Cut that Budget!

Cut that Budget

"I have received personal letters about the budget from nearly every state in the union," said Missouri's Clarence Cannon to his colleagues in the House, "and every one of them urges a reduction." Oldtimer Cannon, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, has seen 34 federal budgets come and go over the years, but he cannot recall anything like the current public outcry against President Eisenhower's $71.8 billion fiscal-1958 budget, biggest in the nation's peacetime history.

A lot of Washington lawmakers and officials report an extraordinary tide of budget-criticizing mail. Treasury Secretary George Humphrey still gets sackfuls of letters applauding his furor-stirring prediction that continued high taxes would eventually bring on a hair-curling depression (TIME, Feb. 18 et seq.). New Hampshire's Republican Senator Styles Bridges has been getting 50 cut-that-budget letters a day--"a surprising volume," he says. Observed a Bridges aide after studying the boss's mail: "The public complacency of recent years about Government spending has definitely worn off."

"Extravagant & Inflationary." Worn off too by the new budget was the first bloom of enthusiasm for Eisenhower's "Modern Republicanism." Newspapers long friendly to Ike rumbled that Modern Republicanism looked a lot like the big-spending New and Fair Deals. "Good Republicans," mourned a California G.O.P. county chairman, "are worried about it and complaining about it--the budget, the New Deal approach." Growled Iowa's Republican Congressman Harold Royce Gross: "I'm afraid I'm not a Modern Republican--not if it means a $72 billion budget."

Programs for lopping big chunks off that $72 billion are piling up. New Hampshire's Bridges suggests nicks and slashes adding up to a hefty $3.3 billion. Virginia's Senator Harry Byrd, working on his yearly clipped-wing "Byrd budget," promises that he will show Congress how to save at least $5 billion, but has yet to produce the details. The National Association of Manufacturers, whose President Ernest G. Swigert last week damned Ike's budget as "extravagant and inflationary," proposes a massive whack of $6.5 billion. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce calls for cuts totaling $4.2 billion, and is still looking for soft spots. Chamber President John S. Coleman contends that a slash of at least $5 billion is "absolutely essential."

With interest payments and veterans' benefits uncuttable, many of the big and little cuts proposed fall into four main sectors:

FOREIGN AID ($4.4 billion). Bridges suggests saving $950 million by taking the average percentage slice that Congress has knifed out of presidential aid requests over the past four years: 21.6%. Atop that, he wants to eliminate programs totaling $225 million which he considers not in keeping with "the declared and enacted policy of Congress." e.g., aid to Communist Yugoslavia. The N.A.M. calls for an aid slash of $2.2 billion, or 50%, the Chamber of Commerce for a somewhat less drastic $1.5 billion.

HEALTH, EDUCATION AND WELFARE ($2.8 billion). Bridges would do little trimming here, but the N.A.M. and the C. of C. consider this a Welfare State monster, fair game for the ax. Both want to chop off completely the Eisenhower program of aid for school construction, hack away on other grants-in-aid to the states. The N.A.M.'s proposed amputations add up to $1 billion, the C. of C.'s to $700 million.

DEFENSE ($38 billion). Bridges proposes an overall cut of $750 million, or 2%, holds that the Defense Department's $10 billion carryover in unobligated funds will give a wide margin of defense safety. The N.A.M. suggests a flat 5% without further specifications, also would deny the Atomic Energy Commission $30 million for new plants. According to the C. of C., savings on research and development, maintenance and administration, plus "redeployment of forces" (i.e., pulling back some troops from overseas), would enable the Defense Department to get along on $1.2 billion less (about 3%) without any cutback in weapons procurement.

AGRICULTURE ($8.4 billion). Bridges favors congressional legislation that would scale down some politically sacred agriculture programs--the soil bank, commodity credit, conservation, etc. Such cuts (plus similar cuts in federal grants to states) would save, he says, some $500 million. The N.A.M. would cut back soil Conservation, the farmers' loans and rural electrification programs to 1956 levels, and it draws a special bead on a $3,000,000 program of grants to states for tree planting. The Chamber of Commerce wants to save $216 million by cutting off grant money for the school-lunch program and cutting back conservation payments.

Perfect Monument. Since the Administration's budget proposals are basically dictated by 1) fixed costs such as debt interest, 2) cold war necessities and 3) public demand for services, it is unlikely that Congress' final budget parings will amount to anything like the N.A.M.'s $6.5 billion, or even Senator Bridges' $3.3 billion. Bridges himself admits that what he really hopes for is a $2.5 billion cut. California's Bill Knowland, perhaps even more realistically, talks of $2 billion.

Last week Clarence Cannon's House Appropriations Committee got down to the actual job of wielding the economy scalpel, started off gently by shaving $80 million--a little more than 2%--off the Treasury and Post Office requests. As if encouraged when the full House passed the shaved bill by a voice vote, the committee went ahead and sliced the Interior Department fund by $61 million, or 12%. Among the bits of trimmed-off fat: $25,000 for designing a monument "symbolizing the ideals of democracy." Ruled the committee: "The Capitol Building itself is the best possible symbolization of the ideals of democracy."

But it takes a heap of $25,000 parings to make $2 billion. And while the House was trimming $25,000 items here and there, Georgia's Senator Richard Russell worried about the Administration's planned 1958 cutback in military research and development funds, was vowing to push for an extra appropriation of "several hundred million dollars" for atomic-airplane research. To reach even the Knowland goal, Cannon & Co. have a long way to go.

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