THE ECONOMY: Rain Some Day

Treasury Secretary George Humphrey’s critics like to think that his idea of heaven is an enormous mass of carefully audited ledgers, in each of which income exactly balances outgo. As far as a balanced federal budget is concerned, Humphrey is still far from heaven. Last week, with Budget Director Rowland Hughes, he held one of his rare press conferences, to explain new budget estimates for fiscal 1955, and spent most of his time parrying pointed questions from reporters.

The new 1955 estimate of expenditure is $64 billion, while income is expected to be $59.3 billion. This means a deficit of $4.7 billion, and that is $1.7 billion higher than President Eisenhower predicted last January. Humphrey explained the deficit increase as resulting from lower excise taxes (which the Administration had not anticipated last winter) and lower corporate income tax estimates.

Overall military expenditure is now running $3.4 billion less than in 1952 (the last full year of the Truman regime, midway in the Korean war). But newsmen asked why nonmilitary spending is $505 million higher than in 1952. Humphrey explained this as “uncontrollable costs”—that is, costs that legislation forces up or prevents from being pared. And most of the increase came from three more or less sacrosanct categories: agriculture price supports, housing and veterans.

Was he, Humphrey was asked, really making progress toward a balanced budget? That was still the goal, the Secretary answered, despite any setbacks. It was like a farmer waiting for rain, he said; some day the rain would come.