"A Fixed National Policy"

For the tenth consecutive year, a U.S. President sent a mutual-security foreign-aid program to Congress, and Dwight Eisenhower's 1960 model had worn and familiar lines. A multibillion-dollar aid program, acknowledged Ike to a moderately hostile Congress, is now "a fixed national policy." And then he requested a budget-rattling $4,175,000,000 for fiscal 1961.

That was $245 million more than he asked for fiscal 1960 and $949 million more than he got.

Most of the boost would be for military-type aid, from this year's $1.3 billion to $2 billion next year. In the request for economic-type aid, totaling $2.2 billion, the Administration shifted from a buckshot to a bullet approach, aiming sizable funds at a few key areas: black Africa, free China and the Indus River development project for India and Pakistan, to be financed jointly by the U.S., the British Commonwealth and West Germany.

Congressional Democrats, who have long championed mutual aid, at once complained that the program contained too few genuinely mutual, share-the-load projects. In this election year, they are only too eager to fling the President's free-spender charges right back at him. They promised to cut Ike down to size by lopping off $1 billion, possibly to tack the saving onto the embattled U.S. defense budget. "There is too much money and too little change in administration," said Montana's Mike Mansfield, the Senate Democratic whip. "Where is the joint foreign aid effort with other free nations assuming their share of the burden?" Next day at his press conference, the President agreed that "the whole free world should be in a cooperative effort to raise the world economy," announced that a step in this direction will be made next week. In Washington, foreign aid planners from six wealthy West European nations (Belgium, Britain, France, West Germany, Italy, Portugal), Canada and the U.S., will sit down for the first time to work out ways of coordinating their aid programs.

Even "the smallest country can contribute something," the President stressed at his press conference--and next day he moved to give small countries the chance.

He asked Congress to support the new International Development Association, ante up about one-third of its $1 billion capital over the next five years. The rest of IDA's bankroll will be pumped in by rich and poor nations alike. IDA will make longshot loans with a banker's cool eye but will accept payments in soft currencies as well as hard. By 1961 IDA expects to be pumping out some $160 million a year.

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