Show history s biggest tax bill can t meet war demands required savings smaller tax exemptions seen as partial solution to inflation threat by BAUKHAGE news analyst and commentator why dont you commentators quit trying to wake the people up to the war and try to wake washington up upa A 6 question which repeats it self self iri in my listener mall mail day alter after day so help me I 1 know the people dont need waking up and who am I 1 to decide whether washington is snoring or just breathing deeply g let me say first of all that I 1 know ow that ahat a large part of washington Is awake and burning the midnight oil and remember that means 2000 business men drafted into service as well as the government men I 1 officials the MAJORITY of w whom hom are nonpartisan non partisan men who have worked through both republican and democratic regimes but let me go on from there and talk about some of the slumber ers you nor I 1 nor big ben nor aclair an air raid alarm could wake up it if they had gone to bed after six cups of coffee and the radio on I 1 am talking again about what washington is talking about today specifically the tax bill now in congress and inflation to in general the biggest tax bill in our history any calm cool instructed thinker thinks nearly big enough why well some say because the fiscal policy makers of the nation dont teem seem to be much more war con adous set 0 us than the home guard before pearl harbor now lets get a few facts straight there are men in the treasury department part ment and sitting on congressional a committees dealing with fiscal batters natters nat who iwho know their monetary onions as well as a farmer knows the rows he be hoes but let us proceed from there about a year and a half ago leon henderson who no matter what you may think of his neckties his manners or his tactfulness is pretty good at foresight echo edthe thoughts of 0 perhaps a hundred other men in washington when he warned against inflation one of the many brakes on inflation Is ii taxation taxation of co course lirse is an ancient pro process ceis another method not so ancient is compulsory savings henderson favored compulsory savings so did a lot of others he said so he tried to convince mr Morgen tAti but mr chudd shuddered ered that was totalitarian re regulate gut ate prices what you pay out all right but dont tell a tree free american citizen what he has to put in his hils sock totalitarian henry morgen thau never said those words to me e but one of 0 his close did associates did well henderson in one ot of his tactless mome moments its a year and a half ball ago commented on mr morgen thaus opinions on compulos compulsory ory savings not for or the record H he e said in I 1 n effect henry Is perfectly willing i ng to have me put a gestapo in every grocery store but he thinks it its s hitlerism to force people to save or buy bonds those his exact words but those were his sentiments I 1 quote th them em not because mr henderson knows everything but because he talks with a punch I 1 might also add that there appeared a year ago an article from the pen of reserve board chairman eccles entitled entitle d price ceilings are not enough in which he expounded the thesis that money must be taken out of the easy spenders pockets or inflation would result one third of the way today we have a tax bill which stands seven months after pearl harbor as incapable of meeting the exigencies of war as manila or singapore were it is true that expenses have shot up inore more rapidly than was expected tal although though many say this should have been foreseen and now we are lucky if we can pay one third of our way daniel bell undersecretary of th the treasury said that 24 bili bill lion dollars of the national expenditure would be handled with borrowing not all from the banks this year secretary had refused to ans answer a question on that point in the senate committee hearings W when hen senator taft put it to him but turned it over to bell tatt taft protested that he wanted morgen thau than as the policymaking policy making head of the department to answer then said he would stand behind beus bells prediction it Is true that the h house ouse cu cut t tl the e tax bill as submitted by the treasury the treasury asked tor for and got from the house the senate is being urged to restore the cuts but the treasury program itself was far ar too small the experts say at present calculations the governments income for or the fiscal year 1942 43 will be around 24 billion dollars whereas its outgo will be in the neighborhood of 77 billions if after pearl harbor the government had asked tor for the maximum it needed the country would have been only too glad to submit As my correspondents say the country need to be waked up washington does critics ot of mr and his program say too little and too late they say too little because the differ difference erice between outgo and income or the fiscal year ending in 1943 will be at least 53 billion dollars nonnegotiable non negotiable bonds they say too late because insufficient measures have been taken 0 to o check inflation and one way inflation can be checked Is to get right after the spending money and make it saving money by forcing the people to invest in nonnegotiable negotiable non bonds that cant be cashed in until after the war A lot of people are going to need spending money again when peace comes until industry Is converted back from war production to civilian production As one man connected with the federal reserve board said to me there is one thing that very few people realize when the government or anyone else borrows from the bank new money is created that makes inflation there Is plenty of money in existence now tor ta pay war expenditures and avoid the e fatal a ka error of borrowing from the b banks an the difficulty now is that the dollars which are the most dangerous in bidding up prices and causing inflation are the dollars in the pay en delopes of the workers of industry and these dollars a are re not as far as we can estimate the dollars that are liuying buying bonds and another thing the taxes dont reach these dollars either what we may as well realize Is coming though not coming as soon as it should is one compulsory savings although we wont use that unpleasant word compulsory it will probably be a requirement to buy bonds not redeemable until after the war and so staggered that they wont all hit the treasury at once two a smaller tax exemption so that we will get the loose dollars from the lower income brackets there are more of those dollars to get three there will have to be s some ome leniency tor bior the fixed salary m man an who is already saving the average middle iddle rn class that puts money into savings regularly in the form orm 0 of f mortgages on homes or farms or plants money into life insurance policies money into pension plans that is savings it Is not creating inflation but that man with the high taxation those in his income b brackets rac have to pay has to go to the bank and take the money from rom the savings which he has there to turn it over to the government canada has faced this problem the united states will have to war production is ahead of schedule fiscal thinking think irig is lagging behind we can see a year after mr eccles said so that price ceilings are not enough increased costs are such that the packers as the canners before them have announced that they just wont stay in business if they have to operate at a loss the price of the finished product has a ceiling but the raw materials and wages have no ceilings somebody has to corral those dollars urban residents rank highest in the proportion of college graduates in the population with 57 per cent as corl pared with 42 per cent tor for rural nor non ifa farm and 13 per cent for or rural farm groups according to information collected by b y the department of commerce in the 1940 census B R I 1 E F V S by baukhage education for or free men Is the general theme chosen for the 1912 1942 american education week ab A bombardier can expect to spend about ab 36 seconds over an enemy target during that brief time he di directs the he plane and makes all the adjustments which actuate the famous am american erle ati bombsight all at a speed peed of miles an hour A gross of 6 5 million books donated donate d in five months is the record made by the victory book campaign education Is one odthe of the five larg est business firms in indiana according to a al recent issue of a publication ca tion entitled priceless product of In dianas public school system the schools directly affect nearly beark one third of the population dally daily |