THE HUMPHREY FLAP

WANDERING through the Capitol corridors at the lonely hour of 6 p.m., a newsman was surprised last week at the sight of a member of the Eisenhower Cabinet seeking out late-staying Congressmen to whom he could pour out his budget woes. What, asked the reporter, was the Cabinet member doing at that hour? "You know what I'm doing," snapped Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield. "I'm trying to repair George Humphrey's wreckage."

By last week Washington was strewn with the wreckage of the demolition job that U.S. Treasury Secretary George Magoffin Humphrey began last Jan. 15. On that day Humphrey held a press conference to explain the latest Eisenhower budget. His prepared statement, written with White House assistance and approved word for word by Dwight Eisenhower, left an eminently proper impression of a Treasury Secretary defending his boss's budget. Then came a question-and-answer period--and George Humphrey struck out on his own. If long-range expenditures are not reduced, Humphrey predicted, the nation will see "a depression that will curl your hair, because we are just taking too much money out of this economy that we need to make jobs." On television a fortnight later, Humphrey expressed confidence that the budget could indeed be cut and that" "if we can make a sufficient reduction now, then we would be in a position to reduce taxes a year from now."

"When George Talks." George Humphrey's budget spark went off with one of Washington's biggest bangs, and the Administration, caught unawares, reacted with near-fatal slowness. This was partly because of the respect George Humphrey has won as the recognized strong man of the Eisenhower Cabinet. "When George talks," another Cabinet member once said, "we listen." Humphrey has generally been worth listening to. At 67, he has applied to U.S. fiscal policy the same firm, careful hand that he used in bringing Cleveland's M. A. Hanna Co. from a snarled tangle of mining miscellany to a mighty corporation with holdings worth $250 million. As the man who shaped the Eisenhower economic policy, Humphrey is entitled to a full share of the credit for the nation's unprecedented prosperity.

Moreover, George Humphrey holds a special place in the regard of Dwight Eisenhower. Since they first got to know each other well aboard the cruiser Helena returning from Korea after Ike's election, they have been close friends.

Ike has the highest opinion of Humphrey's abilities, turned instinctively to him for counsel when Secretary of State Dulles lay ill during the Suez crisis. In February, even after Humphrey had flushed out the covey of budget cutters, the President went quail hunting on Humphrey's Georgia plantation. Because Humphrey is Ike's friend and a top Cabinet figure, his hair-curling statements called for an extra-strong presidential rebuke if the U.S. was to believe that it was being taxed for an honest-weight budget. Instead, Ike decided to smooth things over, seemed almost to be agreeing with Humphrey when he remarked at his own press conference that if Congressmen could cut the budget, it "is their duty to do it." "I'm witk You." That was all the slashers needed. Before long, White House staffers were wringing their hands as they saw the Administration's programs under fire. Throughout the Administration the budget uproar came to be called "the Humphrey flap." Typical remark at Cabinet meetings: "George, you see what you cost me in the House this week?" The most outspoken of Humphrey's Cabinet critics was Commerce Secretary Sinclair Weeks, whose New England sense of thrift is every bit as sharp as that of Midwesterner Humphrey.

On his way to the Bermuda conference aboard the U.S.S. Canberra, President Eisenhower became convinced that he would have to go all-out in fighting to save such budget specifics as foreign aid and school construction. Since then, Humphrey has publicly tried to reconcile his views to Ike's, claimed that his ideas have been distorted (they have--sometimes). But, he has never adopted the stance that is expected of a Treasury Secretary: intelligent, patient defense of a budget for which he is in large part responsible.

In a sense George Humphrey cannot see what the Humphrey flap is all about. He had nothing specific in mind but a low budget figure, even though he would shed no tears if such items as foreign economic aid and aid to education were cut. If he has stirred up popular misgivings about the budget that haunt every Congressman, he cannot believe that this is a disservice--and many would agree with him in principle. But the disservice haunts those fellow members of the Administration who believe that the budget is the minimum price for providing the services that an expanding U.S. needs domestically, and the leadership that the free world needs abroad.

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