Economic Doublethink

February 11, 1957

The late George Orwell coined the word doublethink to mean “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” Has this power been acquired by the Eisenhower Administration? It might explain the budget, the Middle East policy, and the Economic Report.

Let’s begin with the budget. We are told by Administration officials that it is the tightest budget that could be presented to Congress, but that it should be cut. The President even told his press conference that “there are literally thousands and thousands” of individual items in the budget, and “anybody that is examining that seriously ought to find some place where they might save another dollar.” It did not seem to occur to him that it was the prior and primary duty of himself, the Budget Bureau, and others who actually put those thousands of items together to search out the possible savings that “anybody” ought to find.

SPEND AND SPEND

When some congressmen did suggest that it might be unnecessary just now to tie an authorization for a special discretionary foreign-aid fund of $200 million for the Middle East on to the proposal for unrestricted military authority, Mr. Eisenhower quickly intervened to say that separation or postponement of the foreign-aid authorization “would destroy what we are really trying to do.” But when he was asked at a press conference how the proposed $200 million would be spent, he replied that he didn’t know, “because the only way I can find out exactly how to spend the $200 million would be through the medium of the Richards mission . . . which cannot leave until the resolution has been passed.” He insists on the $200 million, in short, before the need for it has even been determined.

His new philosophy of spending is also puzzling. Though he is presenting the largest peacetime budget on record, with unparalleled nondefense spending, Mr. Eisenhower is not troubled, because the country is enjoying the greatest prosperity on record, and a growing country can afford to and must spend more to meet its growing needs. But suppose the growth were suddenly to stop? Suppose signs of a depression set in? Then the government must spend more. Asked about deficit spending as a cure for recession, the President replied: “You begin then to apply moderate means, and then more, and if it kept going, finally you would go into every single thing, and very quickly. . . . And there would be no limit, I think, to what should be attempted as long as it was constitutional.” There is, alas, no constitutional limit on deficit spending.

THE ECONOMIC REPORT

The Economic Report is another example of doublethink. It repeatedly praises “our free economy”—and then goes on to advocate the extension of government controls in a score of new directions. It insists on “strengthening competition”—and then proposes a score of measures to protect small business, labor, and agriculture against the effects of competition. It insists that government “must exercise a strict discipline over its expenditures”—then advocates an expansion of most existing categories of spending, and adds entirely new ones for local-school and highway building.

“As long as the American people demand and, in my opinion, deserve the kind of services that this budget provides,” the President declares, “we have got to spend this kind of money.” This implies the existence of a sort of economic Fourth Dimension. Mr. Eisenhower forgets that the government has nothing to give the American people that it does not take from the American people. It has nothing to give the states and cities that it does not take from the residents of the states and cities. It has nothing to give Paul that it does not take from Peter.

Five years ago (Jan. 28, 1952) with Mr. Truman in office, I remarked here that the Economic Report was an unnecessary document, whose chief recommendations are or ought to be found in the State of the Union message or in the budget. “The rest consists mainly of giving ‘scientific’ and ‘economic’ reasons for what the President has done or wants to do for political reasons.”

Has the situation changed?