Business & Finance: Balanced Budget (Real)

How can the budget be balanced next year? This week the Committee for Economic Development offered a businessman's program to keep the U.S. out of the red and put rearmament on a pay-as-you-go basis. A special tax committee headed by J. Cameron Thomson, president of Minneapolis' Northwest Bancorporation, urged that 1) Congress immediately levy $10 billion in new taxes; 2) the Administration trim at least $3 billion, and possibly $6 billion, from its projected $74 billion budget for fiscal 1952.

Where should the new taxes come from? Although corporate taxes are "very close to the maximum limits that would be safe even in a temporary emergency," C.E.D. thought $1 billion could be raised by boosting the 47% corporate income tax rate to 50%. Its other proposals were equally hard-nosed:

¶ $3,850,000,000 from an additional 5% tax on individual income.

¶ $1,100,000,000 by boosting the excise tax on automobiles from 7% to 20% and on consumer appliances from 10% to 25%.

¶ $1,400,000,000 by boosting excise taxes on liquor, tobacco, gasoline.

¶ $2,750,000,000 by a partial sales tax (which C.E.D. has previously shied away from) on clothing, furnishings, services.

Where can the Government cut its own spending? C.E.D. thinks that the $9.1 billion earmarked for non-defense spending in the 1951-52 year is too high: it is $2.3 billion more than in 1948, when "the nation did not suffer from inadequate Government services." C.E.D. also doubts the need for a 90% increase ($1.4 billion) over 1948's spending on public works, and a $2.6 billion boost over 1951's spending on foreign aid, especially since Europe has made "great recovery."