Deep in the Brush

Each year at about this time, when most other people are thinking about spring, Congressmen are figuring out how to spend the taxpayers' money to the best effect. The work is usually done in the thick underbrush of ten-to eleven-digit figures, so that distant observers scarcely know what is going on. It was that way last week.

Movements and noises in the bushes indicated that Administration forces, talking hoarsely about economizing, were also doing their best to uphold the President's most far-reaching fiscal policies, which Harry Truman had admitted would put the U.S. Treasury another $5.1 billion in the red in fiscal 1951. Republicans were trying to reduce that deficit without losing votes--since a lot of people, notably farmers and veterans, were likely to become coldly antagonistic if certain items were cut.

Congressman Clarence Cannon's Appropriations Committee, trying something new in the way of appropriating, reported out an omnibus bill of $29 billion, covering an area of spending that was formerly taken up piecemeal. The committee announced proudly that it had cut almost $1 billion from what the President asked, but at least $250 million of the cut was only a paper reduction, involving the committee's hope that programs already obligated would not cost as much as they were down for. While the Republicans' crusty John Taber, ex-chairman of the committee, argued that the cut was not nearly enough ("Our people are being taxed beyond endurance"), other Congressmen peered at the bill for its possible political effects. The bill pruned $205 million from the Veterans Administration, $203 million from the Defense Department, $53 million from the $240 million rivers and harbors projects, more familiarly known as the "pork bill."

Other, smaller deductions included $3,000,000 from the Department of Justice. But the committee thought that Justice still had enough money to raise J. Edgar Hoover's salary from $16,000 a year to $20,000, and also to hire 325 more FBI agents, chiefly to step up investigation of subversive activities. Treasury Department appropriations were cut $30 million. But the committee would find funds to hire 1,000 more revenue agents for the purpose of chasing down income-tax evaders, an operation that always shows a profit.

The bill only told part of the spending story. It did not include such items as the inescapable cost of the annual interest on the national debt ($5.6 billion in 1951), money for foreign aid, or money for various Fair Deal proposals which the Administration is urging, e.g., education, social welfare.

Something for Peanuts. Deep in the bushes, other Congressmen wrestled with these problems. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee gave its approval to Mr. Truman's request for $3.1 billion for foreign aid. But on the other side of Capitol Hill, in the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ohio's Republican Representative John Vorys won support for an amendment to cut the $3.1 billion by $1 billion. Instead, Vorys would take $1 billion worth of the Commodity Credit Corporation's surplus food and send that overseas. "We don't like that kind of straitjacket," said ECAdministrator Paul Hoffman.

Vorys argued that since Europeans would spend at least $1 billion of the ECA money for U.S. agricultural products anyhow, his plan was simpler and certainly cheaper, for the U.S. would be able to unload some of CCC's vast surpluses of cotton, wheat, corn, dried eggs, etc.

That fight was not settled, but another farm fight was. Stealing out of the canebrake, Southern Congressmen pushed through a bill to allow cotton growers to sow 1,200,000 more acres of this already too plentiful crop, with guarantees of government price support. They also managed to increase peanut planting (another so-called "basic" crop) by 100,000 acres. What the farm program (a bipartisan measure) would cost this year no one could say. To take care of it, the House, by voice vote, unhesitatingly increased CCC's borrowing power another $2 billion.

"What Mockery, What Doubletalk." As the thrashing in the bushes became more violent, the Administration suffered one sharp setback. It had demanded a $2 billion cooperative housing program for people of middle incomes ($60-$75 a week). Real estate operators, with some logic, called the program "inflationary," with some emotion dubbed it "socialistic," and succeeded in getting the measure killed out of the Senate's overall housing bill. From Key West, Harry Truman wrote a plea to Administration leaders on the Hill to save the program in the House. All veterans' organizations were for it, the A.F.L. and the C.I.O. supported it.

Most Republicans were against it. Charging that the Republicans were giving lip service to housing but undercutting it with their votes, Majority Leader John McCormack shouted: "What mockery it is, what doubletalk. One may fool the public today, but not next November, because this is going to be a live issue next fall." Republicans disregarded the threat, and so, for that matter, did 81 Democrats. The housing bill, providing close to $4.1 billion for Government loans, passed without Harry Truman's built-in feature for middle-income earners.

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