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Show itoffllVrfrsfcii'l POR iilE THIRD TIME within A approximately two months President Presi-dent Truman has urged upon the congress the necessity of giving him broad powers under his ten-point program to fight inflation and the high cost of living. And for the third time it appears equally certain that the congress does not propose to give him that authority . . . the right to impose rationing ra-tioning and wage and price ceilings on certain commodities and the entire en-tire program contained in his message mes-sage to the special session of the congress in November and in his state of the union message early in January. THE PRESIDENTS LATEST warning and his third plea for authority au-thority under law, was contained in his semi-annual economic report which is called for under the full employment act. The President's report was contained in a 136-page printed booklet and while it pointed out the prosperous condition of the country as of today, and predicted continuous prosperity through 1948 he spoke of "Ominous signs" and declared de-clared the present inflation was "the dominant problem in our economic affairs." AMONG THE THINGS he pointed out as the trends of the times and with which most people will age are . . . Consumer purchasing power is dropping, 8 per cent since 1946; that the people are dipping into their savings or are buying on credit to keep up the present purchasing value; that throwing off of credit controls has added millions of dollars dol-lars to debts; the home mortgage debt has Increased from approximately approxi-mately twenty to more than 24 billions bil-lions of dollars In the past four years; profits are up, higher than ever before, but the real income and take-home pay of the masses of the people, particularly white collar workers, school teachers, clerks and others, are actually down over last year; that construction activity, high in 1947, cannot be maintained in 1948 at present prices; that business busi-ness inventories have been built up in expectation of further price rises and that a price decrease will catch these business men, many of them small businessmen and merchants, which "raises a greater potential threat to the maintenance of production pro-duction and employment than has been Mio case at any time since the j war began." He asain culk'tl for his social reforms including a national health bill, increased benefits and broader coverage under social so-cial security, and answered the GOP charge that his reforms would add ten billion dollars to the annual federal budget by presenting- a schedule of timing-and timing-and declaring that a large part of the social security program would be deflationary at the outset and so there was no reason rea-son to delay them. He made it clear that such programs as resources re-sources development, reclamation, reclama-tion, transportation improvement, improve-ment, urban rehabilitation and expansion of the health and education ed-ucation programs should not be undertaken until the "inflationary "inflation-ary pressures subside." He declared that some of his programs pro-grams even though inflationary to a degree, such as increasing the minimum wage and granting his $40 tax evemption, should be immediately immedi-ately enacted to lesson the hardship on those hardest hit by the present high cost of living. IN THE MEANTIME hearings continued on the European Recovery Recov-ery or Marshall Plan before both the House and Senate Foreign Relations Committees with Secretary Marshall urging the full plan or nothing, with heads of war and Navy declaring the plan is peace insurance, that unless it is passed there will be another universal draft and that costs for military preparedness will outstrip cost of the proposed Marshall plan. Also in the meantime the political pot continues to boil in Washington with all roads pointing toward the two national conventions in Philadelphia Phila-delphia this summer. Every statement state-ment made by every member of the congress, Democrat or Republican, is hedged with the thought of either conventions or the November election elec-tion in mind. This year seems to be a year of decision insofar as the battle bat-tle of the progressive liberals and the conservative reactionaries are concerned. Despite the public ridicule by the Republican leadership of President Truman's state of the Union speech, the practical Republican politicians here privately admit that his speech is effective and will swing votes. It was a rehash of the Roosevelt technique, tech-nique, a play to the low incomes where the votes are and a slap at the upper incomes where the votes are scarce. |