On January 4, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson called on Congress to eliminate the nation’s forty-year-old national origins quota system as the basis for immigration and pass an immigration law “based on the work a man can do and not where he was…

On January 7, 1965, Senator Edmund S. Muskie (D-ME), chair of the Special Air and Water Pollution Subcommittee of the Senate Public Works Committee, introduced S. 306 with 20 cosponsors. The bill was based on findings of a 1964 report of Muskie’s…

President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s health problems and President John F. Kennedy’s assassination heightened support for a constitutional amendment to address the exercise of presidential power in the event of presidential disability and to provide a…

On February 1, 1965, President Johnson announced the launching of a “nationwide job development program.” The following day, Senator Joseph S. Clark (D-PA) introduced S. 974 that provided for an expanded federal jobs training program to address an…

Broad, bipartisan support for voting rights was signaled by the 66 Senators who were eager to sign as sponsors of an administration-backed bill that had been quietly negotiated with Senate leaders. When introduced on March 18, 1965, 46 Democrats and…

The number of sponsors indicated that voting rights legislation was likely to pass on the floor, if an acceptable bill could be reported from the committee. Minutes after the bill was introduced, Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-MT), and…

As the Senate floor debate entered its third week, Mansfield and Dirksen began to explore ways to end debate and bring the bill to a vote. As they quietly polled members, on May 21, 1965, Philip A. Hart (D-MI), the bill’s floor manager, initiated a…

Between 1961 and 1964, Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson annually proposed that Congress pass legislation creating a cabinet-level housing department. On March 28, 1965, this typed copy of the administration- backed bill creating a…

In his State of the Union address, President Lyndon B. Johnson called for a National Foundation on the Arts, but he didn’t mention a similar foundation for the humanities. S. 1483 was an administration bill introduced by Senator Claiborne Pell…

After World War II, average life expectancy increased, the number of Americans above 65 years old grew, and national organizations representing the elderly proliferated. This document, prepared for Senator John Sparkman (D-AL) and similar statistical…