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Show Washington Comment We herewith nominate rony l ess for Public Procrastinator No. l! It has dawdled along for months ! complaining because it had to stay in ye-ion and indignantly protesting because it felt it had no business of importance to transact. Late last week, it awakened to find the end of the fiscal year staring it in the face. So. on Saturday, it t ok a spurt, held an unprecederil el session, and by working late into the night Monday, rushed through absolutely absolute-ly imparative legislation legislation legisla-tion which had to be approved if the wheels of government were to be kept turning. With the tem-! tem-! perature mounting and tempers , fraying with the haste, it is not i difficult to analyze the brand ,of : legislation which was put through at this eleventh hour or the lack j of judicious consideration which characterizes it. The gentlemen on the hill are much too prone to vote themselves long recesses and to avoid controversial measures when necessity makes speed imperative. im-perative. Racing toward the dead-l dead-l line of midnight June 30, congress had to provide $4,-300.000.000 of funds and authority for various government agencies in the next 12 months. During the two fiscal days of intense activity on the part of congress to beat the fis:al deadline it gave approval to the biggest cash appropriations bill ; in the nation's history, a S10.3S4.-P21.C24 S10.3S4.-P21.C24 item fcr the army. The total exceeded the largest previous pre-vious appropriation, a 1919 army bill, by about a billion dollars. In addition to the army bill, the senate sen-ate passed and sent to the White House the bill extending operations opera-tions of the 52,000.000,000 stabilization stabi-lization fund and the president's power to devalue the dollar for two years. The senate also approved ap-proved a bill prolonging the life of the Commodity Credit corporation corpora-tion for two years and increasing a crop loan funds by 81,250,000.-000 81,250,000.-000 to a total of $2,050,000,000. The senate passed, as a defense measure, a house bill to give the maritime commission control over the movements and cargoes of all American ships. The total congressional congres-sional spending for the fiscal year 1941 stands at S32,800.0O0,000 -an all-time high. With Uncle Sam, at this writing, writ-ing, balancing his books, and preparing pre-paring a clean page for July, the treasury reveals that record revenue reve-nue collections and defense spending spend-ing falling below Mr. Roosevelt's budget, will find the country Sl,-250.000,000 Sl,-250.000,000 better off than anticipated. anti-cipated. Pending reports on the final four days of June, the treasury trea-sury has forecast income of ?S.-500.000,000. ?S.-500.000,000. an all-time high; spending is expected to fall about $500,000,000 below the budget estimate of $13,202,370,970. Even the public debt will fail to cross the $49,000,000,000 mark as predicted pre-dicted by Mr. Roosevelt. It is now S4S.S3S,2JM,531. The . unexpected unex-pected healthy condition of the (Continued on last past-) Washington Comment ; (Continued from first pagel treasury comes from big individual, indivi-dual, corporation, and excess profits pro-fits levies imposed by congress in , two tax bills enacted last year. . They will exceed $3,500,000,000. Here are some late items along iefense lines: The commerce department de-partment says that increased in-:ome in-:ome from the defense program has resulted in huge increases in purchases of luxury and semi-luxury goods. (Income payments to individuals are currently estimated estimat-ed at the rate of SS5.000.000.000 a year, compared with $76,000,-000,000 $76,000,-000,000 for 1940). The nation is confronted by a serious shortage of labor in 104 essential defense occupations especially aircraft, shipbuilding, and machine shops. Beause of reduced appropriations made necessary by defense needs, 264 C C C camps will have closed ' as of July 1, thus cutting the number of camps from 1500 to 1236. The C C C appropriation for 1940-41 was S2S0, 000,000; for 1941-42. it is $246,960,000. A number of abandoned camps will likely be used by the army for special training purposes. The C C C will start the new fiscal year with 232,500 men, compared with an average in the last year of 270,000. Approximately 75,-000 75,-000 new enrollees will replace those "graduating". |