Fat to Fry

The nation got a sharp warning. A joint congressional committee of tax experts estimated last week that at the present rate of income and outgo, the U.S. would be in the red another $3 billion by next year. Such big round numbers had lost their ability to shock, the government was already $252 billion in debt. But one fact could be understood. If even in prosperous peacetime a government did not keep out of the red, then it was playing with economic dynamite.

Washington debated: what to do? With almost monolithic stubbornness, Harry Truman still insisted that the thing to do was to boost taxes $4 billion. Apparently almost no one in Congress agreed with him. The most notable dissent last week came from a New Dealing liberal, Illinois' greying freshman Senator Paul Douglas, onetime professor of economics.

Can Anyone Deny? Increased taxes, Douglas said emphatically, were not the answer; a tax boost now, when the nation was in a mild slump, might be just the kind of shock that would put the present economy flat on its back. "It is very foolish for us to act on the basis of conditions of five or six months ago," said Douglas.

He proposed instead that the government "fry out the fat" in its system. He thought the government could reduce $30 billion of its expenditures by some 6% without injuring its services. "Is there not at least this amount of fat and excess in the government as a whole?" he asked. "Can anyone really deny this? What we know as men, we cannot pretend ignorance of as Senators."

He figured he could reduce government personnel by at least 6% simply by not filling vacancies that occurred through death and resignations. In addition he would throw out some drones. Said Douglas sternly in a distinctly un-New Dealish voice: "Getting rid of these people would actually raise the output because it would create better morale and a greater will to work in the remainder of the personnel.

"This is not a matter of liberalism versus conservatism. To be a liberal one does not have to be a wastrel . . . The budget issue is simply one of arithmetic and logic."

Favorite Morsels. Just about everyone was on his side. These included the President's own Council of Economic Advisers and industry's middle-of-the-road Committee for Economic Development, who were agreed that it was no time to raise taxes. The Democrats' own conservative wing, led by Virginia's penny-pinching Senator Harry Byrd, welcomed the warning of New Dealer Douglas.

Unfortunately, Douglas was asking Congress to do something which historically it had shown it was incapable of doing. While conservatives and liberals alike might be for frying out the other fellow's fat, each & everyone had his own favorite morsels to save: jobs for friends, subsidies for farmers, pensions for veterans, home-town creeks to be dredged, projects deemed essential to constituents' happinessi and essential to a Congressman's future.

Douglas was also asking Harry Truman to do something he almost never did: change his mind. Mr. Truman had made his stand clear, and it did not include cutting his budget. He wanted Congress to give him authority to control business in an economic emergency; he still demanded that Congress raise income taxes and enact his Fair Deal. He was already a little exasperated with the country's lawmakers. A White House caller reported him as remarking petulantly that there were "too many Byrds--B-Y-R-D--in the Congress."

Despite the friendly advice and unfriendly criticism, Mr. Truman still stood firmly on his own economic platform, even if he was somewhat of a lonely figure there.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.