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Show GRASSROOTS Our Posterity May Have To Repudiate Huge Debts By Wright A. Patterson qiHE PRESENT DECADE is des- tined to go down as the most profligate in our history. In Washington, Wash-ington, the halls of congress and in the executive departments, there is talk only of economies, but it is all talk and no action. The President talks an excellent line of economy. He tells congress to spend less on home projects, and then recommends new ways and places for appropriations. Congress Con-gress talks much about the need for economies, and then votes all and more than the President has asked. It results in a merry go round of tax, and tax, and tax, and spend, and spend. In the end, we are destined not to pay as we go, but to build up more national indebtedness indebted-ness for our children, through several sev-eral generations to pay, or possibly, to repudiate. We are traveling the road to national bankruptcy, with no one willing to apply the brakes. Congress insists it will cut the President's budget by as the end of this session. The result will be increased, rather than less spending. But the people do not seem to awaken to the fact that congress and the President are spending their money, that each new billion of appropriations calls for more taxes which the people must pay, more ways through which to collect. Now, in Washington, they are talking talk-ing about a manufacturers' excise tax, which would mean a new tax to be added to the price of the commodities the people buy. It is not that such a tax is not equitable. It is but another way of taking money out of the pockets of the people to pay for things we could get along without. We tax the people on the food they eat, in order that congress may provide higher prices for farm products, and so cater to the farm vote without a thought of the retaliation that may come from the five urban votes vast expenditure each year. For the President's party, that more than two million bureaucratic payrollers represents from four to eight million mil-lion votes in the next election. Naturally Nat-urally the representatives of that party in congress will do nothing about it. The Republicans in congress would welcome the opportunity of separating that more than two million mil-lion employees from the federal payrolls if that could be accomplished accom-plished without abolishing the jobs they hold. They would like to dispense dis-pense with the present -job holders, presumably members of the Democratic Demo-cratic party, but they want to preserve pre-serve their jobs so they may be filled with their own partisans, following fol-lowing the next election if their party wins. They are more inter-, ested in building a bulwark of votes that can insure their hold on the national government, than in national na-tional economy. ( So it is that, for one reason or another thprp ic nn raql nr.; much as seven billions, the President dares congress to cut it by so much as one dollar. And the chances are that instead in-stead of cutting, congress will, by the end of the session, through the needless items provided pro-vided for in the usual "pork" bill, add more millions or billions. bil-lions. For many years, through "pork" appropriations we have attempted what we have termed flood control without any perceptible approach to actual accomplishment, and we will have similar appropriations at 10 eacn one on me tarms. mat is a place where the urban vote will, in time, demand a decrease de-crease in expenditures. When that urban revolt comes, as it will, it will make a difference of a billion or more in government spending. One place where economy could be practiced, rather than only talked, is in the federal payrolls. With the bureaucratic departments now employing well over two million mil-lion civilians and increasing at the rate of better than one thousand a day, that "army" represents a . .tt, ucoiic iur economy, either on the part of the President or either party as represented rep-resented in congress. What we hear is only meaningless talk. There has been, and will be no real performance. perform-ance. There is no leadership pointing point-ing in that directioivby the President Presi-dent or the members of congress represented by either political party. par-ty. All are playing the game of politics, poli-tics, rather than thinking of the interests in-terests of the nation and its people. Should the people awaken and realize real-ize what is happening, one or both parties might be induced to take action, rather than only talk. . |