Baffle of the Budget

The fight between the President and the Pentagon over the next defense budget ended last week. Truman stood firm for his reduced budget, then made a final concession by adding on $4 billion. And so, after long argument, Defense Secretary Robert Lovett settled for about $49 billion, $10 billion less than the armed services considered necessary to support the planned rate of U.S. defense buildup.

The Navy gets $13 billion plus, the Army $14 billion plus. The Air Force, which is allotted $21 billion, took the biggest cut; they had asked $29 billion. That 8-billion-dollar difference will be chiefly reflected in the time of maximum U.S. readiness, which is supposed to coincide with "the year of maximum exposure," fixed by Truman's planners as 1954.*

Expansion of the Air Force was following a schedule that would give it 126 combat wings, mostly jets of the latest obtainable types (plus 17 support wings), by the end of 1954. Under last week's Truman cuts, the Air Force now will not get to this goal until 1956. (It may have 126 combat wings in 1954, but they will include planes of obsolescent types, some of which have had heavy losses in combat with Russian-made jets in Korea.)

In slowing down the pace, Truman did not seriously argue that the world situation had eased or that the U.S. economy could not stand the strain. He left the impression that he was simply cutting expenditures in an election year.

*When the Joint Chiefs of Staff last year tried to determine 'the year of maximum exposure," they asked intelligence agencies for estimates. Every one gave the same answer: 1952. If the Joint Chiefs had accepter this estimate, the only logical course would have been to call for all-out mobilization immediately. The Chiefs regarded such a course as unrealistic, and decided that, for the time being, 1954 would be "the year of maximum exposure"--no matter what the intentions of the Russians.

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