116. Editorial Note
On May 25, 1961, President Kennedy delivered a special message to a joint session of the Congress on urgent national programs. Among the major measures discussed in his message was the importance of military and economic assistance, and he indicated he would shortly submit draft legislation to implement the administration’s foreign aid program. On the following day, May 26, he sent identical letters to President of the Senate Lyndon B. Johnson and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn describing the major features of the attached draft legislation on foreign aid. For text of his remarks to the joint session, see Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1961, pages 396-406. For text of his letter, see ibid., pages 407-411. The draft bill became S. 1983, which Senator J. William Fulbright introduced for the administration on May 31. Text of this bill is in International Development and Security: Hearings Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Eighty-seventh Congress, First Session, Part 1, pages 1-25.
Hearings on the bill in the Senate and House of Representatives took place from May 31 to July 6. For texts of these hearings, see ibid., Parts 1-2, and The International Development and Security Act: Hearings Before the [Page 260] Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, Eighty-seventh Congress, First Session, Parts 1-3. Testimony by Henry Labouisse, Adlai Stevenson, Secretary Rusk, and several other administration officials on behalf of the bill in closed session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as well as minutes of the Committee’s meetings extending to July 24 are in Executive Sessions of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (Historical Series), Eighty-seventh Congress, First Session, 1961, volume XIII, pages 3-18, 81-233, 277-378, 380, and 395-401.
Considerable documentation on the Kennedy administration’s strategy in supporting the foreign aid legislation in Congress is in Department of State, Central Files 700.5-MSP and 811.0000. Two letters from Under Secretary of State Bowles to President Kennedy, May 22 and 23, in which Bowles offered much advice and encouragement on the promotion of the foreign assistance program, are in the Supplement.
Administration officials also expounded on the foreign assistance program in public forums. For texts of the remarks of President Kennedy and Secretary Rusk, for example, in addresses to the Eighth National Conference on International Economic and Social Development in Washington on June 15 and 16, see Department of State Bulletin, July 3, 1961, pages 3-10.
After the House and Senate passed separate foreign assistance authorization bills, a conference committee resolved differences in the two bills on August 30, and the House and Senate passed the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as it was called, on August 31. On September 4, President Kennedy signed the bill into law. (P.L. 87-195; 75 Stat. 424) For text of President Kennedy’s signing statement, see Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1961, page 588.
In his signing statement, the President said, “I am hopeful that the Congress will provide the funds necessary to fulfill the commitments it undertook in enacting this legislation.” The congressional appropriations committees cut foreign assistance, however, and the resulting Foreign Assistance and Related Agencies Appropriation Act, 1962, approved on September 30, 1961 (P.L. 87-329; 75 Stat. 717), appropriated only $3,914,600,000 for foreign aid for fiscal year 1962, including $1,600,000,000 in military aid, $1,112,500,000 in development loans, and $296,500,000 in development grants. The total amount was $860,900,000 less than the $4,775,500,000 revised total that the administration had requested and $338,900,000 less than that authorized in the Foreign Assistance Act, 1961. (Congressional Quarterly Almanac, volume XVII (1961), pages 310-311)
A summary and analysis of the congressional legislation on foreign aid, including amendments to P.L. 480, is in Current Economic Developments, Issue No. 634, October 10, 1961, pages 1-8. For text, see the Supplement.