Nixon on the Line

The one member of the Eisenhower Administration with the most to lose by getting into the budget battle was Vice President Richard Milhous Nixon. As Ike's hand-picked running mate in 1956, Nixon was already conceded to be the presidential choice of Eisenhower Republicans for 1960. Conceivably he could have courted anti-budget Republican conservatives as well by withdrawing into a convenient Vice President's shell and letting the battle rage around him. Instead, Nixon marched out to be shelled, last month ably defended Ike's budget before no less an antagonist than the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (which proudly takes credit for promoting much of the anti-budget uproar). Last week in Manhattan Nixon gave a save-the-budget lecture to the powerful American Iron and Steel Institute.

Nixon noted that the years of Eisenhower had brought the greatest economic expansion in U.S. peacetime history. He denied emphatically "the phony fiscal philosophy of those who suggest that as the national income increases the expenditures of the Federal Government should increase in proportion. The present tax level, if continued indefinitely into the future, could seriously weaken the economy." But, said he, the heart of the $71.8 billion Eisenhower budget concerns the defense of the U.S.. and he is for that.

"Reasonable men will disagree as to what the level of our military strength should be, but when men with the combined military, diplomatic and business experience of Dwight Eisenhower, Arthur Radford, Charles Wilson, George Humphrey and Foster Dulles, after months of study of information, agree that $38 billion is the minimum we should spend for our own security. I say that cutting the defense budget in any substantial amount below the level they have recommended would be a reckless and foolhardy action which on sober reflection the American people will not and should not support.

"I believe that we are now winning the battle for the world. This is no time to announce to the Communists and the world that we are tired of the struggle. This is no time to lose our vision and our courage. We Americans react magnificently when we are threatened with disaster. The Marshall Plan, the aid to Greece and Turkey, the support of the Formosa Resolution, our resistance in Korea, are all examples of this national characteristic. What we must do now is to demonstrate to ourselves and the world that we have the same will to win and willingness to sacrifice when we are inspired by the opportunity for victory without war as we have when we are frightened by the threat of defeat in war."

Nixon had a sharp final message for his Capitol Hill colleagues. "The Congress has the power to appropriate less than [the President] requests, but in doing so it must assume its share of responsibility in the event world developments prove those cuts to have been unwise." It was a warning that budget-cutting Republicans and Democrats might well remember. And it was unmistakable evidence that Dick Nixon is more willing than ever to leave to his fellow Californian, Senate Republican Leader William Fife Knowland, whatever political profits there may be in riding the great economy wave.

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