Too Little Too Much?

What will Harry Truman's program cost? The President answered the question this week as well as he could, in a 6 1/4-lb. book as big as a Manhattan telephone directory, entitled The Budget.

For all its weight and formidable tables The Citizens Committee for the Hoover Report commended the President for presenting a budget which had "order and clarity." It was prefaced by a cheerful message from Mr. Truman himself.

The soundness of a fiscal program, said the President, depends primarily on whether it provides security for the nation and social progress for the people. A program which sacrifices these things merely to be in balance is "irresponsible and shortsighted." His budget, which called for total expenditures of $42.4 billion in fiscal 1951 against an estimated income of only $37.3 billion, will put the U.S. another $5.1 billion in the red.*

The fact that the 1951 deficit would have to be laid on top of a 1950 deficit ($5.5 billion) and on top of a 1949 deficit ($1.8 billion) and that the nation would be confronted with a total national debt in 1952 of $263.8 billion seemed to worry the President hardly at all. Balancing a budget is a long-term project, he said. He seemed convinced that a reduction in the costs of foreign aid, the veterans' programs, farm-price supports and home mortgage purchases, along with an increase in postal rates (which he was recommending), a revision in taxes, plus an expanding economy (see above), would bring income and outgo back into balance "in the next few years."

Wars, Hot & Cold. The 1,401 pages covered everything from the $150,000 salary and allowance for the President to $1,100 for a new car for the Washington zoo. Dominating everything else was the inordinate cost of war, past & present, hot & cold: $30 billion.

Figured in the cost were $6.1 billion for veterans and their care, $5.6 billion interest on a debt largely incurred in wars; $4.7 billion for aid to allies. But the biggest single item in the war bill was $13.5 billion for national defense. With that vast sum, boosted $400 million above last year's expenditures, Mr. Truman proposed to finance the biggest defense establishment since demobilization after World War II: 1,507,000 regular fighting men and 979,000 reserves; ten Army divisions and 48 antiaircraft battalions; 238 Navy combat ships and 414 other vessels; 48 Air Force groups and 13 separate squadrons operating 8,800 planes. With $2.1 billion, he would procure 2,300 new planes for all services.

How Necessary? The other items in his budget, totalling $12.5 billion, were for actually running the government (a conservative $1.3 billion), and for federal contributions which he deemed "necessary" to the country's continued wellbeing: appropriations for aviation, highways, flood control, navigation, reclamation, power, housing, rural electrification, social welfare, health and security. These were the items economy-minded Congressmen would pounce most quickly upon.

Harry Truman didn't stop there: he un-- oiled some new ideas for spending money: a housing program for the "middle-income" group, for which he proposed a $50 million appropriation; $320 million aid to education, including the beginning of a program of "community colleges" for everyone and a scholarship program for which he proposed $1,000,000 as a modest starter.

In fact, on current domestic programs, the President was proposing an increase of about $1 billion from last year -- chiefly for more social welfare. Did all of this look like too much in view of the imbalance of funds and the ponderous costs of defense? If the President was worried about anything it was "not whether we are doing too much but whether the budgetary requirements [for defense] have constrained us to undertake too little toward . . . the realization of our country's great potential development."

*For another proposal, see BUSINESS.

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