Firing Commences

It was the first broadside of the 1948 presidential campaign. Before 1,300 cheering Ohio Republicans in Columbus, U.S. Senator Robert A. Taft/- opened his "campaign last week by raking the Truman Administration from prow to poop, blasting its domestic policy and its foreign policy and praising the Republican Congress for crimping the powers of the executive. He exposed himself to the hot fire of counterattack, but that would hardly dismay Ohio's Taft.

The record of the 80th Congress is one of Bob Taft's credentials for his candidacy, and he made the most of it. The first Republican Congress since 1931 was organized, he said, "without friction and without Bilbo." With few exceptions, "differences within the party were reconciled in the party interest." Despite criticism from "Communists, New Dealers, the C.I.O. . . . and those modern planners who do not really approve of Congress at all," the 80th passed more important laws than any previous Congress.

Old Battles. On the Taft-Hartley Act: "Polls show that a great majority of labor itself is in favor of nearly every reform contained in the act."

On income-tax reduction, twice blocked by presidential vetoes: "In my opinion the tax burden today is more than can be long maintained without threatening the existence of a free economy. We are taking 30% of the people's income. . . ."

On economy: the 80th Congress "achieved the best economy record ever attained by a peacetime Congress in a quarter of a century and made the biggest cut in presidential recommendations for expenses since the present budget system was established in 1923." Taft's estimate of the cut: $3 billion. (Other estimates, all complicated by interpretive arithmetic, ranged up to $5 billion and down to $1 billion.)

New Trail. During the 80th's sessions, Bob Taft had walked more or less silently and uncomfortably in the footsteps of Michigan's Arthur Vandenberg on matters of foreign policy. He followed that trail no longer. "I am not happy," he cried, "about the country's foreign policy."

U.S. policy was "befuddled." He said: "Through the agreements made at Teheran and Yalta by President Roosevelt, and at Potsdam by President Truman, we practically abandoned all the ideals for which the war was fought. . . ." Blazing his own trail through the thickets of diplomatic history, he reached these conclusions: "We created an impossible situation in which freedom is suppressed throughout large sections of Europe and Asia. In Germany our policy has been dominated by the harsh and impractical Morgenthau plan, even though the Government pretended to repudiate it. Our German policy has wrecked the economy of Europe and now we are called upon for cash from our taxpayers to remedy the breakdown."

The U.S., he said, has "made dollars available to foreign countries in almost unlimited amounts, with little restriction of the use to be made of them." This, he said, had caused domestic prices to rise. "Those loans should be confined to actual goods, machinery and equipment necessary to enable the countries . . . to restore their own productive ability."

He made one point with which Arthur Vandenberg would agree: "Republicans were hardly called in on important new proposals like the Greek loan and the Marshall plan until the policy itself had been formulated. . . . They were merely asked to go along."

The American Method. Finally, Bob Taft let go point-blank at Harry Truman. Republican Congressmen, faced with "clearing away the wreckage . . . of the New Deal," had met their problems with courage and directness. But in every crisis the President "has shown that he is still dominated by the principles of the C.I.O." Harry Truman "clearly believes in the New Deal doctrine of spending, spending, spending. . . . He believes in taxing, taxing, taxing. . . . He insists upon a health plan which will socialize our entire medical profession. . . . He has appointed to office those who believe in control by Government. He has violently opposed every effort to bring about labor reform."

Concluded Taft: "If the people want a definite end to overgrown bureaucracy, overgrown spending, overgrown taxing, and overgrown regulation of everybody--all abuses of the New Deal; if they wish a return to the common-sense American method of handling our problems of regulation and social welfare, and our foreign policy, within the principles of American government, they can only reach that end by electing a Republican President in 1948--and they will do so."

/- As predicted, his colleague John Bricker bowed out. Said Taft gratefully: "I have never seen a new Senator who gained so rapidly the affection and respect of his colleagues."

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