MORE GUNS, LESS BUTTER

...For highway construction in Appalachia, the request is for $102 million of the $200 million authorized...

...Project Head Start, a pre-school program for some 560,000 children, which gave OEO its only widely-recognized success last year, will accommodate barely the same number this summer, though another 200,000 are to be enrolled in year-round classes that are already heavily oversubscribed...

...The rhetoric survives...

...Secretary of the Treasury Henry H. Fowler pointed with pride to the budget's "remarkable achievement"—an increase of only $600 million in non-defense expenditures...

...A national economy which the Administration says can support both guns and butter certainly can support both missiles and milk...

...By tightening eligibility standards, the government would cut off about 1,000 of the school districts now receiving "impacted area" funds, and among the first would be the big cities newly included...

...In fact, some were genuinely relieved, for they had expected to fare worse...

...The $112.8 billion budget, submitted by the President to Congress twelve days after the State of the Union message, was drafted not "in the name of justice" but in the interest of financing the war—to the tune of $10.5 billion—while holding the line on other costs...

...self but in its disturbingly inadequate size, not in the budget's innovations but in its omissions...

...Will they sacrifice the children who seek learning—the sick who need care—the families who dwell in squalor now brightened by the hope of home...

...He added: "I am fearful that there will be other cuts and alterations in domestic programs which will increase the burdens on the wage earners in the major cities...

...Under its new budget, OEO will enroll 45,000 young people in the Job Corps, rather than the 100,000 originally planned...

...For the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the budget proposes $1.3 billion, a modest increase of $190 million over the current fiscal year...

...In a $112.8 billion budget, the saving seems hardly worth any attention, but it is a serious matter to at least sixteen of the sixty-eight land-grant institutions—the sixteen predominantly Negro land-grant colleges in the South...

...In contrast, Pentagon costs for military "education, training, and related functions" are budgeted at $2.2 billion...

...For urban renewal, the President has budgeted $413 million, and for public housing $261 million...

...The new Federal education programs in which the President takes justifiable pride fare only slightly better...

...The Medicare program, which goes into effect this year, is here to stay, for it is financed, for the most part, not from Federal general revenues but from separate (and regressive) payroll taxes...

...It was acknowledged by the President's Council of Economic Advisers, which called for "further exploration" of reverse income tax payments and other devices for relieving abject dependency...

...More readily apparent than the appropriations that might have been sought, but were not;—than the programs that might have been proposed, but were deferred—are the reductions requested outright by the President...

...A death notice would be premature at this point...

...5.84 in 1963...

...If this happens, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of our fellow citizens may be deprived of their self-respect and of their economic integrity...

...With this preface, and under the ingenious title of "The Child Nutrition Act of 1966," he is asking Congress to trim from $103 million to $21 million the Federal milk subsidy for school children...

...Whom will they sacrifice...

...A striking inequity in the poverty-oriented elementary and secondary school aid law—a family income ceiling of $2,000 a year rather than the $3,000 figure employed by OEO—is to be remedied, the budget message indicates, but not until 1968...

...This nation is mighty enough," the President declared in his State of the Union address, "its society is healthy enough, its people are strong enough to pursue our goals in the rest of the world while still building a Great Society here at home...

...Activities under the Higher Education Act of 1965 will be financed at $475 million, rather than the $696 million authorized...

...Leon H. Key-serling, former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, was less sanguine: the new budget, he observed, "continues an unfortunate downward trend in outlays for all domestic purposes in ratio to the gross national product (8.19 per cent in fiscal 1947...

...Some members of Congress have hoped that it could become, in time, the indirect vehicle for the broad, general support of public elementary and secondary schools that has never been achieved by direct means...

...Their average faculty salary is $7,500 a year, as against almost $12,000 for the nationwide land grant group...

...The amount of increase for OEO is less than one-fortieth of the additional money now being sought for Vietnam...

...It was reflected in the recent report of the President's National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress, which called for government-guaranteed minimum family incomes and government-financed public service jobs for the hard-core unemployed...

...Where are they and the other thirteen predominantly Negro institutions to find the money...

...In the case of every major domestic program for which Congress has authorized expenditures in fiscal 1967, the appropriation proposed in the President's budget falls short—often far short—of the authorization...

