The Johnson Budget and Vietnam
Harrington, Michael
In his 1966 State of the Union message, Lyndon B. Johnson said that if the war in Vietnam were to go on, it should not be fir anced at the expense of the worst-off in the society but...
...Thus, there has been a concerted campaign to show that the 1967 budget actually proposes $25.6 billion in aid of the poor...
...In other words, this is an area where dramatic progress could be made by the utilization of existing resources, among them the potential of Negroes and other underemployed groups, rather than by competing for new resources...
...In his various domestic policy statements early in January, 1967, the President took back that Populist outburst...
...There are some leaders—most notably, Senator Ribicoff—who have begun to speak of the huge, multi-billion dollar figures required for desperately urgent social construction...
...Johnson is not simply going back on the old promises...
...Eventually, a tighter labor market allowed the unions to attempt to catch up somewhat...
...He is thinking small as well...
...Johnson is once again refusing to face up to the problem of the fair shares of affluence...
...Johnson might say that he could not confront these problems in the midst of a war...
...Johnson's proposals take "the smallest proportion of the national output of any budget since 1948...
...This approach might be contrasted to the tactic of a Democratic President who suffered a rather spectacular midterm defeat twenty years ago...
...This is the thorny, contradictory and conflictladen aspect of the New Economics...
...Third, Johnson is now taking a most conservative position on the issue of full employment...
...In the budget itself there is similar accountancy hocus-pocus...
...So, it is a way to growth which does not threaten inflation...
...In the first phase of the New Economics, when unemployment was so high that labor's bargaining strength was not great, the chief function of the guidelines was to hold down wage increases...
...At the same time, as the Council of Economic Advisers acknowledges in its 1967 Report, profits went up and up and up...
...Or worse, does Washington intend that the public funds shall contribute inordinately and exorbitantly to the private gains of the rich...
...But there were no such large ideas in this year's economic messages...
...The Administration boast is also vague when it comes to the $3.8 billion in education and training funds which are supposed to be concentrated on the poor or the $3.1 billion in economic and community development funds...
...And Mr...
...Johnson is apparently in no mood to face up to it...
...If this is not done, we will be at the mercy of Candide as a CPA...
...And so, if there is some university or foundation interested in a valuable project, here is one: to do an annual, expert translation of the budget into plain English and social priorities...
...In addition, as I. F. Stone noted in his Weekly, the Director of the Budget, Charles Schultze, boasted that, if the costs of the war in Vietnam are set aside, Mr...
...Johnson is leading some diabolical, malevolent attack on the poor...
...At times he even seems to move back toward that Eisenhower mood of celebration in which one emphasizes the accomplishments of the past rather than the needs of the future...
...But Mr...
...Second, Mr...
...It is clear, for instance, that if the proposals of the Freedom Budget were adopted in the area of housing—that is, if we made a specific, targeted commitment to do away with the slums in ten years —there could be a more rapid growth rate and a much larger fiscal dividend at the end of the process...
...they do not take into account the number of people who have been driven out of the labor market altogether, they do not compute parttime unemployment and full-time underemployment, etc...
...It is not, of course, that >'1r...
...For all intents and purposes, the Council accepts a 4 per cent jobless rate as an inevitable fact of life in the economy...
...Johnson does his with statistics...
...In his 1966 State of the Union message, Lyndon B. Johnson said that if the war in Vietnam were to go on, it should not be fir anced at the expense of the worst-off in the society but rather by the best-off...
...Mr...
...However, 1 do not intend in this brief space to attempt any extended political analysis of the retreat from the War on Poverty and the Great Society...
...There is talk about voluntary corporate restraint, but that's all...
...But even so, a few ideas, a thought or two about the period after the war, a modest exercise of the social imagination—these things could have been done without adding any real cost to the budget...
...Harry Truman bounced back from his 1946 disaster and achieved his extraordinary triumph of 1948 precisely by challenging his "do nothing" Congress...
