The Case for the Budget

"Get out of town and do some thinking," Dwight Eisenhower sometimes advises his top aides. "You just don't have time to think in Washington." While lolling aboard the missile cruiser Canberra during his six-day holiday from Washington, the President found time to think through to a basic decision: in view of the national outcry for economies in the Federal Government, he must make a direct and vigorous defense of his budget.

His first opportunity was at his press conference last week, and he made careful plans to speak out. But the first question on the subject sharply illustrated the pettifogging nature of much of the talk about budget cuts. Asked William McGaffin of the Chicago Daily News: "Would you be willing to do without that pair of helicopters that have been proposed for getting you out to the golf course a little faster than you can make it in a car?" At the question Eisenhower showed more anger than most Washington correspondents have ever seen him betray. His face bleached, and then a flush of red spread upward from his neck. After a moment of dead silence he glared, and his words came like small-arms fire. "Well, I don't think much of the question, because no helicopters have been procured for me to go to a golf course."*

"Futile" Talk. When Edward P. Morgan of the American Broadcasting Co. later went back to the budget area, the President seized the opportunity. "I am afraid you have opened up yourself for a little speech," he said. "This budget was not only made carefully, it was made intelligently. [It is] futile to talk about the U.S. keeping up the position it must keep up in the world and measurably sticking to the programs that have already been adopted in the U.S. ... and cut that budget severely."

"Foreign aid," he said, taking up the budget cutters' favorite target, "has no pressure group in any district in the U.S. . . . But I say to you there are no dollars today that are being spent more wisely for the future of American peace and prosperity than the dollars we put in foreign aid." He defended his embattled $451 million school-aid program as a one-shot emergency undertaking: "While I don't believe in the general theory of Federal Government supporting education throughout our country all the time, I do believe this deficit must be made up."

The President jabbed at congressional critics of his budget: "I must say it is a very great satisfaction to me to find out there are so many economy-minded people in Washington. They didn't use to be here." He followed up with the hardest whack at Congress that he has ever dealt in public: "But now let's--if anyone is interested in economy, let's go to the things that are open for all to see. Take ... the ... great number of public works that are authorized without proper engineering studies to back them up. Congress authorizes them. Why? It must be for political purposes, because the engineering department has not said they are necessary" (see below).

"Fatuous" Talk. Then the President brought the essence of the budget-cutting controversy into sharp focus, as nobody in the Administration, or on Capitol Hill, had managed to do before, despite the torrents of talk. "If you are going to save this money," he said, "you have got to look at programs [and decide] what programs you want to eliminate." In "all sorts of ways," he continued, "the Federal Government has been assuming responsibilities by law that, if continued, are just going to cost money. And it's just fatuous to get up and say we are just going to save all this money, and then not do something about federal responsibilities already given to us."

At last the President had made the case for his budget that he should have made long before: the Administration feels that it has sent to Congress the best budget it can devise in the light of 1) the Government's responsibilities set by law, 2) the demands of security in a troubled world, and 3) the needs and demands of the people of the U.S., as represented by the members of Congress. If Congress can find ways to cut the budget and still meet those requirements, it should do so.

* The helicopters were purchased chiefly to facilitate the President's trips from the White House to National Airport, which often involve delays and tie-ups in Washington traffic stopped to permit him to pass. But the golf question had been left hanging by Presidential Press Secretary James Hagerty last month, when he said he would not rule out the possibility that the President might some time use a helicopter to go to Burning Tree for golf.

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