...It depends on the land-grant funds for twenty-five per cent of its entire instructional budget...

...Population growth alone—not to mention the decline in the dollar's buying power—would have required an expansion of $2 billion or more in the non-military sector, but Vietnam, Fowler shrugged, "is one of the unpleasant realities of this world...

...and 5.71 in 1967, estimated...

...But Shriver swallowed his pride and described the President's budgeted $250 million increase as "a substantial vote of confidence" in the war on poverty...

...Mr...

...This would destroy the substance of the Great Society...

...In the name of justice, let them call for the contribution of those who live in the fullness of our blessing, rather than strip it from the hands of those in need...

...It was voiced by Lavaree Johnson, a Mississippi Head Start teacher frustrated by red tape and fund delays, who went to the Capitol in Washington to say, "We want the money now, we want some answers today," and by Calvin Alton, the eighteen-year-old Youth Mayor of Harlem, who shouted at Mayor John Lindsay after an anti-poverty hearing, "Where's the bucks, John...

...The first legislative offering of the new Department of Housing and Urban Development is a "Demonstration Cities Program" which, the President said, would "focus all the techniques and talents within our society on the crisis of the American city...

...But the budget proposes an overall reduction of $190.7 million—almost half of the $397 million now appropriated...

...The hot lunch program, which now serves about eighteen million children in 71,000 schools, will be confined almost entirely to low-income areas under the President's proposal...

...The President's long overdue environmental health proposals provide funds not to eliminate air and water pollution but, as the budget message phrased it, "to demonstrate methods for a broad attack...

...The promise of "abundance and liberty for all" has been heard, and there are those who believe it...

...It was manifested most terribly in the mobs who rioted and burned in Watts last year, and most pathetically in the Delta Negroes who invaded the de-activated Air Force base at Greenville, Mississippi, because they wanted food and a warm place to sleep...

...We will continue to advance toward our goals for a Great Society...

...It depends on these funds for fourteen per cent of its instructional budget, and South Carolina State College is dependent to the extent of thirteen per cent...

...As presently funded, these programs will demonstrate what educators and urban planners, politicians and the poor, scientists and social workers have suspected all along—that marvelous things can be done with money, and precious little without it...

...The program has been steadily expanded over the years, and only last year it was amended to allow payments for the first time to about a dozen of the nation's largest cities...

...The "impacted areas" school aid program was inaugurated in 1950 to provide some tax relief for communities providing education to military dependents and other children whose parents live or work on military bases or other tax-exempt Federal property...

...But they have not led us to a short-sighted policy of abandoning the war on poverty, ignorance, blight, and disease...

...But money, not magniloquence, is the lifeblood of the Great Society...

...The school lunch and special milk programs will focus more on needy children, helping to provide them with adequate and well-balanced meals," the President declared in his budget message...

...It might have been addressed to the author of the Great Society...

...The sixteen colleges serve about 30,-000 Negro students in the South, and few of them are among "those who live in the fullness of our blessing" and can therefore be called upon for sacrifices...

...Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College of Mississippi is a predominantly Negro institution," Representative Albert Quie, Minnesota Republican, told the House...

...It was recognized by Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who warned last December that "to refuse to make the future efforts and sacrifices that justice and tranquility require at home would be to invite the very internal conflagration of which we have been warned—to invite a society so irretrievably split that no war will be worth fighting and no war will be possible to fight...

...Representative Jonathan Bingham, New York Democrat, noted that New York City alone would lose $8 million a year in school funds, and voiced the "fervent hope" that the budget did not mean what it seemed to say...

...MORE GUNS, LESS BUTTER by ERWIN KNOLL HPhe Great Society, that splendid vi-A sion of "abundance and liberty for all" proclaimed two years ago in the fervor of a national election campaign, has fallen victim to the Vietnam war...

...Proposed is a total annual appropriation of $400 million for six years to combat urban decay in sixty or seventy cities—an amount that any one of the big cities could easily spend without solving its problems...

...The percentage of increase in expenditures for OEO is, as a matter of fact, larger than that of the Defense Department," Shriver said...

...A domestic revolution of rising expectations has been kindled that could, conceivably, bring a Great Society into being...

