The Week

Bumper sticker seen on a Boston freeway: “Don’t blame me—I’m from Alabama.”

While presidential and congressional rhetoric emphasizes the need for economizing, in order to fight inflation, recent actions belie the words. In the first months of the Ford Administration we have a new $25-billion education bill, an $ll-billion mass transit bill, an $11-billion housing bill, unbudgeted additional millions on veterans benefits and small business loans, subsidized loans for cattlemen and banks, and the refusal to defer federal pay increases. The Joint Economic Committee recommends “holding” federal spending at $300 billion (a $25-billion increase over last year), while the Committee simultaneously advocates spending billions more on public service jobs, food stamps, and welfare benefits. Interest on past deficits, already costing taxpayers over $29 billion a year, is expected to be revised upward soon. Well, what can you expect from the outfit that “held” federal spending from $ 118 billion to almost triple that sum in a single decade?

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Bumper sticker seen on a Boston freeway: “Don’t blame me—I’m from Alabama.”

While presidential and congressional rhetoric emphasizes the need for economizing, in order to fight inflation, recent actions belie the words. In the first months of the Ford Administration we have a new $25-billion education bill, an $ll-billion mass transit bill, an $11-billion housing bill, unbudgeted additional millions on veterans benefits and small business loans, subsidized loans for cattlemen and banks, and the refusal to defer federal pay increases. The Joint Economic Committee recommends “holding” federal spending at $300 billion (a $25-billion increase over last year), while the Committee simultaneously advocates spending billions more on public service jobs, food stamps, and welfare benefits. Interest on past deficits, already costing taxpayers over $29 billion a year, is expected to be revised upward soon. Well, what can you expect from the outfit that “held” federal spending from $ 118 billion to almost triple that sum in a single decade?