ECONOMY: Where Is the Waste?

Apple-cheeked, apple-growing Senator Harry Flood Byrd of Virginia, whose committee has been mulling over ways & means of cutting down Government expenses, turned in his report to Congress.

The report recommended savings that would cut $1,301,075,000 in non-defense items out of the Government's expenditures, which this fiscal year will amount to $25 billion. Some of them:

> No more CCC, no more non-defense activities for NYA. (The President two months ago suggested that Congress combine CCC and NYA for economy's sake, got no action.)

> Reductions in WPA, Public Works (including flood control) and Federal Highways.

> Dropping of all land-purchase, Farm Tenant and Farm Security loans.

As a minority member of the committee, Progressive Senator Robert M. La Follette wrote a separate report, sharply attacking Senator Byrd's findings. The cuts proposed, said Bob La Follette, would fall on the neck of "the very lowest income groups among our population," would cripple programs of social reform which are "vital to the successful conduct of total war. . . . No one can disagree with the general objective," added La Follette. "The crux of the matter is . . . 'where is the waste?' "

But this week the scholarly, economics-wise Brookings Institution brought up its reserves in support of Senator Byrd, recommended even bigger savings ($2,085,000,000) than had Byrd's committee. Brookings' proposed cuts, mostly from the same places Byrd would make them, would take more from agriculture, much more from highways, flood control and public works. The Brookings report said that the Government had not yet really come to grips with the situation, added: "Yet if the will to do so exists, the proposed $2,000,000,000 curtailment can be made without difficulty."