Next Year's Needs

Congress wanted to know only one thing about President Roosevelt's relief plans for fiscal 1937. How many billions was he going to ask for? Last week, on the eve of his departure for Florida, he sent Congress his answer: $1,500,000,000.

The President's vital figure was documented with a picture of the relief problem as it looks to New Deal eyes:

P: 5,000,000 more people with jobs in December 1935 than in March 1933.

P: 3,800,000 families and unattached persons now on work relief and 1,500,000 additional on local and state relief.

P: Untold others--unemployed but not destitute, part-time workers, youths who never have had jobs--suffering hardships.

"Because of the impossibility of an exact definition of what constitutes unemployment, no figures which purport to estimate the total unemployed in the nation can be even approximately accurate."

How Much? Franklin Roosevelt's reason for including no relief estimates in his budget message last January was that, given a two-months' delay, he could transmit estimates with "far greater knowledge and accuracy." Last week his knowledge and accuracy were still definitely vague to many a Congressman. He pointed out that more than $1,000,000,000 allotted for this year's public works and other projects would not be spent until those projects were completed in fiscal 1937. Next year's regular budget carries about $600,000,000 for various public works and Civilian Conservation Corps. Declared the President last week: "If to this total of $1,600,000,000 there were added $2,000,000,000, to be expended for relief in the fiscal year 1937, the total for this purpose would just about equal the amount that is being now expended in the fiscal year 1936."

Burden. Rather than go on the assumption that relief needs in fiscal 1937 would approximate those of fiscal 1936, the President chose an alternative, not so vague as a suggestion, not so definite as a plan: "I am, however, not asking this Congress to appropriate $2,000,000,000.

"I am asking only for an appropriation of $1,500,000,000 to the Works Progress Administration. . . . This request . . . will, if acted upon favorably by the Congress, give security during the next fiscal year to those in need, on condition, however, that private employers hire many of those now on relief rolls.

"The trend of re-employment is upward. But this trend, at its present rate of progress, is inadequate. I propose, therefore, that we ask private business to extend its operations so as to absorb an increasing number of the unemployed. . . ."

Blame? Unemployment today is, as commentators on the President's relief message hastened to point out, concentrated in the heavy industries, steel, building construction, etc. The failure of heavy industries to recover lost ground and thereby re-employ more men is blamed, in part at least, on the New Deal and its repressive policies toward Business. Administration critics last week were quick to contrast the President's exhortation to industry to absorb more unemployment with his latest tax message in which he recommended a penal levy on corporate surpluses.

As a political proposition, however, his proposal enabled the President to say: "The ultimate cost of the Federal Works Program will thus be determined by private enterprise." By putting the blame, if any, for additional relief costs on Business, he could present a relief bill, close to a politically ideal figure--not so small as to sustain charges that he was planning to starve the jobless, not so large as to leave him no answer to the charge that relief costs and Federal deficits are still mounting.

Grumbling there was in Congress, from Republicans intent on making a record of protest, from Democrats, fearful of the New Deal's relief policies. Said Senator McNary with Republican vim: "It's too much money." Said Senator Clark with Democratic disgust: "I'm sick of voting blank checks." But no one dreamed that the President would not get substantially what he asked for without any real opposition.

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