"He Lost Control"

When the request rolled up Capitol Hill for $38.5 billion for U.S. defense in fiscal 1958, the word was that this was President Eisenhower's minimum figure for the needs of the nation's security. Such a word was usually enough to get Eisenhower, defense specialist, almost anything out of Congress that he wanted. But when Congress jibbed a bit, the President said he could accept a $1.3 billion "bookkeeping" cut. Then Defense Secretary Charles Erwin Wilson found out that he could cut service manpower and lop off $200 million more. Back of the Battle of the Budget a second word got around that Eisenhower himself was dissatisfied with the rate of defense spending--that Charlie Wilson had let Pentagon spending get away from him. "Charlie just lost control," said one spokesman in the know. "He lost it in the programing."

Result: the Senate and House of Representatives agreed last week upon a "compromise" defense budget of $33.75 billion plus for fiscal 1958, billions less than the President's original minimum request. Had Congress cut too far, too fast into the muscles of everybody's security? Had the Administration trimmed its judgment on national security to appease congressional critics?

The U.S. had no way of knowing (nor had Congress) because of the unknowing demeanor of the U.S.'s defense budgeteers. "While the President was concentrating on the Suez business, shoring up the world alliance and all that," said another spokesman in the know, "we plumb forgot about our own bureaucrats." And when military officers around the Pentagon said, calmly last week that they could "live with" the new budget, nobody knew whether they were being frank or just polite.

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