Don't Sputnik

"So I am trying to say: let's try to be reasonable," replied Dwight Eisenhower when a reporter asked about antirecession spending. "Let's try to use some common sense and not just get a Sputnik attitude about everything." All last week the President kept a tight grip on the rule of reasonableness, surprised staff and Congress alike by using it to administer a sharp rap across the knuckles here, a threat there, to keep politically fired recession fears from getting out of bounds.

First off, he decided that the $1.7 billion pork-barrel rivers and harbors bill did not measure up to being reasonable, even though Congress had tried to pretend that it was an important antirecession remedy. Among the 154 projects in the barrelful, 28 costing $350 million looked like fat bacon. Example: one section of the bill laid out $269,000 to be spent on the lower Potomac River near Hull Creek, Va. to build a harbor for 41 small boats and 42 skiffs. Army engineers tagged the job uneconomical; the Virginia state government, by failing to promise matching funds for half the cost, flunked what the President considers "the best test yet devised for insuring that a project is sound." So down came the veto on the whole bill, recession or no.

The other big appropriation on his desk was the $7.2 billion highway bill. Eisenhower didn't like its dimensions very well either. He had wanted to speed up highway spending by $2.2 billion over the next four years, but the Democrats had pumped this up to $1.8 billion in the next fiscal year alone. Far more serious, in the President's eyes, was the fact that the bill abandoned the established principle that states should pay 50% on primary and secondary highways, provided instead that they should only pay 33 1/4%, and that the Federal Treasury should advance that. The Commerce Department had already leaked the word that the President would veto. But Senate G.O.P. Leader William Knowland and Vice President Richard Nixon warned that the bill was the best they could hope to get out of Congress this year, pointed out that the objectionable features would expire in one year. Eisenhower, trying to be reasonable about reasonableness, signed the bill into law, but added: "I would oppose any repetition of these or similar provisions in subsequent legislation."

The clear Eisenhower go-slow line involved considerable political risk. In standing against tax cuts, in heading off dreamboat public-works projects that he thought would ultimately contribute to inflation, Ike was staking the Republican reputation in an election year on his basic faith in the U.S. economy. If he was right, the recession would some day be forgotten, and the pundits would turn happily to the next crisis. If he was wrong, the Democrats would never let the nation forget that they were its true heroes.

Last week the President also:

P: Admitted in answer to a question about future summit talks that he "wouldn't have any brief now to file as to the accomplishments of the Geneva Conference."

P: Dispatched former G.O.P. National Chairman Len Hall, now a New York gubernatorial hopeful, to the Brussels World's Fair as presidential representative to Host King Baudouin of the Belgians.

P: Signed into law a bill taking U.S. admissions tax off plays and concerts by nonprofit civic groups.

P: Cabled congratulations to Van Cliburn, 23-year-old U.S. pianist who won first prize in Moscow's International Tchaikovsky piano contest (see Music).

P: Threw out the first ball for the new baseball season and watched Washington upset Boston 5-2; played his first spring golf on both Burning Tree and Gettysburg Golf courses; hooked five trout while fishing at Camp David, Md.

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