheless block many of Kennedy's most desired proposals such as Medicare that were doomed to burial in the committee system.

With ample compromise, Kennedy was still able to pass important components of the New Frontier including housing, an increase in the minimum wage, manpower development and training, and area redevelopment. The latter is instructive insofar as Kennedy's strategic approach. On the campaign trail, he had repeatedly emphasized the need for government action to aid economically depressed areas. He made a campaign promise to voters in the West Virginia primary election to put legislation before Congress within sixty days of his inauguration to "bring new industry and new jobs to your state, and all other neglected areas of our country." Area redevelopment had become a particularly heated issue in the general election following President Eisenhower's veto and a failed override of a $251 million proposal in 1960. Eisenhower had vetoed a similar bill in 1958.

Kennedy kept his pledge to make the issue of depressed areas a legislative priority. Before he was sworn in to office, he asked Senator Paul Douglas (D-IL) to head a task force to investigate the issue of urban renewal.

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