Little Man's Budget

It was late--4:19 p.m.--before Prime Minister Churchill retired at the end of the question period. He had put the House of Commons in a gay mood by his deft handling of tricky questions. As the speaker left the chair, the sergeant at arms, dressed in court black, advanced solemnly up the aisle, removed the mace from the table, and set it in the bracket underneath. This put the House "in committee of the Whole House," ready to consider any bill concerned with money.

Up from the Treasury bench rose round, pink-faced Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Kingsley Wood--known to the House as "The Cherub." In a clear tenor voice he piped: "What I want is cash." And for the next 91 minutes, speaking from notes written in his own hand, taped up in little bundles, one for each phase of his speech, he presented Great Britain with the heaviest budget in her history.

Sir Kingsley made some staggering demands. To the budget presented three months ago by Sir (now Viscount) John Simon, he added expenditures of -L-800,000,000, so that total outlay for the year was estimated at -L-3,467,000,000--more than half the entire annual peacetime national income. Against this he presented plans for new revenues of only -L-239,000,000, hardly 30% of the increase in expenditure and just about enough to pay for one month of warfare. To get this new income, Sir Kingsley was obliged to ask for new taxes, both direct and hidden. Basic rate for income tax rose from 37 1/2% to 42 1/2%. Sir Kingsley proposed that taxes should be collected at the source--by deductions from weekly payrolls. New sales taxes on luxuries--jewels, furs, fancy hats, silk ties--were set at 24%; and on humble necessities--clothing, shoes, pots, brooms, newspapers, books--at 12%.

In all this, said Sir Kingsley, he was regretfully obliged to hit the little man. There were just not enough big men left. He pointed out that incomes in excess of the equivalent of $80,000 were taxed 90%, leaving only $8,000. If he confiscated every salary in the country in excess of $8,000, he said, all he would get would be $280,000,000-- enough to keep the war going not quite nine days.

The house received the speech with marked apathy. Members rose and left, until fully one-third of the seats were empty. When he finished, not a single Cabinet member was present. The people, when they heard of it, received the speech with more than apathy--disappointment that they had not been asked for more. Their only real objection was that the cigaret tax would be tough on the Tommies, whose meagre service allowance ($2.80 a week, of which married men must remit half to their wives) was not enough for a packet a day as it was. By last week most Britons figured that they might lose everything even if Britain won, that they would surely lose everything if not; and they were prepared to devote much more than was asked to national defense. The News Chronicle called the budget "Timid and tinkering." The Daily Mirror'?, acid "Cassandra" wrote: "It's like its creator--chubby, cheery, ineffective, unimaginative and hopelessly inadequate. It limps far behind public demand." In plainer sight than ever was the plan of liberal Economist John Maynard Keynes to appropriate a part of everybody's salary, "hold it" for him until after the war.

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