The First 100 Days

May 15, 1961

At noon on April 29, President Kennedy completed his first 100 days in the White House. During the election campaign, he announced that these would be “the crucial days” of a new Administration, and drew a parallel with the famous first 100 days of Franklin Roosevelt’s Presidency.

In view of the hairline margin of his victory, Mr. Kennedy has so far been astonishingly successful in getting his domestic program through. Of the sixteen measures called for in his “must” list of February, seven have already been enacted, and some action is under way on all but two. The President can surely not be accused of inactivity. During the period he sent no fewer than nineteen messages to Congress—an unparalleled record.

But is this a record of “success”? That depends on what the practical effect of these measures will be (or will be judged to be) at the election three and a half years from now.

The President’s Cuban venture was a disastrous failure. It was seen to be such a failure by practically everybody within 72 hours after it was launched. The consequences of economic policies are more difficult to judge. Their long-run effects are often quite different from their immediate effects. The innumerable factors always at work in the economic realm lead to wide differences of interpretation. Bad consequences of bad policies are often blamed on something else—especially by those who originally recommended the policies. But the longer a bad policy is continued the worse its consequences tend to become, and the more obvious becomes the connection between the consequences and the policy.

SPENDING PROGRAM

Let us now look at some of the major Kennedy measures, both enacted and proposed. They include a higher minimum wage with broader coverage; aid to depressed areas; higher and longer unemployment benefits; aid to dependent children of the unemployed; increased social-security benefits; with a lowering of the eligibility age; medical care for the aged; large Federal school aid; expanded foreign aid; an omnibus farm bill with higher price supports; lower interest rates through government intervention; withholding of taxes on dividends and interest (though with some limited incentives for business investment), and a “cyclical” rather than an annual balance—beginning with a planned deficit.

Space does not permit an analysis here of any one of these proposals. But they add up, individually and collectively, to a huge spending program. And all this is on top of the tremendous annual spending program in excess of $100 billion (including social security) that had already been planned by President Eisenhower. This spending, and the deficits it would entail, are being taken very lightly. “Such a deficit [$2 billion],” now says Secretary of the Treasury Dillon, “is not a cause for alarm in times like these. . . . Another deficit is in prospect for fiscal ‘62, one of about $3 billion. This, too, will be entirely appropriate.”

INFLATION AHEAD

What this spending and these deficits mount up to, however, is inflation. This inflation may seem at the beginning to be beneficent. The upturn in business that has already started may continue. In spite of the measures that discourage employment by forcing up labor costs, there may even be further improvement in employment.

But what will happen when all this inflationary tinder catches fire, as it eventually will? What will happen if world confidence in the dollar is shaken again? What will happen if the run on gold is suddenly resumed? What will happen, in brief, if the inflation, now so devoutly prayed for in the Administration in the belief that it will restore employment, not only arrives but starts to get out of hand? For as other governments have learned to their bitter cost, this is the way of “planned” inflations.

The Kennedy program, as unfolded in the first 100 days, is a program of inflation and welfare-statism. During the past two decades, the wrecks of such programs have been scattered over Europe and Latin America for all to see. The true friends of Mr. Kennedy will warn him of these consequences now, while there is still time to reconsider his course.