Evening Post. MONDAY, JUNE 6, 1938. NO ENDING TO SPENDING

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 131, 6 June 1938, Page 8

Evening Post. MONDAY, JUNE 6, 1938. NO ENDING TO SPENDING

People who expect an ending t< Government spending are optimists They begin by accepting the pump priming theory as a genuine priming —as a State spending which is t< "taper oft" when the stimulation o State money has restarted the pumj: of industry. But the "tapering-ofi no sooner appeared in the Rooseveli policy than the pump began to cougl irregularly, and President Roosevelt again came forth with .streams o: money to soothe its brazen throat This year the pump will be again ■>rimed with 3,722,000,000 dollars il he President has the same success n the House of Representatives as is eported in the Senate, The cougl nedicine required since 1932 by the American pump must have reached in equivalent in dollars hardly cal :ulable. And the actual result is hat die carefully-induced summer oi jrosperity _quickly passes to the mtumn of "recession," with fear of i winter of slump. At a point on the ip-grttde the President did rfiake an ittempt to stop priming, but economy ind human circumstances were toe trong for him. Here in New Zealand here has been no sign of a halt; jrosperity and Government spending iave soared together. At the prime >f summer" the Government primes tlso. "If winter comes" there will )e nothing in hand except a vague iromise of insulation. ! It was not for a result like this hat the Brains Trust was organised in 1933. The New Deal then foreshadowed assumed a New Economics ; but in Jess than five years he phrase "pump-priming" had lost its primal meaning. Concurrently ivith this deterioration in the New Economics, it is noted that American hinking, which became furiously :conomic under stress of the 1932 arises, has swung back to partypolitical channels. In 1933 the \merican public and its Congress stood aside to give the new President lis unimpeded chance tas an ecolomic conjurer. He no longer ippears as such in America today, jut as a politician—still "heads ibove others"-—playing deep ppliti;al chess with a now capricious Congress and - with an equally ;apricious economic situation which imerges from the New Deal uniformed, unrepentant, and inclined o 'reproduce all • its old worst eatures. In 1933-34 there was a 'pump-priming" that was to. end all 'pump-priming"; today it is merely lumping to keep the ship afloat in he presence of a new unscheduled storm, in an uncharted shoal region. The present chapter was quite absent irom history as foreseen in 1933. The descent from prophecy to politics follows almost as a matter jf course. 5 , In 1933 Mr. Roosevelt could not be too powerful—Congress almost ibdicated —but in 1938 the rallying ;ry of dissident Democrats and lepublicans is that he is altogether 00 powerful. The word "dictator,hip" is heard so often that the President has to repudiate the idea. [>o his political enemies really dread hat he is becoming a dictator? Pro>ably not, but it is easier to oppose he "3,722,000,000 dollar Recovery md Relief Bill" by saying that the spending is too much in the hands pt 1 dictatorial President than by opposing the Bill on any other ground, io oppose spending proposals requires ?reat political nerve, and that is why the promise to "taper off" was never more than a promise. Those Republicans who charge dictatorship or Fascism, and who are said to use the dissident Democrats as a spearpoint and also as a shield, are hardly likely to refuse to be Santa Claus when their turn comes. The New York "Nation" recently remarked:

If Fascism comes, it will not come from the attempt of a duly elected Government, whether New Deal or anti-New Deal, to tackle the economic problem. It will come from the collapse of governmental power in the face of an insurmountable economic crisis.

Americans no. longer look to Mr. Roosevelt to abolish such crises, but a -very large number of them still regard him as the main hope that "governmental power" will ride the storm. Hence no doubt his triumph in securing from the Senate a free hand in the spending." j How times change is indicated by the.fact that it is a "triumph today to obtain what was freely given five years ago. War clouds as well as "recession" clouds now tend to keep the President in the saddle, but the missionary zeal of 1933 —the resolve to drive the money-changers out of the temple—is "gone with the wind."