Congress' Week

Congress could hardly wait to get at Harry Truman's veto of the tax-reduction bill. When it came, it was heavy with sober warnings. The President argued that it was unwise, in a time when new expenditures for defense and foreign aid were in prospect, to cut revenues to such an extent "as to make likely a deficit."* Furthermore, he said, the bill would "greatly increase" the danger of further inflation by increasing civilian purchasing power.

But legislators who remembered Truman's own ill-considered "$40-and-a-mule" plan for tax reduction were not impressed. Thirty-eight minutes after it had received the President's veto, the House overrode it, 311 to 88.

The Senate permitted itself 78 minutes of debate, brought to a close by Colorado's bald Gene Milliken, who had guided the bill to passage. Senator Milliken scoffed at the "nervous Nellyism" of his opponents. Said he: "We have got to strengthen our economy to the utmost, and this is one way of doing it. If we come to war--God forbid-- we will have to raise taxes, but if we do, we will have a more equitable basis and that fact alone justifies this bill." The Senate vote to override was a massive 77 to 10. The tax cut was law.

The bill was a better one than either of those Truman had vetoed last year. Its percentage of tax relief, even for single persons, ranged from 100% in the lowest bracket to 7.5% in the highest. And it was one of the few tax bills in history which paid at least & at last some attention to the usually overlooked middle class.

*An immediate unlikelihood: the Treasury reported last week that its surplus for the first nine months of fiscal 1947-48 is $7.8 billion.

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