Don't Look Now, But ...

No matter how well braced he was for the new defense program, John Citizen was going to be hard put not to emit at least one wild and profane cry when he got the word. Best Washington guess at the next national budget: approximately $73 billion, or $20 billion more than this year.

Government tax experts, mulling how to keep on a pay-as-you-go basis, guessed that at best only $3 to $5 billion more can be raised by an excess-profits tax. Raising the 45% corporate-profits tax to 55% could squeeze out another $4 billion. Where to find the remaining $11 billion? Nowhere but in the pockets of individual citizens.

The new interim tax law which raises income taxes an average of 17%, effective Oct. 1, will gather only about $2.7 billion extra over twelve months' time. Another raise next year, if twice as stiff, would probably bring in added taxes at the rate of no more than $6 billion a year. That would leave $5 billion to be gathered from broadened excise taxes, or from a federal sales tax--all of which would result in the highest levies in U.S. history. Congress might not stand for that, might decide instead to go deeper into debt (national debt today: $256 billion). While kicking in the highest taxes since V-J day, U.S. citizens would thus still have to watch the national debt (and their long-term liability for taxes) rise . . . and rise . . . and rise.

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