Budget Bouquet

"I believe that the Federal Government today is the best conducted big busi ness in the world."

This tenet of the Coolidge credo was reiterated by the President at last week's semi-annual business meeting of the government in Washington. It was the dominant note in an address devoted to the eight years of budget system history. Those years have seen the public debt reduced from $24,000,000,000 to $17,000,000,000. Big business, an invalid in 1921, has revived. Unemployment has been lessened, economic confidence restored, etc. etc.

President Coolidge gave credit largely to the elimination of government extravagance under the budget system, whose history is almost all within the Coolidge era. Forty-three scattered and isolated departments and bureaus were coordinated for unified effort, their expenses checked by meticulous budgeteers and initialed by a prudent chief executive.

But the President warned against pride. Brightly he illumined the need for further constructive economy. "A short time ago," he stated, "there were pending bills which would have doubled our annual cost of government. Had there not been a constant insistence [by the speaker] upon rigid economy, many of these bills would have become law. A decrease of less than 10% in the income of the nation would produce a deficit in our present budget."

Plainly the President wishes to leave a surplus for Mr. Hoover. Observers inferred that he did not consider it "big business" to drain the present treasury for cruisers or prohibition enforcement (see p. 10).