Perilous Penny-Pinching

As balky as a small boy whose neck is about to be scrubbed, the House began debate last week on the Defense Department's $51 billion appropriation request for the next fiscal year. Like most taxpayers, House members were already rubbed raw by the prospect of another big budget deficit. And they were sure that hundreds of millions could be cut from the Pentagon's figures--in addition to the $4.2 billion already chopped out by the Appropriations Committee--but nobody knew where.

Touch of the Brush. Georgia's Carl Vinson did what he could to defend the bill against indiscriminate cutting. "I am certain," he said, "that so long as this nation remains prepared . . . war is not imminent. Let down our guard and the lightning will strike." But the House was not in the mood for sober counsels. At the first touch of the scrub brush it began flailing back. It refused to restore any part of the Committee cuts. Then it sliced out half a billion more, leaving a final figure of $46.2 billion.

One of the noisiest economizers to take the floor was New York's Republican Frederic R. Coudert Jr. Since the war began in Korea, he argued, Congress has appropriated money so much faster than the Pentagon could spend it, that the $46.2 billion the House was now considering would give the military a staggering $108 billion in the kitty to spend at will. Indeed, said Coudert, the Pentagon planned to spend $52.5 billion this year regardless of how Congress treated its new appropriation. Therefore, he said, the House should pass an amendment limiting this year's defense-spending, regardless of appropriations, to $46 billion. "The Pentagon," he shouted, "is no longer going to rule the nation."

Brake on the Pentagon. Coudert's proposition made good political fodder in an election year. But it was recklessly irresponsible. The Coudert amendment had nothing to do with appropriations; it arbitrarily clapped a tight brake on the rate at which the military may dip into its kitty to accept and pay for finished weapons for the U.S. armed forces. Of the $52.5 billion that the Pentagon had planned to spend this year, $14.1 billion is for fixed costs such as troop pay and maintenance; $10.8 billion is for military equipment too close to delivery to be canceled; the balance of $27.6 billion is for weapons now on order. Administration floor leaders warned urgently that the spending limit would force the military to slow down delivery on $6 billion worth of equipment which U.S. manufacturers were finally geared to turn out--tanks, guns, guided missiles and especially aircraft. But the House refused to listen, and passed the amendment by a 90-vote majority of Republicans and Southern Democrats.

The House decision flew in the face of some hard military facts. According to the best intelligence estimates in Washington, the date of maximum danger of Russian attack, when Soviet air power will be strong enough to deal a decisive blow to U.S. industry, is mid-1954. The Administration's "stretch-out" of the defense program has already delayed the date of minimum U.S. preparedness well beyond mid-1954. If the Senate allows the spending ceiling to stand, the date will be put off still further--at incalculable peril to the security of the nation.

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