FULBRIGHT’S BILL Although his 30-year tenure is best remembered for vocal antiwar positions and spats with Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, it was as a freshman senator that J. William Fulbright established his most enduring legacy. In late 1945, in office for less than a year, Fulbright introduced a bill to deal with the problem of America’s World War II surplus. Millions of tractors, trains, hospital beds – you name it – were no longer needed by our armed forces, but the cost of returning the items to the United States would have offset any revenue from their sale. Foreign nations recovering from years of war were desperate for the equipment, clothes and tools the United States left behind, but they were also broke and deeply in debt. With the consequences of post-World War I debt still fresh in everybody’s mind, Fulbright’s bill allowed foreign nations to barter for American war surplus with international education credits, thus keeping their own economies afloat while creating the bilateral exchange programs that Fulbright’s tutor at Oxford later called “the largest and most significant movement of scholars across the earth since the fall of Constantinople in 1453.” However, Fulbright knew that money and foreign relations were two of politics’ most stubborn sticking points. Rather than grandstanding, he sold his idea to party leadership while moving the bill along through his senate subcommittee without bringing extra attention to it. Even its title was camouflaged to be boring: “A bill to amend the Surplus Property Act of 1944 to designate the Department of State as the disposal agency for surplus property outside the United States, its Territories and Possessions, and for other purposes.” When the bill was brought to the Senate floor in April 1946, Fulbright asked for unanimous consent to waive normal procedure, approve the bill and pass it to the House for consideration. Sen. Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee, the only senator whom Fulbright knew to be openly hostile to the bill, was mysteriously absent from the Senate chamber at the time. The motion passed. The House spent even less time considering the bill, approving it on what was described as a “whoop and a holler.” By the time it reached President Truman’s desk in August, what had become known as the Fulbright Act had passed Congress without a single formal vote. McKellar later caught up to Fulbright to reprimand his freshman colleague for sneaking the bill behind his back. “Young man,” he scolded, “it’s a very dangerous thing to send our fine young girls and boys abroad. They’ll be infected with those foreign ‘-isms.’” McKellar was only half-right: Fulbright’s point was that their foreign counterparts might learn some of our -isms, too.
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