National Affairs: Plenty of Cooks

Just about everyone on Capitol Hill last week was a short-order cook with a favorite recipe for frying the fat out of Harry Truman’s $71.6 billion budget.† The trouble was that most of the recipes were the old hit-or-miss kind handed down from grandmother’s kitchen—take a chunk of executive expenditures, mix with a heaping tablespoon of Social Security appropriations and simmer until done.

Republicans were more hopeful than helpful. “We’ve got to cut out the dessert,” declared Minority Leader Joe Martin. He was sure $4 to $5 billion could be melted off with ease. New York’s nickel-minded John Taber thought at least $3 or $4 billion could be saved. But the Republicans still had not dug up a single specific recipe for doing the job.

Cars & Paper. Mr. Truman’s own party colleagues did a little better. Virginia’s Harry Flood Byrd, a man who some day hopes to hear a Lincoln-head penny holler Uncle, wanted to fry off $9.1 billion—$200 million from the Veterans Administration, $500 million out of the Defense budget, $3.5 billion out of the $7.5 billion foreign-aid program and $4.9 billion out of the domestic-civilian sectors of the Truman budget.

Paul Douglas of Illinois, a liberal who is endowed with the heretical habit of favoring economy in Government, was still sniffing and measuring away. Without even touching the vast funds ticketed for national defense, he thought he detected $4 to $6.5 billion of possible fat: $100 million of general Government expenditures, $300 million in the VA, maybe $200 million in agriculture, $150 million in conservation programs, another $150 million in the Government-loan field, down to countless hundreds of thousands that could be saved by buying cheaper cars for Government officials and cheaper paper for Government clerks.

Guns & Pork. The budget-cutters were also beginning to cast a flinty eye at the Pentagon, which was down for the lion’s share—a lump sum $41.4 billion of the coming budget. There were doubtless millions to be saved by resisting the Pentagon’s request for a blank check, and making the admirals and generals come up with some specific figures.

But as usual, the biggest roll of fat was uncomfortably close to Congress’ own waistline. The annual pork barrel—a dazzling and expensive array of highways, flood walls, harbor improvements, reclamation projects, new parks and buildings, and other enterprises designed principally to please a Congressman’s or ‘Senator’s home-town constituents—would be the real test of the cooks’ intentions.

Not until the proposals for dropping pork-barrel items began piling up in the pantry, and the budget-cutters began to replace broad-gauged words with some specific proposals, could the U.S. taxpayer settle back and listen to the pleasant sputter of frying fat.

† Actually, the budget for fiscal 1952 adds up to $94.4 billion—$71.6 billion for cash expenditures and another $22.8 billion in contract authority to be allocated now and paid for later.