Evening star., 1949-11-03
Our Red Ink Con Drown Us

The United States is really in the red.
According to the Budget Bureaus latest
estimate, the Federal deficit for the cur
rent fiscal year-which ends next June 80
will be $500 900 900. Thus, for two
years in a row, in a period of relatively
great national prosperity, we have failed
to balance our income with our outgo;
we have spent tremendously more than
we have collected in taxes; we have moved
further and further ahead on the road
to insolvency; and we have done all this
in q generally carefree spirit, as If there
were no need whatever to worry about
such profiigacy.
But actually there, is a very great need
to worry about it. The astronomical fig
ures involved may seem incomprehensible
and they may make for decidedly dull
reading, but they are nonetheless of ut
most Importance to the future of all of
us, individually and collectively. Our
national debt now amounts to more than
quarter of a trillion dollars. The interest
we are paying on it every year-the inter-
est alone-exceeds the entire sum of money
the Federal Government used to spend
annually as recently as the early 193Os.
At present, out of each four dollars he
earns, the average American has to hand
over about one dollar to the tax collectors.
Yet we face huge deficit and we may
have bigger one still at the end of
fiscal 1851. In fact, unless something is
done to reverse the present trend, it may
become permanent, in which case we may
one day find ourselves drowning in our
own red ink.
For the fact is that these deficits, auto
matically increasing our fantastic debt,
cannot continue indefinitely without en-
dangering our way OF life as we know it.
Sooner or later, as Senator Byrd and others
have warned, we must put an end to such
financing lest it shatter public confidence
in Federal securities, wreck the credit of
the Nation, upset our system of Govern
ment, imperil our constitutional liberties
and weaken u and our friends abroad to
such an extent that the Red totalitarians
will see green light beckoning them on to
new adventures in aggression. Although
this fiscal menace does not yet exist in
full strength, 1t is definitely taking shape,
and unless we act now to counter 1t, it
may descend upon us much sooner than
most of us care to imagine. t. We cannot
safely be complacent about it. Far from
being make-believe bogeyman conjured
up by people like Mr.. Byrd. it is real
enough to be dealt with without further
delay.
And how ought we to deal with it?
For his own part, President Truman, de-
claring that he wishes somebody would
tell him what else can be done, has sug-
gested that he intends to ask for higher
taxes. But ta., Understanding that
a moderate one would be wise and that
the Senate and House would enact it With
elections coming up next November-can
hardly achieve much by itself. What is
needed above everything is a genuine effort
by both the administration and Congress
to make substantial slasfes in Federal
expenditures. Without that, there can be
no getting out of the red. @
OF course in certain categories-s as
debt charges, defense outlays, foreign aid,
etc.-great savings cannot be made,
either because the categories themselves
are legally irreducible or because severe
c,,ts In them would be against the best
,nterests OF the Nation. However, in the
f,elds of administrative reorganization,
farm price supports, and actual or pro-
posed projects like broadened social secu-