Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1946-10-24
Budget Bureau Cuts
Weaken u. S. Defense
Bureaucrats Seen to Hold Veto
Over Congress, Service Chiefs

w S0NSn ~ ~ DSbSBSS
Bureaucrats Seen to Hold Veto
Over Congress, Service Chiefs
By David Laurence
Serious cuts in the Army, Navy and
Air Forces are coming which will ma
terially weaken the defense of the United
States in troubled world.
At the same time that President Tru-
man has ordered drastic cuts in the
budgets of the armed services, he has
allowed the pork barrel budget for
rivers and harbors expenditures to be
increased.
The order to cut has come from the
Budget Bureau. The War Department
has been requested to cut about 81 ,300,-
100000 and the Navy about $3.50 900, 900.
This is in addition to cuts already made
Of about the same amount heretofore.
These new reductions were not au-
thorized by Congress. 1t begins to look
as if Congress Is by-passed altogether
and that, no matter what money Con-
gress may specify as permissible, the
Budget Bureau, acting through the
White House, can require 1t not to be
spent.
The cuts ordered are on the current
budget in the fiscal year ending June 80,
1947, and are being made after Congress
had determined what 1t wanted to spend
for national defense.
Civilian Controls Defense.
If President may, during recess Of
Congress, use his power over the Army
and Navy to reduce their respective
budgets, it means that the peoples legis-
lature will have no means hereafter Of
controlling the nature or quality of the
defense facilities available to the Ameri-
can people.
The many thousands of pages of testi-
mony taken in connection with the Pearl
Harbor attack merely tell the story of
what our armed services failed to do
with the facilities and equipment they
had, but it is also we'll known that, even
if they had been properly alerted, the
result might not have been very differ
ent For the Budget Bureau was the
institution that regulated expenditures
for national defense before 1941, and
there is instance after instance in the
record to show that, although the
Budget Bureau cut down the requests of
the armed services, Congress managed to
restore portion of those requests. This
means that the defense of the United
States is not handled by men who know
something about defense but by civilian
bureaucrats who apparently don't know
whether the armed services will remain
effective instruments of foreign policy"
Basic Principle Important.
The basic principle involved in the
cutting of the defense budgets is OF
transcendent Importance. If the Budget
Bureau, through its presidential in
f1uence, forces the Army and Navy
officers to cut our defense strength
below what they believe is necessary
for our safety in this atomic era. these
officers do not dare to tell the public
about it. Only by discreet answers to
bold questions asked by members of
congressional committee can the facts
be brought out. The damage to the
military establishment about to be In
f1icted may not be remediable by JAM
| uary when the new Congress convenes.
The defense of Guam was impossible
in the last war because the administra-
ton had failed to fortify that all
important base. Army and Navy OIL
GERS were told by civilian officials not to
ask for funds to fortify Guam because
Congress wouldn't grant the requests
But the specific request was never pre-
sented for vote to Congress, and the
responsibility for the loss of many
American lives in the Pacific cannot be
placed on the Army and Navy officers
who asked in vain for better defenses
in the Pacific but were prevented from
making their views public as to our
defense needs.
Cuts May Backfire.
The War and Navy Departments are
engaged in trying to make the new cuts
requested by the Budget Bureau. but
theirs is a discouraging task Then
they see political pork barrel expend-
itures deliberately increased, especially
just before elections.
The Army and Navy cuts, however,
may backf1re politically. 1t is said that
most of the civilian shipyards will be
closed down soon if the cuts go through.
The news about this prospective dis
missal of numerous shipyard workers is
being kept secret till after election-in
fact. the orders to cut have been hushed
up for long time and only leaked out
this week. Even SO, the details of how
the cuts are to be made and the effect
on the total personnel-ofhcers and
civilian employes-in shore establish
ments and airfields and Army camps
have not yet been revealed and probably
will not be known till after the Novem-
Der elections