...President Johnson has said that 1966 is "the year of rebirth for American cities...

...The increase is there, to be sure—a net gain of about $2.1 billion for Great Society programs, according to the Administration's calculations—and loyal Cabinet officials took pains to point it out when they briefed the Washington press corps on the budget...

...The apparent discrepancy between the $600,000,000 increase cited by Fowler and the $2.1 billion rise mentioned in this paragraph is explained by the fact that the President proposed "reductions in lower priority programs, management improvements, and other measures"— including a saving of some $1.6 billion by transferring to private lenders many of the loan funds now administered by the Federal government...

...But the significance lies not in the increase itERWIN KNOLL is a Washington correspondent for the Newhouse National News Service...

...Viewed in this perspective, the war on poverty as currently financed is at best a laboratory demonstration—one whose various programs affect from three to twenty per cent of the poor...

...Community action funds will be spread thinner than they were this year, and many localities will have to curtail operations...

...He specializes in coverage of education and welfare developments...

...Taken together, the two programs are somewhat more costly than the $545 million budgeted for military family housing—a sum that Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara's critics have attacked as woefully inadequate...

...These impoverished schools—"developing institutions" of the type for which President Johnson has on some occasions expressed concern—rely heavily on the Federal subsidy to meet their faculty payrolls...

...His question was terse and to the point...

...I agree with President Johnson in his judgment that, if sacrifices must be made, they should be made by those who are best able to do so...

...I would hope that, in the formulation of our domestic programs during this session of the Congress, we will bear in mind that it is not enough to protect the poverty-stricken against bearing the burdens of our international responsibilities...

...The milk program, which now finances annual consumption of some three billion pints of fresh milk in the nation's schools, would be limited by law to needy children—an approach that confronts both pupils and school officials with the repugnant prospect of a means test...

...He has contributed articles to Commentary, The Reporter, Esquire, and other publications...

...the President asked...

...What is the substance of the Great Society in 1966...

...But President Johnson's proposed budget for fiscal 1967 leaves no doubt that the Great Society is missing in action...

...Demonstration projects," whether formally so designated or not, have been launched or proposed in the fields of education, economic opportunity, urban revival, health, and beautification...

...Under the Administration's own austere definition, thirty-two million Americans live in poverty...

...Fort Valley State College of Georgia is a predominantly Negro college...

...5.76 in 1966...

...The Neighborhood Youth Corps, with 325,000 enrollees this year, will increase that number by less than ten per cent...

...The annual Federal payment to land-grant colleges, which dates back to the Morrill Act of 1862, is reduced in the President's budget from $14.5 million to $2.5 million...

...One accomplishment of the Great Society overshadows the rest—a product not of Congressional legislation or Federal funds, but of Presidential oratory...

...For the Public Works and Economic Development Act of 1965, the budget requests $327 million in new appropriations—less than half of the $769 million authorized by Congress...

...Eloquently he rebuked the voices demanding more guns and less butter...

...Like so many of the official utterances about the budget, his statement was technically accurate but misleading...

...Will they sacrifice opportunity for the distressed —the beauty of our land—the hope of our poor...

...Demonstration" is the watchword for other Great Society programs in the new budget...

...This budget provides for a significant increase in programs which attack urgent domestic problems...

...It is equally important that we not further depress the living standards of those who, by tremendous personal effort, have barely managed to escape the clutches of poverty...

...Because of Vietnam, we cannot do all that we should or all that we would like to," said Sargent Shriver, Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, who had hoped to double in fiscal 1967 his agency's present appropriation of $1.5 billion...

...In its annual report a few weeks ago, the Council of Economic Advisers estimated that the "poverty income gap" could be eliminated at a cost of $12 billion a year—seven times the budget proposed for OEO but only slightly more than the current cost of the Vietnam war...

...Several of these cutbacks—in the school lunch and milk programs, aid for "Federally impacted" school districts, and payments to land-grant colleges—are stirring concern and opposition among Congressional Republicans as well as Democrats...

...Our military needs are heavy," President Johnson said in his budget message...

...Speaker," Representative William F. Ryan, New York Democrat, commented on the floor of the House, "the impact of the war in Vietnam should not deprive American school children of milk and lunches...