Going Along

For several days, Washington had been wondering how President Kennedy would react to the report (TIME, March 29) of a ten-man presidential committee, headed by retired General Lucius Clay, recommending cuts that could save some $500 million in the Administration's foreign aid program for next year, originally set at $4.9 billion. As it turned out, the President was willing to go part way with Clay. Dropping in at a meeting of the Magazine Publishers Association, he confided that his foreign aid message this week would request $4.7 billion, and that he would be content if he ended up with $4.4 billion.

Actually, the Administration hoped to turn Clay's critical report to its own advantage. As usual, the anti-aid congressional bloc, headed by Louisiana's Democratic Representative Otto Passman, is out after the program with a meat ax. Now the Administration can point to the Clay report as proof that its own reduced requests are realistic and should not be cut further.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.