From the DETROIT FREE PRESS
Tuesday, March 5, 1946
For A Stable Economy
BALANCED BUDGET
The joint statement issued Sunday by 16 members of the House and Senate, calling for a balanced Federal budget in the 1946-47 fiscal year, and for the elimination of spending for war functions which have outlasted their usefulness, should strike a responsive note throughout the nation.
It is significant that this call for an immediate end to deficit spending crossed party lines. Signers of the manifesto were both Republicans and Democrats. Michigan was represented by Senator Vandenberg and Rep. Woodruff.
This statement closely followed a Treasury announcement that the Nation's peak debt of $279,500,000,000 should be the high-water mark for some time. Secretary of the Treasury Vinson reported that recent revenues have been running ahead of expenditures and during February $2,800,000,000 in cash was laid out for debt retirement, with an equal amount pledged over the next three months.
This is a hopeful picture, but it is not all of the story. Treasurey receipts have not come entirely from taxes. Last fall's Victory Loan produced more than was actually required for immediate purposes.
Tentative Federal budget estimates for the next year are about $35,000,000,000. This is said to be considerably more than anticipated Treasury receipts from individual and corporate income taxes, which are substantially reduced from last year.
The solution, then, as the Congressional group points out, is to apply the pruning hook.
"We cannot afford to spend money we do not have," the Congressional group stated. "We cannot afford to continue war agencies overdue to demobilization, or war functions of doubtful value in civil agencies. Every dollar we spend now must be justified by overwhelming proof of its need."
The statement goes on to point out that the country's need is for a high level of production. This cannot be attained if the Federal Government competes in the market ofr manpower and materials needed in the factories.
This will lead only to inflation and "under such circumstances we should not psend a penny for men and materials beyond our absolute need."
This question of inflation is closely linked to Federal spending. Continued deficit spending can start the spiral just as surely as can any other economic factor.
But to keep the lid on, and at the same time hold taxes at a relatively high level, would be just about the best safeguard that the Nation could have. That was pointed out the other day by the Committee on Economic Development in its inflation-deflation control plan.
The Nation's $279,500,000,000 debt is not the absolute measure of the cost of the war, but it will serve as a gauge.
This obligation must be paid, partly by this generation, partly by those to come.
But it can be paid only by a sound economy. To increase our existing national obligation, which is what deficit spending would do, would only serve to increase our present-day problems and to postpone the awful day of reckoning.
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Our Own 'Indonesia'
Washingtonians, agitating for the right to vote, were cheered by President Truman's reference to their plight in his recent state of the Union message.
While Government officials and employees, who maintain domiciles outside the District of Columbia, are able to go home and vote, Washington's permanent residents are dis-franchised. They haven't even had the right to vote for mayor and council since 1874. They have no representation in the Congress that legislates for them. A board of commissioners appointed by the President administers their affairs.
Although the President merely said that "we should move toward a greater measure of local self-government consistent with the constitutional status of the District," voteless Washingtonians argue that, as their local government is Congressional government, this must mean representation for them in Congress. They don't want to remain a "dependent people".
When we are seeking through UNO to extend the ballot to the dark corners of the earth, we can hardly continue to deny it to the denizens of our national capital. That is, with a straight face and an easy conscience.
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Thomas L. STokes
Our Moral Duty to Europe
Washington - The voluntary food conservation campaign to help feed Europe, which President Truman has entrusted to the leadership of Herbert Hoover, can do something for us and the rest of the world beyond its immediate essential aim, if we so will it.
This can be simply stated by saying that sharing with others helps to create sympathy and understanding. And at no time since the war ended has there been such a need of this all over the world. For swashbuckling nationalism is rampant in a way that none could even imagine when the guns ceased firing last August.
The spirit with which Americans undertake the saving of food is what will count and can count.
There is, of course, no question tht we can save a great amount of food. It is plain to anybody who sits down at a time - at home, in restaurants, in hotels - that there is a shameful wastage. Nor is there any question of the willingness of the American people to help.
But out of it all can come more than that.
This might be illustrated that these hungry people came in and sat down with us, in our homes, and shared the food that goes to waste. We would suddenly find, if they sat at our tables and we could communicate with them across language barriers, that they were not "foreigners" at all.
We would find they have the same interest in resuming normal lives with their neighbors, doing their share of the world's work every day, raising children, educating them, and being kind, tolerant and decent citizens.
Their present desperate plight would touch us to the heart if they walked into our homes.
You may be sure that, after just one look mother would hurry off to get together that dress that she needs no longer, that old suit of father's, the jacket and trousers that brother has outgrown, a dress that sister no longer wears. She would herd these people upstairs and tell them to make themselves at home and get into these clothes. And you may be sure, too, that she would fix up something extra for dinner.
Everybody around that table would quickly be friends.
And you can be sure alos that none of these imaginary people who have come into our homes, no matter from what country, as any more desire than any of us ever to go to war against anybody. They would shudder to think that the little ones about the table, when they grow up, would have to go to war.
These are not the people who start wars.
They are started by the deification and glorification of a nation as an entity separate from the individual peoples who make it up. The nation becomes a person and a symbol unto itself, a sort of godhead, with its own peculiar attributes. It becomes an object of self-worship.
Its agents are leaders who somehow merge themselves into its identity and operate on a sphere all their own. They come in time to play a game of their own private purposes, which was the evil of Hitler and the Japanese war lords.
Nationalism seems to be springing up again, all over the world. There is a lot of throwing out of chests.
The Big Powers are indulging in it.
What about the plain people all over the world? Is anybody thinking of them, as individuals?
Perhaps the "moral leadership" of which we boasted can be restored somewhat if, as we share our food with others, we think of ourselves sitting about a table together, just human beings. They are our neighbors next door, after all. They are familiar. They can cause us no fear.
The swashbucklers preening themselves in the streets do not really represent them, nor us.
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NO WHITE SPAGHETTI
Some of the strongest opposition to the President's "dark bread" order is coming from an unexpected quarter - spaghetti manufacturers.
Spaghetti, macaroni and noodles are made from semolina, a gritty flour made, in turn, from Durham wheat.
Semolina millers, as well as spaghetti makers, are up in arms about the "dark bread" order, declaring it will drive them out of business. Already a number of semolina mills in the Minneapolis area have filed and exception to the order.
It's a big headache to Department of Agriculture officials. They understand the problems of the spaghetti people, but at the same time realize the dangers of amending the order for one group.
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And now for some fun ads in that same newspaper.
Let me apologize for the poor quality, but this particular paper wasn't kept in the greatest condition prior to my acquisition.
This is one of the reasons I transcribe and scan this information.....to share with others, especially young people that have not had the opportunity to access. Seems our public school system now either politically distorts information, omits entirely, or tries to limit access (search engines).
We can learn from history.
History is fun, interesting, and can be comical at times. It teaches us how far we've come - and allows free-thinking people to appreciate what we have.
Our young nation is amazing.
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