Where It Can Be Cut

January 28, 1957

A few comparisons for perspective: Average annual expenditures of the Hoover Administration (fiscal years 1930–33 inclusive), $4.1 billion. Of the first Roosevelt Administration (1934–37), $7.4 billion. Of the second Truman Administration (1950–53), $55.8 billion. Of the first Eisenhower Administration, $66.6 billion. In the coming fiscal year, $71.8 billion.

The Korean war, let us remember, lasted three years and one month. All but that last month was fought under Truman budgets. The entire $9.7 billion reduction that Mr. Eisenhower effected in total expenditures between the fiscal years 1953, and 1955 ($74.3 down to $64.6 billion) came out of the military budget ($50.4 down to $40.6 billion). Of the $7.3 billion rise in annual expenditures since 1955, the major part is accounted for by increases in domestic “welfare” spending. No wonder Secretary Humphrey rebelled. “I don’t think,” as he put it, “that you can spend yourself rich.”

Disregarding other huge categories of spending, let us consider the proposal to spend $4.4 billion more on foreign aid in the next fiscal year, on top of the $55 billion or so we have already paid out for this purpose since the end of the second world war.

FUTILE ECONOMIC AID

Our so-called foreign “economic” aid program has from the beginning been based on a mishmash of political confusions and economic fallacies. Politically, it has not promoted good will or gratitude or stopped the growth of Communism. On the contrary, it has engendered suspicion of our motives precisely in the countries to which we have given most. Its effect has been actually to breed anti-American policies on the part of foreign governments eager to prove to their own people that their receipt of aid from us has not made them subservient.

We on our side no longer dare to ask for any political quid pro quo for our aid, or even to insist that the recipient governments follow sound internal economic policies. We are afraid of being accused of attaching “strings” or conditions—although without such conditions our aid must fail to achieve the only results that could justify it. In fact, by freeing foreign governments from making the internal economic reforms that would be necessary to assure and attract foreign private investment, our foreign aid has merely subsidized and prolonged inflation, Socialism, and repressive controls in the countries receiving it. Our “economic” aid has probably on net balance actually retarded recovery in the countries to which it has gone.

OUR COSTLY SILENCE

The proposal for a still bigger economic-aid program merely serves to divert attention from the essential weakness of the rest of the Middle East proposals. Mr. Eisenhower declares boldly that we will now do in the face of every disadvantage what we did not have the foresight to do when we enjoyed every advantage. When Britain, France, and Israel only a couple of months ago were within a few days of controlling the Suez Canal, and protecting their treaty rights and the vital interests of the free world, we self-righteously joined Nasser and Soviet Russia to stigmatize them as “aggressors” and order them out. When the U.S.S.R. threatened to send “volunteers” to Egypt to enforce this edict, and when a hint from us that we would not tolerate this, and might even join forces with France and Britain to combat it, would have nullified the Russian threat, our Administration spokesmen were strangely silent.

Now that the French and British are out, now that we no longer have allies in possession of the area, or even a clear idea of how we would get our own troops into the area, Mr. Eisenhower wants us to warn Russia how firm we are going to be the next time. Having rebuked Britain for a go-it-alone policy, we blandly propose a go-it-alone policy for ourselves, in the same theater and to accomplish essentially the same objectives. The only difference is that having spurned NATO and our proven allies we now promise, in compensation, to submit ourselves once more as in Korea, to the trammels and frustrations of United Nations debate and consent. How great, by the way, is the alleged “moral force” of the United Nations? What did it accomplish in Hungary?