The 'People's' President

...To what extent the 8 million unemployed in this country will be satisfied with a trickle is something else...

...First, there would be $3.7 billion from lowering the top tax on the first $50,000 of income to 22 per cent, and dropping the maximum rate on the balance from 48 to 46 per cent...

...If you didn't hear about them, don't panic...

...For some reason they were not well publicized, and many of "the people" actually attended by special invitation...

...And study of the Budget and State of the Union messages suggests the President kept his word...

...A second Indianapolis man called for Federal aid to the cities...

...Those who stood to gain from the contact could easily have afforded the trip to Washington...

...Said the Journal, "This is an incentive to invest in the least productive places, to allocate scarce capital to the least efficient outlets...

...A related theme at the town meeting was government regulation and "red tape...

...If this is what the President had in mind all along, he might have spared the American taxpayer the expense of having most of his Cabinet shunted around the country and put up in deluxe hotels for the duration of the town meetings...

...He was instructed by the White House "to seek out the best advice possible from throughout the country to enable us to develop the means to use our domestic resources in ways that most respond to the needs of the people.' A Council circular later announced: "The President plans to draw upon the results of this review in developing his 1976 legislative program...

...No less prominent a person than lame-duck Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, who conducted such charades as governor of New York, presided over most of the meetings...

...Well, the poor, the minorities, the unemployed (admittedly, there is some overlap here...

...Thus the recent Domestic Council Open Forums, or "town meetings.' Similar in conception to the 1974 Economic Summit and the current Consumer Representation hearings being held around the country, they took place from October through December in Denver, Indianapolis, Tampa, Austin, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles...

...The way it is played is that the President sends his top policy advisers around the country to "feel the pulse of the nation"—to talk to the people, listen to the people, even take notes...

...But even giving the President the benefit of the doubt, even assuming that his Town Meetings were not intended as sham all along, that he really did believe in the grass roots process, the end result is still the same—a legislative program that bows to the interests of businessmen, investors and the upper middle class...

...But what about everyone else's...

...Government...

...Then the advisers return to Washington and, according to the rules, the President is supposed to translate their findings into policy...

...But somehow none of their suggestions are in the Ford budget...

...President Ford seems to have heeded this advice with his $394.2 billion budget...

...Although a cruel slap at the unemployed, who apparently are deemed unworthy of the power because they pay no taxes, this reflects the acceptance of another corporate argument...

...There is no assurance, of course, that any of these cuts would increase jobs, especially in the numbers needed...

...In fact, the Wall Street Journal described the accelerated depreciation proposal for investing in high unemployment areas as "perfectly awful...

...The Ford budget not only ignores these people, however, it punishes them...

...Then there were "the people everywhere" who Vice President Rockefeller described as "concerned about social programs, whether the truly deserving, the old and the sick were getting enough help...

...For instance, an executive vice president of U.S...

...But there is no mention of this bill in the Ford Budget or State of the Union messages...

...An Indianapolis man concerned about economic conditions had called on the President to "eradicate the cancer of joblessness that is devastating the nation," and argued that "to get out of this depression we need jobs now...

...Lastly, as an inducement to build new facilities in areas of high unemployment, extra amortization benefits would be piled on to the bigger investment credit...

...Yet in a time of the near collapse of New York City, the President's State of the Union message does not even broach the very real urban problems confronting the three-quarters of the American population living in urban areas...

...Next, the temporary increase in the investment credit would be made permanent, yielding another $1.2 billion, while electric utilities would receive a 12 per cent investment credit along with other breaks valued at $800 million...

...WITH all this responsiveness to the people, who could the President have missed...

...Look at all the white folks who live in the suburbs and come here to work everyday...

...Here the President was not very explicit about what he would do to remedy the situation, but he agreed that "freedom from the petty tyranny of massive Government regulation" was "a necessary condition to a healthy economy...

...that would provide every American with a legal right to a job, enforceable in court...

...The board chairman of the Philadelphia National Bank, for example, recommended "removing these impediments to competition," and the president of the Delaware Valley Manufacturers' Association stated that "every move to hamper the free market system from operating can eventually result in a reduction of jobs...

...At least, he drew on some of the Town Meeting testimony in developing the 1976 program—that of big business, small business, the banks, the oil companies, and other prospective Republican voters...

...He had "concrete plans" he said, to change things, and will probably introduce them as legislation in the coming months...

...To the rest of us, he beamingly said during his State of the Union message that "life was better for me than it was for my father, and I know it will be better for my children...

...The Administration itself estimated last fall that to continue Federal programs now in force, spending would have to increase to $423.1 billion...

...the President intoned, "at least our kind of government, cannot create that many jobs...

...Instead, the President bypasses the unemployed and gives the money to business, assuring us that there will eventually be some trickle-down effect...

...He went on to recommend passage of the legislation introduced by Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (D.-Minn...

...it would also end health insurance for jobless workers, and shorten unemployment-benefit eligibility from 65 to 39 weeks...

...The squeezes compelled by the almost $30 billion cut will come in outlays for Medicare, school lunches, education, food stamps, and home-front programs generally...

...But the Federal government can create conditions and incentives for private business and industry to make more and more jobs...

...For the Administration has proposed phasing out the current public service effort, which provides 310,000 jobs in local government agencies...

...That's fine...

...On the subject of public service projects to tackle unemployment, the President must have noted the words of the executive director of the Tax Foundation, who told the Philadelphia town meeting that "almost all our economic ills are directly traceable to government overstepping its proper limits,' and complained that "one particularly onerous thorn" in the side of the market place was "state-run, make-work programs...

...He called attention as well to "the people concerned that we still do not have a comprehensive system assuring health care to all Americans...

...There must be something good about the cities," he told the town meeting...

...Life probably will be better for his children...

...They attended the town meetings, too...

...Steel urged "austerity spending at all levels of government" at the Philadelphia meeting, and a Florida businessman said in Tampa that "the economic well-being of this country makes it imperative that actions be taken to achieve a balanced budget, and social programs should be cut to do this if necessary...

...Among the "moves" he specified were "increased regulations such as the Consumer Product Safety Act, the Agency for Consumer Advocacy, the Federal Trade Commission," and even—through taxes and the cost of doing business—unemployment compensation and minimum wage legislation...

...and Representative Augustus Hawkins (D-Cal...

...By holding down the growth in Federal spending," the President bluntly observed, "we can afford additional tax cuts and return to the people who pay taxes more decisionmaking power over their lives...

...Accordingly, business would get a $6.2 billion shot in the arm under Ford's budget...