Evening star., 1938-04-03
By NC. r.
s THE reviewer mentioned In

Tor us leaolng artlcle, piece
by David Cushman Coyle, which
undertakes to explain that the Fed
eral deficit, about which we hear
from time to time, is by no means
as bad as rumor hath it, but is,
instead, greatly exaggerated matter.
Further, says Mr.. Coyle, public
uneasiness over the (alleged) ma
tional debt could be alleviated by no
more effort than change in govern
mental bookkeeping. In other words,
we could balance the books by balanc-
ing tine books. Letting. one supposes,
the outstanding indebtedness fall
where it may? Well, the world has
seen many strange methods Of doing
business in recent years, and 1t may be
indeed that there is something to
Mr.. Coyle's ingenious scheme.
But Senator Harry F. Byrd, writing
in the April Atlantic Monthly, does
not think so. He is very far from be-
lieving that the deficit exists on paper
only, or that it can be decreased by
paper manipulation. Instead, he views
it with plain old-fashioned alarm.
And in his article, called THE Cost
Of Our Government" he offers tax
paying citizens some reasons for shar-
ing his uneasiness.
| Announces the Senator: 1.-The TWen-
tieth Century Fund, an independent
fact-finding agency. says that the total
Government debts in the United States
Federal, State and local-amount to
| 1or
nation has ever had" And of this
total indebtedness he estimates that
the Federal share is upward of s38,-
900 100000"
He then proceeds to give us some
picturesque statistics as to what that
figure means.
In 1913" he writes. "the per capita
income for the United States was
$3.50; in 1885 it was s469. an increase
Of "a per cent. In 1918 total expendi-
lures by all governments in the Nation
equaled $50 per capita; in 1886 the
total was $l34. an increase OF 347 per
cent. On a per capita basis, Govern
ment expenditures in 1918 represented
per cent Of the national income; in
1886 the expenditures represented %
per cent Of the national income. In
| 1913 the total public debt average was
$3.50. At present about one-third OF
every persons income would be re-
quired to meet Government expendi-
lures II we were to pay as we spend"
The meaning Of that last sentence
would seem to be that at the present
time the Government is actually spend
ing one-third Of every personss in
come, even though We are not paying
"as We spend" or, in other words, that
the Government is mortgaging one
third OF every dollar you own And,
OF course. the planned spending for
the coming year is even higher than
for those which have gone before The
Senator's figures are assurdly interest
ing.
He very clearly does not share Mr.
Coyle's opinion that the deficit could
be made to shrink by the use of a re-
'vised system of bookkeeping. On the
contrary, he asserts that there has
been altogether too much trick book
keeping already. The two budget" |
system, He says, allows our expendi- |
lures to be represented in a way which |
mlsleads the citizen into thinking that
the debt is being checked. This system
he describes as follows:
The double budget was adopted in |
1884. There was to be one budget for
emergency expenditures and another
for regular expenditures. There are
still two budgets. But there has never
been but one treasury, and one source
Of revenue
'HE manner in which the system
| works to public confusion is like
wise succinctly outlined in the article.
There have been announcements of
reductions in spending for recovery
and relief" observes the Senator, but
almost invariably reductions Tn the
emergency budget turn out to mean
that the regular, permanent budget
has been increased by the items elm
mated from the emergency totals.
The expenditures have been juggled
from one book to another, but the
taxpayer pays the bill for both bud
gets. The two-budget system has
merely aggravated the confusion"
There Is not much comfort in this,
and there IS no more in the Sena-
tors article for those who extenuate
the national extravaganza by declar-
ing that the taxes are levied in such
way as to place the burden on those
able to carry it. On the contrary.
the Senator fatty contradicts this op-
tinism
The revenue, he declares, "did not
not come from millionaires, for if the
Government had conflscated all the
| income of all the millionaires in the
country the revenue would have run
the Government only about three
days. 1t did not come from big busi-
ness. through the so-called undistrib-
| uted profit taxes. The records show,
and no one will deny. that this and
other share-the- wealth schemes broke
down. Some contend that, together
with other Federal policies and ac-
tivity, they carried business down
with them, with the resulting recess
sion.
Nearly half OF all revenue came
from the miscellaneous taxes embrac-
ing tobacco. amusements, and hum
dreds Of other items which rich and
poor alike pay at the same rate.
Ordinary people will pay most of |
these bills and carry the load of this
debt and these expenditures. ="
These sharp, authoritative state
mentS cannot but evoke a memory in
the minds of the ironical, a memory
of a now forgotten man, one Alfred
E. Smith, talking at Liberty League
dinner. He said on that occasion
something to the effect that you can't
get 1t of the rich because there
aren't enough of them and you can't
get 1t of the poor because they
haven't got it. And came, we'll in
advance Of the event, to Senator
Byrd's conclusion that 'it" would
have to be gotten of the ordinary
/