Chairman Dawson convened an executive session of the full committee on May 5, 1965 to vote on H.R. 6927 and report the bill to the House. He stated that the legislation simply upgraded the existing Housing and Home Finance Agency (HHFA) to…

July 1966 monthly report for the Foreign Operations and Government Information Subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Operations. This report notes on page 7 that on July 4, 1966, the President signed into law (P.L. 89-487) S. 1160, the…

On January 13, 1965, Representative Emanuel Celler (D-NY) introduced in the House of Representatives an administration-backed immigration bill, H.R. 2580. On March 3, the Subcommittee on Immigration and Nationality, chaired by Representative Michael…

Representative Feighan did not initially endorse H.R.2580 and was close to organizations such as the American Legion and the American Coalition of Patriotic Societies that resisted immigration reform. Feighan opposed several provisions of H.R. 2580…

Celler, the dean of the House in the 89th Congress, was the only member who was in Congress in 1924 when the Immigration Quota Act passed. He voted against it and had been an ardent foe of national immigration quotas for forty years. On April 28,…

The House Judiciary Committee and the Immigration and Naturalization Subcommittee received much correspondence from individuals and groups explaining how national immigration quotas adversely affected them. This letter from the General Counsel of…

The administration had to make concessions to Representative Feighan to get his support for the Celler bill. The House Judiciary Committee’s August 3, 1965 vote of 27 to 4 to report an amended H.R. 2580 to the House was the major milestone for…

On March 18, 1965, Representative Emanuel Celler (D-NY), chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary, introduced the administration bill, H.R. 6400. The 77-year-old chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary stated that people preventing…

For years, Wilbur Mills (D-AR), Chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means, had been an obstacle to health reform, but in the 89th Congress his leadership was crucial in passing legislation that gave the nation Medicare. A committee meeting on…

The Ways and Means Committee deliberations on health legislation culminated on March 24, 1965 when the committee voted on draft legislation that Mills had proposed at the March 2 meeting. This tally sheet from the March 24 executive session…