...I cite these statistical tricks as an example of that credibility gap which seems to open up in absolutely everything that Mr...
...But more than that, this campaign to overstate society's contribution to the struggle against poverty is part of a retrogression to the mood of celebration and complacency which characterized the Eisenhower fifties...
...Guns win, butter loses...
...But then those were the days of giving 'em hell rather than of reasoning together...
...although it would be easy enough to honor last year's pledge in terms of economics, his consensus politics will not permit him to take the necessary steps...
...Rather, let me limit myself to some random comments on the Johnson economic policy which do, however, share a central theme...
...Assume that the war in Vietnam is good (which I emphatically do not) ; even grant that the meager social allocations of the current budget are dictated by economic necessity rather than political choice (which I certainly do not believe...
...In the process, the old, unfair guidelines were shattered...
...By this crucial measure, Mr...
...Thus, the New Republic notes that a $500 million decrease in spending on education programs is transformed into a $600 million increase in "gross outlays" by assuming that private investors will buy into government loans to colleges...
...He did not communicate any largeness of vision, any sense of social imagination...
...Yet, in Europe this figure would be considered intolerable by almost everyone—and in England Harold Wilson is in trouble for allowing the unemployment figure to reach half of what we are now asked to consider as normal...
...They have predictably responded to the present situation by demanding cuts in programs for the desperate ("ruffles" some of the Republicans call them) and Mr...
...It's just that he is committed to spending almost x¢22 billion on a tragic commitment to a war on the Asian mainland and that...
...Johnson has sounded retreat...
...Related to this conservative position on unemployment (which represents a retreat from the goals set by President Kennedy in 1961) is the assumption that the economy must slow down in the coming period...
...To get this number, one adds in a $14.6 billion item which is mainly Social Security, i.e., money which the recipients have themselves contributed on the basis of a regressive payroll tax which is becoming a special hardship for the poor...
...So in reality it would seem that the budget proposes $1.9 billion in new Great Society programs, an additional $280 million for the War on Poverty, and that it is thus substantially less than the sums which the Congress has already okayed for social purposes...
...Yet it is precisely this percentage which is the index of social justice in the nation, for it tells how we are distributing these unprecedented $40-$50 billion GNP dividends of the affluent economy...
...But then, things are, as usual, worse than the statistics indicate, for these percentages do not describe the depression rates of idleness still prevalent among Negro youth...
...But how, then, deal with this problem...
...That, of course, is true as long as the President is unwilling to make the hard political choices which would place the burden of the conflict on the rich rather than the poor...
...Johnson managed this meanness of thought at a time when the Automation Commission, the Ribicoff hearings on the city, the conference on air pollution, and many other individuals and institutions have all demonstrated, with the aid of official data, that we are in the midst of a profound social crisis...
...But why...
...There is talk at the University of Minnesota of building a new ctiy for 250,000 people from the ground up...
...Johnson does...
...President Eisenhower used to do his celebrating with optimistic, if somewhat incoherent, speeches...
...Mr...
...Johnson has proved his soundness by adopting the line he attacked so well a year ago...
...This is particularly true since the resultant guaranteed full employment in the building trades could well lay the basis for ending some of the ancient restrictive practices which grew up so naturally in that precarious, seasonal industry...
...The $4.2 billion health figure involves the same deception since it is primarily derived from Medicare, which is tied into the Social Security system...
...even so, the President still failed in his messages to do what he could have done easily...
...Is the slicing up of an enormous, and federally induced, increase in GNP of no concern to the government...
...There is a growing understanding in the society that unless something radical is done, we are likely to be the victims of our own ingenious technology rather than its masters...
...All those corporate chieftains, whom he has so assiduously wooed, would not be amused by equality of sacrifice or, God forbid, by meeting the Vietnam emergency by just a bit of income redistribution...
Vol. 14 • March 1967 • No. 2
