Before the Snow Melts

Toward the end of the new President's third press conference last week, a reporter asked John Fitzgerald Kennedy how well he thought he had done in creating "a new mood'' in Washington. Said the President, in something of a new, guarded press-conference mood himself: "I am hopeful, although we have been in office only 2 1/2 weeks . . . that before the snow is off the ground we would have been able to stimulate action in a variety of areas."

At week's end a lot of snow still clothed capital lawns, but John Kennedy's stimulation was already at work in some areas. He acted with increasing confidence in home-front politics and economics. But in foreign affairs the Kennedy Administration moved with growing caution and uncertainty as it became aware of the wheels within wheels of foreign-policy-making. Among last week's mileposts :

THE BUDGET. Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon audited the Eisenhower budget for the fiscal year ending in June, predicted a billion-dollar deficit instead of Ike's hoped-for $79 million surplus. Most of the shrinkage, said Dillon, comes from dwindling tax receipts in a worsening economic climate.

THE ECONOMY. In the wake of his gloom-ridden State of the Union and Economic messages, the President asked Congress for specific legislation to solve the dollar crisis and to raise the minimum wage from $1 to $1.25. He also indicated that he would formally propose an extension of unemployment benefits. One significant omission: a request for a tax cut. At his press conference, the President explained that a tax cut would not be considered before April, when the Administration would make another check on which way the economy was moving. But even if conditions worsened, Kennedy indicated, he might well prefer more federal spending as a pump-priming measure. Said he: "With $5 billion or $3 billion devoted to education or health or international security, you can produce a longer-range result."

TARIFFS. In his message to Congress on the balance-of-payments deficit, the President warned that "a return to protectionism is not a solution." In a loud hint to tariff raisers, Kennedy later refused to increase duties on imported twine and cordage. As a Senator from the twine-producing state of Massachusetts, Kennedy had testified in favor of higher cordage tariffs before the Office of Defense Mobilization in 1957.

HEALTH & MEDICAL CARE. Predictably, the President submitted to Congress his new version of the various liberal medical bills that died in Congress last year. Kennedy's new program--which faces stiff opposition in the Senate and House--calls for an increase in social security taxes (probable first year total: $1.5 billion) to pay for hospital, nursing-home and outpatient service for 14.2 million persons 65 years of age and older. He also recommended federal assistance for construction of nursing homes, and Government scholarships for medical and dental students. At his press conference he said that the Surgeon General would establish a new Child Health Center to specialize in the study of mental retardation.*

EDUCATION. Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Abraham Ribicoff was already at work clearing the boulder-marred road that lies ahead in Congress for one of Kennedy's firmest campaign promises: an education program calling for $5 billion in new federal expenditure over the next five years. As the President sees it, the Federal Government should make annual grants of some $900 million to the states to build new public schools and supplement teacher salaries (based on a figure of $30 a year per pupil, with a bonus for low-income states and complex big-city plants), provide an additional $100 million for teacher-training.

INTEGRATION. Because he hopes for Southern support of his economic program, Kennedy will not propose any new civil rights legislation for this congressional session. But the President was "carefully considering" the possibility of federal intervention in the New Orleans school crisis, and promises to speak out on civil rights issues. "I will," said he, "at such time as I think it is most useful and most effective . . . attempt to use the moral authority or position of influence of the presidency in New Orleans ... It is my position that all students should be given the opportunity to attend public schools regardless of their race, and that it is in accordance with the Constitution. It is in accordance, in my opinion, with the judgment of the people of the United States."

FOREIGN POLICY. Secretary of State Dean Rusk, in his press-conference debut, reflected his boss's new caution in foreign affairs by turning back virtually all questions with the grey answer that the matter was "under study." Clearly, Kennedy was treading water while he found his own personal bearings. One top-rung State Department adviser 'backgrounded' reporters on the news that the U.S. had asked the Soviet Union to leave crucial East-West issues alone while the new Administration re-examined policy, or expect the toughest possible response to crisis. (To such nonsense, Moscow backgrounded a predictable answer: the U.S. must avoid being provocative.) Yet the beginning of one new important policy was taking shape. Well aware that the nation's old allies in Europe have taken little pleasure in the new U.S. attention promised to Africa and South America, the President stated warm, reassuring support for NATO, promised solidly "to maintain our military strength in Europe," and appointed onetime Secretary of State Dean Acheson, a NATO founding father, as chairman of an advisory group that will propose ways to strengthen the treaty organization.

* A cause of deep personal concern to the President's family. The Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation last year granted $10 million for medical research in mental retardation. John Kennedy's eldest sister, Rosemary, a childhood victim of spinal meningitis, is now a patient in a Wisconsin nursing home.

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