Budget Stew

The political pot was bubbling briskly in the House, and the aroma of a rich fiscal stew flared jaded old nostrils on both sides of the aisle. The basic ingredient was the Administration's record peacetime $71.8 billion budget, which is, in many domestic respects, a Fair Dealer's dream, e.g., burgeoning appropriations for agriculture, expenses for school construction, outlays for welfare projects. Old-fashioned Republicans criticized it as a Fair Deal budget, but the President left it up to the Democrat-controlled Congress to trim as it might. Entering into the spirit of the thing, House Democrats made an unprecedented proposal: a resolution formally asking the President to tell them where to do the cutting.

House High Jinks. Emerging from cob-nosed Clarence Cannon's Appropriations Committee, the resolution touched off a long, loud partisan debate with many a tongue in cheek and many a wink. It is only "common courtesy," said Mississippi's Jamie Whitten, to invite the Administration to indicate where to cut its own budget. Complained Tennessee Democrat Ross Bass: "We are faced with this unusual situation because it is the first time in the history of our nation that a President has submitted a budget for the opera tion of the Government; yet neither he nor his Secretary of the Treasury has made any attempt to justify this budget."

House Minority Leader Joe Martin rose amid the high jinks to remind Democratic colleagues that Republicans in the old days never hesitated to cut Democratic budgets: "We did not dodge our responsibility. We cut the budget. And if you can, you should." Kansas Republican Errett Scrivner was more pointed: "Foreign aid, of course, can be cut. Military--some cuts are in prospect. How about agriculture? Will you cut a big deficit of $700 million a year in the Post Office by raising postal rates? How about Welfare? Health? National forests? Power dams? Public housing? Aviation assistance? Civil defense? Business aids? Rural electrification and telephones? Increased pay for all federal workers? School lunches? Veterans' pensions? Veterans' hospitals and other benefits? The FBI? Our courts? Immigration? Atomic energy? Farm-surplus programs? Those are the questions; it'll be interesting to see what answers this 85th Congress will give us after all their talk about economy."

Senatorial Self-Help. After knocking down an amendment by ranking GOP appropriations member John Taber that the President be commended for already seeking cuts, Democrats by a 219-178 party-line vote, handily passed their resolution, sent it on to the White House.

Appetite whetted, Clarence Cannon's Appropriations Committee reconvened, lectured 18 agencies on buying new cars, hiring additional employees or constructing plush buildings, then cut their requests by $500 million. Feeling the shock hardest: the Veterans Administration, which took a $206 million slash.

Will such cuts pass on the floor of the House and Senate? Probably not, if the Senate's action on another budget item is any indicator: without objection, $20.6 million already allotted for a second Senate office building was increased another $2,800,000 to 1) cover rising building costs, and 2) provide a subway to tote Senators between office and Capitol.

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