Congressmen Challenge U.S. Budget Demands

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31278, 26 January 1967, Page 11

Congressmen Challenge U.S. Budget Demands

(N.Z.P. A .-Reuter —Copyright) WASHINGTON, January 25. President Johnson’s record 135,000 million dollar budget ran into trouble today as influential Congressmen threatened cuts in domestic spending to reduce a large deficit caused by soaring Vietnam war costs.

Even some of President Johnson’s staunchest Democratic Party lieutenants joined a Republican-led revolt against his great society welfare programmes and warned that their economic axes were being sharpened.

The budget, which went to Congress yesterday with a predicted deficit of 8100 million dollars outlined the Administration’s spending programme for the 1968 financial year beginning next July 1. It carried a defence budget of 75,500 million dollars including 21,900 million dollars for the Vietnam war, as well as increases for the anti-poverty war and other welfare projects. Shortly after he submitted it to Congress, the President

requested supplemental funds of 12,300 million dollars for the Vietnam war. Of this amount, 9100 million dollars were earmarked for immediate use, bringing total war spending in the current 1967 financial year to 19,419 million dollars. Initial reaction in Congress to the 1968 budget displayed acceptance of the swollen defence costs but widespread resistance to domestic spending increases and the 6 per cent

tax surcharge the President proposed Americans should pay.

Leading the uproar over the issue was Senator Russell Long, the Democratic whip in the Senate and a senior member of the party’s congressional leadership. “We’ll certainly reduce it very drastically,” said Senator Long, who is chairman of the Finance Committee, which plays a major role in budgetary and economic legislation. Senator Everett Dirkson, the Republican leader in the Senate, accused President Johnson of budget “gimmick-

ry” and said there were a number of items which would receive sharp scrutiny.

Representative George Mahon, a powerful Democrat who is chairman of the House of Representatives Appropriations, Committee, said it was imperative that Congress should cut everything it safely could. Political experts predicted, on the basis of the widespread criticism, that Congress would make multimillion dollar cuts in requested appropriations so as to reduce the estimated deficit and avoid a tax increase.