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Show NEWS REVIEW Peril Seen for Tax Cut; Soil Control Row Due $, AID BURDEN: Taft's Plank Sen. Robert Taft, Ohio's G.O.P. aspirant to the White House, started off another campaign jog around the West by offering a thoroughly Republican message calculated to appeal to a large portion of the western voters. The United States cannot allow its foreign aid program to jeopardize jeopard-ize freedom at home, he said in Chicago, his first stopping place. "We should not be actuated by purely altruistic desire to improve Following the first blush of joy over the spirit of deflation which seemed to have been evoked by the commodity market price slump, U. S. citizens began to realize that complications might set in. Most significant hidden gimmick behind the market skid appeared to be the development that the price decline might, in the words of Sen. Scott Lucas (Dem., 111.), "eliminate all possibility" of income tax reductions re-ductions this year. And that apparently was the cautious cau-tious but considered opinion of the entire tax-writing senate finance committee, of which Lucas is a member. Sen. Owen Brewster (Rep., Me.), also a finance committee member, expressed a concurring view, pointing point-ing out that any appreciable general gen-eral price decline "certainly would have to be taken into consideration" by Republicans in their tax-cutting plans. Another member of the group, Sen. Harry Byrd (Dern., Va.) said that if a decline of market prices develops into a business recession, it probably would have "a considerable consid-erable effect" on tax reduction. "I certainly am not going to vote the condition of a lot of other people who have failed for centuries to do the job themselves. "We want peace and prosperity throughout the world to eliminate a threat to our own freedom, but it is certainly not worth uhilA trt nrinnt fl TAFT foreign policy so burdensome on our own people that it will destroy at home the very freedom we are trying try-ing to protect" There was expressed a major plank in Taft's campaign platform: Careful control of the foreign aid program In the pre-eminent light of how it may effect this nation's domestic do-mestic economy. Also, it was consistent with his activities in congress where he has been making that theory felt with regard to approval of the Marshall plan. U. N. PLUM: To Eur one for any bill that would put the treasury treas-ury in a deficit position," said Byrd. While the senators' statements reflected re-flected a good deal of pussyfooting and at least a temporary surge of indecision with regard to tax reduction reduc-tion in the light of the market slump, it was obvious that they were thoroughly concerned' with this turn of events. Theory which set their tax-cutting plans awry is that a continued slump of commodity market prices would bring down the national income in-come and tax receipts, thus rendering render-ing any major tax reduction perilous. a Decision on where the United h tions will hold its 1948 assembly meeting will mean that some European Euro-pean city will get a healthy, 50-million-dollar plum tossed in its lap. Because the choice of a site for the coming meeting probably will involve that much money there is a considerable ferment of anxiety in the cities of Paris, Brussels, Geneva or the Hague, principal contenders for the honor. Trygve Lie, U. N. secretary-general, just back from a tour of European Euro-pean cities, has made a factual report re-port without actually recommending recommend-ing any one spot. He did, however, narrow the field down to those four cities. The 57 member nations of the general assembly decided at last fall's session to hold the 1948 parley in Europe, possibly to get away from the scene of their erstwhile rather futile efforts. SOIL CONTROL: State or Federal? One of the springtime battles now shaping up in congress will concern the issue of whether the national farm erosion program should be federally or state controlled. Fireworks are scheduled to begin in March when the house agriculture committee opens hearings on a bill sponsored by Rep. Harry D. Cooley (Dem., N. C.) which would turn over the soil conservation program, operated by the agriculture department depart-ment since 1935, to state land grant colleges. Along with the transfer of authority author-ity would go about 10,500 department depart-ment agents who administer the program in about 2,000 districts. That will provide a point of strong controversy, as will the measure's provision for federal grants to help states foot their soil-saving bills. Pushing the switch from federal to state control most strongly is the national farm bureau, one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington, Washing-ton, on the grounds that the soil conservation program would accomplish ac-complish more under state authority. author-ity. The federal program has not been as effective as it should be so far, the farm bureau contends. But opponents op-ponents of the transfer counter with ' the argument that the states lack experience to handle the project satisfactorily. Currently operating under an annual an-nual budget of 39 million dollars, federal soil conservation service has 10,500 persons working rith farmers, helping prepare conservation conserva-tion plans which the farmers may accept or reject. So far it has prepared conservation conserva-tion plans for 478,128 farms covering cover-ing 131,855,608 of the country's one billion acres of farm land. |