Monday, Oct. 31, 1955
A Brake on the Boom
Each spring when the Chancellor of the Exchequer presents his budget to Parliament, the imposts and expenditures which he proposes are expected to hold good for the entire year. Once in a while, he may be forced to submit an "autumn budget," a phrase which in Britain has become virtually synonymous with economic trouble. When Parliament reconvenes this week, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rab Butler will submit an autumn budget. It will be Britain's first in eight years.
Britain has been speeding along the highroad of prosperity, but wages and prices are rising, and industries busy meeting domestic needs have been draining off gold and dollar reserves by importing more goods than they could match in exports. "The Chancellor of the Exchequer has to be ready to step on the gas or apply the brake," explained Butler last week. "Frankly, the time has now come for a bit of the brake."
Rab Butler's brake was expected to consist of cuts in government spending and hikes in purchase and profits taxes. He is almost certain to be attacked as a jerky stop-and-go driver--Butler cut taxes only last spring, a month before the election which gave Sir Anthony Eden's government a five-year lease on life. At the time, Hugh Gaitskell, Labor's onetime Chancellor of the Exchequer, cried that the voters had been "bribed," and now Laborites stand ready to exhibit Butler's "autumn budget" as proof of their charge. But with perhaps four years to go before the next election, Rab Butler and the Tories can afford a bit of political discomfort as the price of economic caution.
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