The 80th Congress

While the era after World War II was filled with prosperity and growth, the nation was anxious to get back to normal after the war ended in 1945. But President Truman kept the wartime government controls on wages and prices in effect even after the war ended. This infuriated voters, who wanted to return to normal life as quickly as possible. In addition, the nation was hit by a wave of big and sometimes violent strikes as soon as the war ended. Unions had avoided strikes during the war out of patriotism, but their membership and power had grown enormously and the pent-up demand exploded when the war ended:^[4]

[In] 1945 there were 4,750 strikes involving 3,470,000 workers for 38 million days, and in 1946 there were 4,985 strikes involving 4,600,000 workers for 116 million days. The US strike wave of 1945-1946 is one of the great episodes in working class history.

Companies had little choice but to cave in to union demands, often agreeing to immediate raises of an astounding 30% for the union workers simply to get them back to work. A recession hit the country, and voters took out their anger on the Democrats who had been in power since 1932. In the congressional elections of 1946, voters dealt President Truman a huge defeat and returned the Republicans to control of Congress for the first time since the Great Depression. This new Republican-controlled Congress began in 1947.

This "80th Congress" that began in 1947 was the most productive and influential session of Congress in American history. (Note that a "session" of Congress is the two-year period between is elections; each session is numbered starting with the first Congress in 1789. The 80th Congress convened 79 times 2 (158) years after the First Congress in 1789: 1789 plus 158, which equals 1947.)

The Republicans moved quickly to pass important legislation. They passed (and the states ratified) the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution in order to limit future presidents to two full terms in office, so that no one could ever again repeat what President Franklin Roosevelt did in dishonoring President Washington's precedent of serving no more than two terms. President Roosevelt died in office only a few months after his last inauguration, as his illness was concealed from the American people and they were deprived an opportunity to vote in an informed manner for the person who would really serve as president.

The 22nd Amendment also has an effect of reducing the power of the president while he is in office. It requires by law that he leave by a time definite, in contrast with congressmen and justices who have no set limit. That shifts power from the presidency to the other branches of government. By limiting the duration in power of any particular president, the 22nd Amendment limits the extent of his power to control and influence others.

When the Republicans took control of Congress, that enabled them to assume control of key congressional committees and thereby hold public hearings as investigations into key issues. One of the key congressional committees was the House Committee on Un-American Activities, featuring California Congressman (and future president) Richard Nixon. With the Republican Nixon in control, he called hearings into whether Alger Hiss was a communist, and required attendance by Hiss to answer questions. For years Whittaker Chambers had complained about Hiss, but the Democrats refused to do anything. J. Edgar Hoover, who built up and ran the FBI for decades, had worked to force Hiss out of high-level government positions. But it was Nixon's committee that really exposed Hiss as a communist, and the Democrats never forgave Nixon's combative tactics. Eventually the Democrats and the media caught Nixon doing something illegal: the Watergate scandal forced Nixon to become the only president ever to resign (in 1973).

There were other important achievements of the 80th Congress. The Republicans passed, over President Truman's veto, the Taft-Hartley Act to limit the power of unions. This was one of the most important pieces of legislation in the entire century of the 1900s, and by far the most significant labor legislation in our nation's history. It was written by the brilliant conservative Senator Robert Taft, who had graduated first in his class from Yale Law School and nearly defeated Eisenhower for the Republican nomination for president in 1952. By 1947 unions had risen to the zenith of their power, having membership of nearly 10.5 million nationwide.

The Taft-Hartley Act, which was derisively called the "slave-labor bill" by unions, did the following:

• established the right of employees NOT to join unions in states that also supported this right

• a union could represent all employees only if state law permitted it and a majority of workers voted for it

• unions must give 60 days notice before striking

• the federal government could prohibit a strike for 80 days if it endangered national health or safety

• a later amendment in 1959 prohibited "secondary boycotts," which were devastating "sympathy strikes" against additional companies to increase pressure on the target company (Landum-Griffin Act)

For the purposes of this course, remember that the Taft-Hartley Act finally ended the unions' enormous power. And not a moment too soon, because there were many crippling strikes that badly hurt the country's economy in 1946 after the end of World War II. Ever since the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, Democrats have tried to repeal it, without success. It remains essential today to protect the right of workers not to join a union, and the Obama Administration and Democratic Congress may try to weaken it in 2009.

In 1955, two large labor organizations merged into the AFL-CIO, and it remains a powerful part of the Democratic Party today. But in 1959 Congress acted further to curb union power by passing the Landum-Griffin Act, which requires democracy in electing union officials, prohibits secondary boycotts (which is a boycott of additional companies to support a strike against a primary company), and places restrictions on picketing. Unions remain powerful, particularly in the car industry and among public school teachers.

Debate: Do you think union power should be strengthened or weakened by Congress today?

Several years later, in 1952, another important law was enacted over President Truman's veto: The McCarran-Walter Act. This Act limited immigration to one-sixth of one percent of the population of the continental United States in 1920. This was similar to the national-origins quota system of 1924.

The 80th Congress also cut taxes, sparking an economic boom that would last through the 1950s. It balanced the federal budget for the first time in years. It implemented the joint income tax return for married couples, which gives a financial benefit to a working man in sharing his income for tax purposes with a wife who is raising the children rather than earning an income.

Ironically, Truman ran for reelection in 1948 by campaigning against what he called a "do nothing Congress." And Truman won in an upset! But by 1952, Truman was the most unpopular president in history, and he was utterly unelectable.

Truman's mishandling of the Korean War (discussed below) hurt him the most, but he made another impulsive mistake on April 9, 1952, when he seized 88 private steel mills around the country to avert a strike during the Korean War. The American flag then flew over the mills as government property. As President he felt he had the power to take over private factories and keep them running for the good of the country, rather than be shut down in a threatened strike. Within two months the Supreme Court, which included four Justices who had been appointed by Truman, ruled against Truman in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer: the President has to obey the law and respect private property too. Control of the steel mills was returned to their owners.

World War II hero General Dwight D. Eisenhower, called "Ike", ran for president and won the White House in 1952, the first Republican presidential victory in 24 years. President Eisenhower is best known for spending his time on the golf course. Near the end of his two terms he warned against growth of a "military-industrial complex" in which government and the military would feed each other's growing power. Coming from a General, this warning was often repeated by liberals who wanted to reduce our defenses during the remainder of the Cold War.