THE PRESIDENCY: It Cuts Three Ways

Congress for once had given Harry Truman more money than he had asked. Inside the $15.5 billion defense bill which he signed last week was an extra item of $615 million to be spent in starting to build a 58-group Air Force. On this subject Harry Truman had been sharp and clear: he wanted the Air Force held to 48 groups. So with a brisk bit of juggling, he took what he wanted of the bill and left the rest.

The extra allowance which Congress had voted for the Air Force could wreck the internal balance of the defense family, said the President, and it might wreck the balance he had long sought between military security and the strain on the domestic economy. It wasn’t so much the down payment, he went on, it was the upkeep. In succeeding years the extra planes would demand a larger & larger share of the budget as they required personnel, housekeeping and maintenance. “I am, therefore, directing the Secretary of Defense to place [the $615 million] in reserve,” the President announced.

This rare use of a selective kind of “vest-pocket veto” was apt to ruffle the feelings of many a Congressman, since the House had voted 305 to 1 for the ten extra air groups. But a majority of the Senate was on the President’s side and had only reluctantly agreed to the House increase to speed adjournment.

Army & Navy also had to practice a little self-denial on orders of Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson, pressing his own campaign to trim expenses $800 million. Johnson ordered the mothballing of 77 Navy ships, including two medium-and three small-sized aircraft carriers, six cruisers, 14 destroyers, nine submarines. Navy manpower would be cut 55,000 to 461,000. The Army announced that all 24,000 of the current draftees would be released after completing a year’s service, and no more would be called in the “foreseeable future.” The Army had to squeeze within a budget of 630,000 men by February.

All three services accepted the amputations in a tight-lipped military silence.