Russell Long: Grandma Amendments, the EITC, and the New Orleans Saints

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Russell B. Long was born Huey Pierce Long III in 1918, son of Louisiana governor and senator Huey Long, and is the only person preceded in the Senate by both his father and his mother, Rose McConnell Long. After serving as student body president at LSU, he commanded a Navy landing craft in the invasions of North Africa, Sicily, Italy and southern France, earning four battle stars. Elected in 1948 one day before turning 30, he took office on December 31, gaining seniority over an incoming class of 1949 that included Lyndon B. Johnson and Hubert Humphrey. He chaired the Senate Finance Committee from 1966 to 1981, with jurisdiction over all federal revenue and about 40 percent of federal spending, and the Wall Street Journal called him the fourth branch of government.

Long preferred attaching amendments to must-pass tax bills over sponsoring headline legislation. He was the chief architect of the Earned Income Tax Credit and of Employee Stock Ownership Plans. With Representative Hale Boggs he placed the AFL and NFL merger's antitrust exemption in a tax bill in exchange for an expansion team, and the New Orleans Saints were born on November 1, 1966. He signed the 1956 Southern Manifesto and voted against the Voting Rights Act of 1965, yet backed statehood for Hawaii and Alaska, twice voted to outlaw the poll tax, hired Black staff in 1960, stayed out of the filibuster and later voted to extend the act. He retired in 1987 with 75 percent approval and died in 2003.

• A 1972 provision letting a Thibodaux Marine keep a $547 overpayment also created the Middle District of Louisiana federal court.
• Colleagues called his provisions for the elderly and poor grandma amendments.
• He summed up tax politics as: don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree.
• A 1966 plane conversation with New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison about the Warren Commission helped spur Garrison's JFK investigation.
• Martin Luther King Jr. called his 1965 election as Majority Whip a blessing in disguise.