If You Put It in Figures--

President Roosevelt last week presented his first war budget. It called for the U.S. to spend in the fiscal year 1943 (beginning next July 1) $58,927,992,300.

By far the greater part ($52,786,186,000) of this sandbagging sum is to go for war expenses. For "normal" requirements, including interest on the public debt: $6,141,806,300 ($437,464,462 less than in the current fiscal year).

The figures were too tremendous to grasp, but statisticians fumbled feebly with them. Mr. Roosevelt was asking the U.S. to spend in one twelvemonth a sum: 1) $21,000,000,000 greater than the total value of all securities on the New York Stock Exchange; 2) equal to the entire dollar value of all the products turned out in 1939 by the 184,000 factories in the U.S.; 3) equivalent to $3,295 per hour since the start of the Christian era.

This freight train of boxcar numbers was too much for editorialists, who tiptoed away, began talking of something else. The New York Times told its readers: "It is more profitable ... to discuss objectives and principles." The New York Herald Tribune simply gave up without a twitch, headlined its budget editorial: "Next: A Real Production Head."

People with long memories smiled a pale smile at the thought of the good old days when a favorite winter indoor sport was beefing over the annual deficit, when a couple of spent billions was a shocker. One of the fixtures each January had been the annual calculations of how much more the President had spent during the New Deal than most of the other Presidents put together. Now the budget had gone far beyond even a grim joke.

The President's budget was based on a flat statement: "We are determined to pay whatever price we must to preserve our way of life."

The Government is now spending on the war effort at the rate of two billion dollars a month, may spend more than five billion a month during fiscal 1943. Big budget points: > The Government is determined to devote "at least one-half" of national production to the war effort. > The major Federal aid programs--farm aid, work relief, youth aid--can be reduced by about one-half, to about 1.4 billion dollars during fiscal 1943. But the President abolished none of them, merely short-rationed each program. > New taxes of seven billion dollars must be levied, plus another two billion dollars of social-security collections (this latter fund would not reduce the deficit; would serve as a post-war works-financing cushion) (see p. 15). > To control inflation the President called for a rounded, integrated program of direct price controls, a flexible tax policy, allocations, rationing, credit controls and producers' and consumers' cooperation. > Most chilling passages in the message: "I do not at present propose general consumer ration cards. . . . These debt levels [a 1943 public debt of 110 billion dollars] require an increase in the annual interest from one billion dollars in 1940 to above 2.5 billion dollars at the end of fiscal year 1943. Such an increase in interest requirements will prevent us for some time after the war from lowering taxes to the extent otherwise possible."

In all the budget's 1,172 pages, its 5 lb. 1 oz. of weight, there was no real relief for the oppressed, bursting mind of the U.S. taxpayer, now strained many times beyond what would have been ultima Thule for the Founding Fathers. But there were a few grim economies, not figured on by Franklin Roosevelt and the Budget Bureau: the U.S. may very soon be relieved of the present expenditure of $161,425 for expenses of the High Commissioner to the Philippines. And there will be no immediate need of the $39,450 appropriated for the care of lepers on Guam.

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