All We Can Spend

Franklin Roosevelt this week presented his second war budget. The figures ran right off the edge of the paper, the fiscal thinking soared right out of this world. For this year the U.S. budget was not held to earth by any question of what the nation could afford. It was designed to go the limit of what the U.S., by straining night & day, could possibly manage to spend to win the war.

In the fiscal year 1944 (beginning next July 1) Franklin Roosevelt figured that the U.S. could spend $104,128,924,923 directly plus $4,774,123,000 more through RFC etc. This was a staggering sum: 1) more than the combined income of all U.S. citizens in any year except 1942; 2) more than the budget of any other nation in any year in all history, past and perhaps future.

Yet, though the hugeness of the budget presaged backbreaking taxes and empty shelves for civilians, it was greeted with less grumbling than a few million dollars for a Federal Theater Project a few years ago. For of every dollar that the U.S. spends next year, 96-c- will go for the war or for interest on a public debt that was largely built by war. Said Franklin Roosevelt: "[The budget] reflects the determination of the civilians to 'pass the ammunition.' "

Important aspects of the budget message:

> Present taxes will pay only a third of next year's bill: the President therefore called for $16,000,000,000 more in taxes to bring the ratio up to half. (He favors compulsory savings, an end to joint income-tax returns, some sort of pay-as-you-go system like the Ruml plan; opposes sales taxes.) As usual he will probably get less than he asks but taxes will be upped enough so that this year's taxes will soon seem like the good old days.

> The Navy will have $22 billion to spend in fiscal 1944 (v. $17.5 billion in the current fiscal year); the Army $62 billion (v. $44 billion).

> Left for civilians, out of next year's production, will be about $500 worth of goods each--a fourth less than in 1941. But the nation will have to get along on a simpler diet, do without "the thousand and one things that are nonessentials or luxuries."

> By eliminating WPA and the food-stamp plan and trimming other expenses, the President reduced the budget for "normal" expenditures to $4,124,000,000 (36% less than in 1939). Chances are that this cut will not satisfy the Congressional economy bloc, led by Virginia's tart Senator Harry F. Byrd, which has a shrewd suspicion that many former peacetime expenditures are now masquerading in the war budget. Said the President, anticipating criticism: "I shall be glad to cooperate with the Congress in effecting further reductions. .

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