The Gutting of Foreign Aid

A major reason for General Dwight Eisenhower's 1952 decision to get into the "political business" was his well-founded fear that right-wing Republicans would impose on the U.S. a policy of political and economic isolationism. Last week President Eisenhower was still fighting against such a policy, and fighting as rarely before. But this time, in a historic political turnabout, it was Congressional Democrats that the President had to meet in maneuver. The Democrats were gutting the U.S. foreign-aid program that they had long claimed as their very own.

Although the Administration had worried through Congress a barely adequate $3,367,000,000 (about $500 million less than the Administration had originally requested) mutual-aid authorization bill, a whole new set of distress signals began flapping around the White House early in the week. In the legislative wonderland, "authorization" is a far cry from actual appropriations, and White House liaison men reported that a House appropriations subcommittee was about to slash foreign aid even below the authorization total. Ike was disturbed. "This is no lighthearted matter," he told associates. "The very integrity, the very safety of the U.S. rests upon this undertaking."

"The Cheapest We Spend." On Tuesday night he summoned a ten-man, bipartisan group of House and Senate leaders to his upstairs study for an after-dinner conference, with no aides present. The President insisted that the mutual-aid authorization bill represented a rock-bottom figure for U.S. security. Next day he went even farther. About a dozen White House newsmen, straggled into the office of Presidential Press Secretary Jim Hagerty for the routine afternoon briefing. "Guess we won't need this," said one, indicating his note paper. Replied Hagerty: "I haven't anything to say to you today--but if you'll follow me, the President would like to see you."

The surprised reporters followed Hagerty to the President's office for Ike's first such unscheduled news conference.* They found President Eisenhower waiting behind his desk, a drawer half open to support a stack of note cards scrawled on in heavy black grease pencil.

Since 1947, said the President, the U.S. "has put into the defense part of our mutual security about $17 billion. Our allies have put $107 billion. This means that for all of the money we have put in, there have been hundreds and thousands of soldiers and sailors and airmen supported that we could not otherwise have supported at all on the side of the free world . . . I feel that America is not going to want to desert something that has been so laboriously and patiently built up over the past ten years by Americans of all parties, all races, all occupations . . . Here is the cheapest money we spend, as long as we are talking about getting security for the United States. If we did not have this working effectively, I just would hate to guess what would be the sums I would have to ask in the defense appropriation next year."

Asked if he might call Congress into special session to get adequate foreign-aid funds, the President replied: "I would have to. You cannot stand aside and see America's interest deterioriate throughout the world just by inaction."

"Not a Damn Thing." But the President's pleas, including a public statement issued on the day the House was to vote on foreign-aid appropriations, seemed only to irritate the Democratic leadership of the House. Said Louisiana's Democratic Representative Otto Passman, leader of the forces aiming to slash foreign aid: "What the President wants does not mean a damn thing to me unless it makes sense." Growled Speaker Sam Rayburn: "Sometimes Congressmen shoot and cut in another direction if they are not in good humor." And Mr. Sam made it clear that he was in a foul humor.

Confident of success. Louisiana's Passman, wearing an ice-cream white suit and eating an Eskimo Pie, lounged in the speaker's lobby before going to the floor to attack the Administration for its "propaganda" efforts on behalf of foreign aid. Opposed to Democrat Passman were such longtime Republican economy advocates as Minority Leader Joe Martin and New York's crusty old Representative John Taber. Cried Taber (whom Martin accurately described as "a man who is noted for his pinching of pennies") : "Why do we have the bill? It is because of our own military situation and the world military situation, where we have the Communists knocking at every port of entry in the world."

Bastardized. It was no use: a majority of Democrats defeated a majority of Republicans in beating down amendments seeking the restoration of foreign-aid funds. Indeed, such was the party turnabout that Pennsylvania's Daniel Flood, a Democrat who remained loyal to foreign aid, berated his fellow Democrats for deserting their own program. ''This is your baby,'' thundered Flood. "Do you make this a bastard child?"

As finally passed by a 250 to 130 House vote, the foreign-aid appropriations bill granted $3,191.810,000--about $810 million less than the President had asked and about $175 million less than the House itself approved in the separate authorization program. The bastardized cuts went thus:

P: Military assistance, to $1.8 billion from an original Eisenhower request of $2.4 billion and a Congressional authorization of $2.1 billion. The cut would come from plans to help South Korean and Vietnamese forces match Communist military buildups and to modernize NATO with F-100 jets. Nikes and Matadors. P: Defense support, to $621million from an Administration request of $900 million and a Congressional authorization of $750 million. About 80% of the cut would be absorbed by military-aid programs to South Korea, Formosa, Viet Nam, Pakistan and Turkey, which have more than 2,000,000 of their own men under arms at much less cost than it would require the U.S. to provide its own troops. P:Special assistance for such countries as Israel, Afghanistan, Guatemala and Bolivia, which cannot qualify under the development loan program, to $175 million from a $300 million request and a $250 million authorization. P: Technical cooperation with such countries as Ghana, Tunis and Morocco, to $125 million from the $151.9 million asked and authorized. P: The atoms-for-peace program, to $4,500,000 from the $7,000,000 asked and authorized, meaning fewer research reactors send abroad, less money for technical training, etc. P: For its long-range economic development loan program, the Administration had asked $500 million for fiscal 1958, $750 million for 1959 and another $750 million for 1960. Congress had authorized $500 million for 1958, $625 million for 1959 and nothing for 1960. The House appropriated only $300 million for 1958 and nothing thereafter, thereby wrecked a vital new Administration plan to check grants-in-aid and encourage loans.

Surveying the House damage, President Eisenhower turned to the Senate as a last hope. He called in Minority Leader Knowland for an emergency conference. Ordered to move upon Capitol Hill this week with urgent pleas were Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, retired Joint Chiefs' Chairman Arthur Radford and John B. Hollister, retiring International Cooperation Administration director.

Earlier this year, the Senate showed itself more friendly to foreign aid than the House--but in recent weeks it has also become increasingly less friendly to Dwight Eisenhower personally (TIME. July 29). In the new belt-Ike atmosphere, Arkansas' Democrat William Fulbright, having voted with the segregationist bloc in the civil rights debate, took foreign aid as an occasion to announce that he was "sick and tired" of "fighting for a fellow who won't fight for himself.'' Georgia's powerful Richard Russell said he was backing the House cuts. Vermont's Republican Senator George Aiken wanly admitted that, far from helping, the President's efforts last week had had "an adverse effect." Said Illinois Republican Everett Dirksen: "It's going to be a tough fight. We're going to have to fight out each item in the bill."

*Franklin Roosevelt unexpectedly called reporters into his office to announce the U.S. victory in the Battle of the Philippine Sea (1944). Harry Truman held a similar conference to denounce Henry Wallace's 1946 let's-be-pals-with-Russia speech in Madison Square Garden.

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