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Show The 44 Billion Dollar Question Listening to Harry Truman's rabid attack on the opposition oppo-sition during his recent Jefferson-Jackson Day speech, you wondered at the childish spite of the man. And you couldn't could-n't help but wonder if some of those wild swings at the opposition weren't prompted by the President's desire to distract the public's attention away from some current administration embarassments. All through Harry Truman's speech we kept recalling the words of a man whom Harry Truman could hardly brand as a hypocritical Republican. He is U. S. Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois. He is a Democrat. He is serving his first term in the senate, but has been in and out of government govern-ment service since the beginnings of the New Deal and you would certainly not be wrong if you classed him as a liberal. lib-eral. In Mr. Douglas' eyes things are not quite as Utopian under the present administration as Harry Truman would have you believe. Nor have the Democrats suddenly achieved a corner on all wisdom and light. , , By way of illustration we quote several of Senator Douglas' pungent observations made in an article which he wrote for Collier's magazine. "The gravest danger we face today is economic and political disintegration into competitive groups, each placing plac-ing its own interest above national interest. Loyalty to a group can be good when it is secondary to loyalty to our country, but when magnified out -of its proper place it becomes be-comes a menace. If I were limited to only one conclusion based on my first year in the United States Senate, it would be this: We must guard against breaking our population down into self-conscious, selfish segments." Harry Truman's intemperate attack on those" who oppose op-pose him politically was hardly calculated to lessen the friction that has developed with his and his predecessor's encouragement. ' . "- Again we quote from Senator Douglas: "Over the stretch of years, we candidates for elective offices have encouraged the people to make demands on the public treasury. We have promised them bigger buildings, better roads and everything else, if only they would elect us. We have told' them to come to us in our state capitals or in Washington and we would get for them what they want. So we must share thejnoral responsibility for what has happened. .V "In our campaigns we have often promised too much. Now I think we must reverse ourselves, even at the risk of defeat, and talk straight economic and political .truth to the voters. "If saying "No" instead of promising "Yes" occasionally occa-sionally results in political defeat, what of it? It will at least advance the popular understanding of a basic issue." The meanwhile, the President prpmised even mi?re and more of the bigger and better in his Jefferson-Jackson address, ad-dress, ignoring as usual the precarious economics upon which such a program is based. What does Mr. Douglas have to say of present expenditures? ex-penditures? He states: "Federal expenditures for the fiscal year 1949-50, including authorizations, will add up. to about 44 billion dollars, but federal receipts will not exceed 38 billions. Thus, there will be a deficit of about' six billion dollars in one of the most prosperous years this country has known. That's a serious situation. If we do not balance the budget when business is booming, when will we do it?" That is the $44,000,000,000 question which Harry Truman's much maligned opposition has been asking for an embarassing number of months now. It's encouraging to find a Democrat like Douglas asking the same question. However, we don't expect President Truman to answer it. Why should he as long as he's got a mouthful of dirty words to spit at the Republicans? |