Fiscal Fun

In their search for characteristic poses, newspaper cartoonists last week might have pictured the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee with a budget book in his left hand, a batch of appropriation bills in his right, and his legs wrapped around an adding machine. Congress had left him to his mid-July pastime of reporting analytically on a fat $4,409,377,454.15, which is to nourish the Federal Government for the fiscal year 1927.

The gentleman in the picture was Francis Emroy Warren, 82, Republican Senator from Wyoming, senectissimus of them all, father-in-law of General John J. Pershing. The duties of snowy-haired, keen-eyed Senator Warren and his Appropriations Committee are to find out the financial needs of the various Departments of the Cabinet, to frame them into bills, to confer and bicker with the House Appropriations Committee, and to guide deftly the resulting bills through Congress. Then he is left to explain the Government ledger to the people.

His research revealed that the appropriations were $470,886,681 more than those of the previous session, but were six odd millions below the original estimates submitted to the 69th Congress. Senator Warren found joy in these figures: "Good times and prosperity are immediately reflected in a demand for increased as well as new governmental functions. . . . No Congress ever made a greater record or a harder and more honest and faithful effort for economy. . . ."

Representative Madden (Republican of Illinois), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, echoed cheers for President Coolidge's economy and "the faithful manner in which he has performed his duties under the budget law." Mr. Madden predicted a surplus in the Treasury for 1927, and showed how the Government was going to get rid of its four and a half bilbion:

Public debt interest........................................................ $795,000,000

Sinking fund, debt retirement .... .....................................515,583,398

Veterans Bureau................................................................5 79,215,000

Postal service................................................................ .... 842,322,910

Navy................................................................... ................323,040,600

Army................................................................... .................271,615,207

Pension................................................................ ................202,730,000

Roads.................................................................. ................106,675,000

Tax refunds................................................................ .........155,500,000

Rivers and harbors...............................................................7 5,736,674

Shipping Board.................................................................. ....24,198,574

Prohibition enforcement.........................................................41, 713,106

Judgments and claims............................................................12,51 6,003

Public buildings.............................................................. .........13,987,810

All other activities............................................................. ....449,489,169

Another Representative of the people looked upon the columns of well-rounded figures and was shocked. He was Joseph W. Byrns (Democrat of Tennessee), ranking minority member of the House Appropriations Committee. He ridiculed the alleged economy of the Administration as suave propaganda "featuring the silent man of the White House as the economic savior of our tax-burdened people."