Pig in a Poke

The House passed the $56 billion arms bill, 348 to 2.* Few bills have been voted by such a big majority with so little certainty; Congressmen knew they were buying an enormous pig in a poke--a pig representing three-fourths of the whole federal budget.

Above the quiet but troubled debate before the final vote sounded the voice of Massachusetts' Richard Wigglesworth. A member of Congress since 1928, Bostonian Wigglesworth established his heavy-set figure at the reading stand, and began with a familiar Republican charge. "This $56 billion appropriation bill," he said bitterly, "represents a down payment on tragic errors in judgment made at the conference tables of Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam. It amounts to a ransom for an appeasement policy which this Administration has pursued in Asia ... a mortgage on the life of every American for blunders made . . . [Now] we must ask ourselves if we [can] substitute billions for leadership, bullets for statesmanship."

But Congressman Wigglesworth, member of the Appropriations Committee, had more than that on his mind. From then on, he spoke for many members on both sides of the aisle. What he said supplied one reason why the 82nd is behind in its work, underlined the difficulties of making any sense out of anything so vast as the U.S. budget.

"Some 24 Inches." He said in effect: Congress can no longer handle the budget intelligently. Once, under the 1946 Reorganization Act, the Appropriations Committee was well staffed with clerks and statisticians. It no longer is. The committee's staff, charged Wigglesworth, was "decimated" by the Democratic-controlled 81st Congress "in clear violation of the spirit of that act." Wigglesworth and his colleagues found themselves unable to form any opinion about items in the budget involving hundreds of millions of dollars.

Justifications submitted by the military, for instance, made a stack of papers which "would extend, I should judge, some 24 inches upward from the table." Nor did the committee get much help from the White House or the Pentagon. "Budget estimates were not received from the President until the last day of April [the law says that they should be submitted to Congress in the first 15 days of its session]."

The testimony of Pentagon experts was "in many cases highly unsatisfactory. Time & time again, no breakdown was available . . . Witnesses were either unprepared or unwilling to supply simple and essential facts. Again & again came the response, 'We shall have to submit that later for the record.' "

"I Would Be at a Loss." Hours were wasted by the committee in cross-examination trying to extract information. Wigglesworth quoted "a typical exchange." He had asked one bureau chief (Rear Admiral Malcolm Schoeffel, of Ordnance) to imagine that he and Wigglesworth had changed places. On the basis of facts submitted by the admiral, could the admiral, if he were a Congressman, make up his mind whether the bureau needed $1,300,000, or $500,000, or $5,000,000? Said the admiral: "Sir, I would be at a loss."

After eleven weeks and 3,500 pages of printed hearings, the committee had finally written a 158-page report and produced its bill. The committee had shaved some $1.5 billion off the Defense Department estimates; but from the tone of the debate, it was perfectly clear that the committee would not be surprised to find out some day that it should have added $1.5 billion--or subtracted $15 billion.

Having made this $56 billion act of faith, the committee whacked up the appropriation--$15.55 billion for the Navy, $19.85 billion for the Air Force, and $20.12 billion for the Army--and sat back to let the Senate take on the bureau chiefs of the Pentagon and bring out its version of the biggest pig in the most baffling poke.

*The two: Howard Buffett, Nebraska Republican and diehard isolationist; Fred Marshall, Minnesota Democrat and farmer, who had "no quarrel" with the bill, but wanted to register "no confidence in the spending policies of the Defense Department."

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