Too Little or Too Much?

It was the highest price the U.S. had ever paid for its security in peacetime--almost four times Franklin Roosevelt's entire first budget. But far from trying to trim it down, the U.S. House of Representatives last week added a few hundred millions of dollars to what President Truman had asked. Then with a heavy sense of urgency, some sane and some not-so-sane oratory, and a frank admission of helplessness, the House approved the record $15.9 billion defense bill.

The feeling of helplessness came from trying to put an exact price tag on what it would cost to meet the unknown. Texas' shy, scholarly George Mahon, chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee, made the point: "If war comes too soon we are appropriating too little. If we have miscalculated the dangers, if the threat of war is just a deceptive mirage on the horizon, we are appropriating too much."

Mahon could only hope that his final figure sensibly measured the distance between the two extremes. He and his committee had talked it over for eleven weeks with the nation's top military people: the past & present Secretaries of Defense, the three Secretaries and their chiefs of staff. The military agreed that if war immediately threatened, the bill should be at least $50 billion, not $15 billion. Said Mahon: "These men did not predict an early outbreak of war, but they agreed that some unpredictable development might throw us suddenly into conflict . . . This, however, was not anticipated . . . No military leader has made the remotest suggestion that we should launch an unprovoked attack upon any country on earth . . . No military man before us recommended complete preparation for war. Nothing would please a potential enemy better than to have us bankrupt our country and destroy our economy by maintaining complete readiness for armed conflict." As it is, added Mahon, "This year we will appropriate for national defense more than 3,000% above the sum that was expended for national defense four years after World War I."

After only two days' debate, the House voted 271-1 for the huge bill. The one dissenting vote was cast by Manhattan's hot-eyed Representative Vito Marcantonio, who talks a lot about U.S. aggression and not at all of Russian aggression.

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