How to Save Money

Looking around wildly for some way to save money with a minimum of local political pain, the House Appropriations Committee last week seized on a favorite target: foreign aid. Last week it whacked the European recovery appropriation down $629 million to $4.6 billion, and sliced $150 million out of the $1 billion appropriation for U.S.-occupied areas. Promptly, the alarms sounded.

Up to Capitol Hill scurried ECAdministrator Paul Hoffman, who had spent anxious months justifying the appropriations. To Republican Leader Joseph Martin and Republican Tightwad John Taber, Salesman Hoffman made an urgent, timely appeal. The cuts, warned Hoffman, would embarrass Secretary of State Dean Acheson at the Big Four conference in Paris. Hoffman's proposition: let the cuts stand, but let ECA come back for more at the end of 13 1/2 months instead of the 15 months originally intended.

Speaker Sam Rayburn used the same arguments on recalcitrant Democrats. When the revised ERP bill hit the House floor, it sailed through 193 to 27. Half of the cut in funds for occupied areas was also restored. It was a compromise designed to keep everybody happy: the House had had its fun, swinging the ax --and, in the end, ECA was probably not hurt badly, just nicked in the neck.

Last week, the House also: P:Rejected a bill to increase the pay of everybody in the armed services except recruits, along lines recommended by a civilian commission, after a year's study. Cost: $350 million the first year. Total monthly pay of a major general has risen only 11% ($805 to $895) since 1908 while a private's base pay has been boosted almost 350% (from $18 to $80). But since the new bill favors the brass, a group of ex-G.I.s in the House raised such a fuss that it was sent back to committee, 227 to 163.

The Senate:

P: Approved a bill strengthening the hand of Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson (see Armed Forces) by giving him specific "direction, authority and control" over the armed forces instead of "general" authority previously granted. It would set up a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, making him the principal military adviser to the President and the Defense Secretary, but giving him no vote on the JCS. The bill also limits the power of the Army, Navy and Air Force Secretaries to appeal over the Defense Secretary's head to the President. The House has not yet acted, and seemed to be in no hurry. P:Approved unanimously a bill permitting the annual admission of 100 aliens who have jeopardized their lives in espionage activity for the U.S. It also permits the Central Intelligence Agency to spend money for espionage without accounting for it.

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