First Slice: 61%

Harry Truman's budget called for expenditure of nearly $1.2 billion to operate 20-odd Independent Offices (e.g., the Federal Trade Commission, the President's office) during fiscal 1954. Last week a revised Independent Offices budget was approved by Chairman John Taber's House Appropriations Committee. After Taber and the Administration's own budget men had got through wringing the fat from it, figure was slimmed down to $451 million --a cut of 61%.

Some of the cuts were mere bookkeeping, e.g., the committee decided that the Government did not have to pay itself $192 million interest on the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund. But others were solid, e.g., the committee threw out a General Services Administration request for $188 million to stockpile supplies because GSA still has $457 million left over to spend for that purpose.

Then, branching into the bookkeeping area, the committee demonstrated how much cash a few administrative decisions could pile up. By cutbacks (e.g., slashing $795 million from the Public Housing Administration's proposed expenditures) and sales of assets (e.g., $1 billion worth of mortgages held by the Federal National Mortgage Association), the U.S. could better its cash balances by $2.8 billion all told, the committee reported. While some of these "savings" amounted to little more than transferring assets from one pocket to another, they nonetheless were an indicator of John Taber's frame of mind about the major budget requests yet to come.

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