Yardstick: Anger

Congress was even angrier when it picked up its pruning shears. With one big snip, the House Appropriations Committee last week cut more than $365 million out of requests for $843 million made by the Administration to run some of its agencies.

The severest cut was made on the Voice of America. The committee sliced its funds by 90%, from $97.5 million to only $9.5 million. In doing so, the committee said that it really approved of the Voice's mission, but just didn't like the way it was being run. (A citizens' watchdog committee, headed by the Christian Science Monitor's Editor Erwin D. Canham, rushed into print with an endorsement of the Voice's operation.)

Voice officials themselves were almost voiceless with dismay at the committee's action, but after a time they announced bravely that, despite the slash, they would go ahead with Operation Vagabond, a new plan to install powerful radio stations on fast-going freighters. The ships, by being able to move about, would beam a U.S. "campaign of truth" into Communist countries despite Soviet jamming tactics.

Also snipped:

P:Various defense-production agencies, including the National Production Authority which lost $13 million out of a requested $51 million.

P:The Civil Defense Administration, which sought $403 million and got less than half of that.

Anyone who ever worked in Washington would agree that almost any agency could always get along on less than it asked for. But there was no evidence that the House Appropriations Committee had used any yardstick but anger in making its cuts.

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