April 27, 1950
The President Secretary Acheson Senator Tom Connally
The President opened the discussion by complimenting Senator Connally very highly upon his address to the Senate at the opening of the debate on the Foreign Aid Bill.
He then said to the Senator, who apparently had expected Senator Bridges and some others to be present, that he had asked Senator Connally to come in in order to underline the fact that the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate and its Chairman, Senator Connally, were the established and authentic channels of consultation between the Executive Branch and the Senate. The same thing was true in the House and the Foreign Affairs Committee. The President explained that he had had the meeting with Senator Bridges because of a letter which he had written to Senator Bridges protesting against his attacks on the State Department and the Secretary of State, pointing out that he was thoroughly misinformed about his facts and that he was doing great harm to the United States and to the bipartisan policy. The President went on to say that following the receipt of that letter Senator Bridges had met with me, in the course of which meeting we had resolved some misunderstandings between us to which he laid his attitude of hostility to me.
The President said that he thought and hoped that his meeting with Senator Bridges would be helpful to Senator Connally and the Foreign Relations Committee, and that he expected to meet with members of the Foreign Relations Committee and he would like the Senator\'s advice as to that and if there were any other members of the Senate with whom he should meet. Senator Connally said that Senators Wiley and Lodge had be particularly helpful to him and it would be a good thing if the President could see them. I said that I was proposing to see them and that I was sure that the President would be glad to do so also. The matter was nor firmly agreed but left with the expression that it would be desirable.
I told Senator Connally that I would meet with other Republican members of the Senate for the purpose of asking their views on proper methods of consultation and expressed my own view that the proper method was for them to put the Republican members of the Committee in possession of their views and let me handle the matter in so far as possible through the Committee itself.
Senator Connally said that he appreciated the attitude the President and I were taking; that he had always been a strong supporter of the non-partisan approach, and that indeed it was he and Secretary Hull who had started the whole procedure. He said he was quite willing to subordinate his own position in order to bring about harmony.
I asked whether in the Senator\'s judgment it would be helpful in getting the McCarthy charges off the front page if a subcommittee, on which Senator\'s Smith and Lodge might be present, would take up the Benton Resolution and get outstanding figures to testify. The Senator was not enthusiastic about this idea - first because the Committee was very busy with the Foreign Aid Bill on the Floor; secondly, because he thought the McCarthy charges were so sensational that they would continue to occupy the front page, and that while he hoped that the Voice of America, strengthened and improved, would be useful he had doubts as to whether it would reach the right people. However, he would take the idea under consideration.
The Senator informed the President that Mr. Stassen had asked for an opportunity to appear before the Committee to give his views about Far Eastern policy. After consultation with Senator Wiley, he had replied that perhaps sometime next week it would be possible to do this in Executive session. He had some doubt whether Mr. Stassen would press the matter.
The Senator also spoke about the McCarran amendment, including aid to Spain in the ECA Bill. He was informed that this amendment might be passed and asked whether the Export-Import Bank would not do something in order to divert support from the amendment. The President pointed out that both he and I had informed the Export-Import Bank that there was no political objection to a loan to Spain, which ought to be considered on its merits, and I added that this idea had been expressed both in my long letter to Senator Connally on the Spanish policy and in the letter which I wrote him only a day ago about the McCarran amendment. The Senator concluded that he would oppose the amendment on the Floor and if beaten there try to get it out in conference.
We then went over the proposed press release which Senator Connally approved but requested that the word "consultative" be stricken out in describing the subcommittee as he proposed to make them more than consultative by having them hold hearings on legislation from time to time. The President agreed to this and the press release was put out as attached.
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IMMEDIATE RELEASE
APRIL 27, 1950
STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT
I asked Secretary Acheson and Senator Connally to call on me this morning for the purpose of canvassing in general the efforts that we are all making to devise ways of bringing about a true bipartisan approach to the consideration of our foreign policies.
I have been particularly interested in Senator Connally\'s plan to set up eight subcommittees of the Foreign Relations Committee, which subcommittee groups will correspond with the organizational structure of the State Department. This new procedure is a decided step forward in the matter of keeping the Committee, and through the Committee, the Senate, currently informed of State Department attitudes toward pending foreign policy issues.
This new approach will serve not only to provide mechanics for free interchange of information between State Department representatives and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but it will have the added advantage of quickening an interest on the part of the various consultative subcommittees in the particular areas of the world or the State Department functions for which they are given specific responsibility in this new committee organizational arrangement.
I hope that the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives will see fit to adopt a somewhat similar pattern, in order that we may bring about greater understanding and confidence between State Department representatives and the Members of the Congress who represent the House and the Senate in the various fields of State Department operations.