The Senate approved and sent to conference committee with the House today a college aid bill providing for construction loans on which both chambers agreed none of the funds could be used to build facilities for religious instruction or worship.
The measure authorized $300, 000, 000 a year for five years for such purposes but substantial differences in the measures required a conference committee to resolve the differences. In the voting, the Senate rejected an amendment, offered by Senator Sam Ervin, North Carolina Democrat, which would have barred any grants under the bill to all private and church-supported colleges. The National Community Relations Advisory Council had sent a telegram to Senate leaders, urging such a provision.
At the same time, President Kennedy sent an omnibus $5, 700,000, 000 Federal aid to education measure to Congress, in which he again asked for funds for public elementary and secondary classroom construction and teachers salaries. As he did last year in asking for similar funds, the President insisted that Constitutional provisions barred allocation of such funds to parochial and other private schools.
A battle over the exclusion, led by the Catholic church, bogged the bill in committee last year where it died. Congressional experts forecast a similar struggle over the new Administration bill and a similar outcome. The elementary and secondary public schools would get $2,100, 000,000 in Federal funds ever a three-year period.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
