THE BUDGET: The Rains Came

A federal red-ink splash "of the order of $10 billion." said President Eisenhower at his press conference last week, lies ahead in the newborn fiscal year of 1959. It was a rueful admission for a President who had pledged himself to balanced budgets as an essential goal, and who half a year ago submitted an optimistic 1959 budget showing a $500 million surplus.

One big reason for the dizzying switch from surplus to massive deficit had nothing to do with either cold war or recession ; it was the further bloating of already swollen farm programs. As of January, the Agriculture Department was planning to spend a whacking $5 billion for the fiscal year, largely in efforts to cope with surpluses that are encouraged by high price supports (TIME, Aug. 19). But abundant spring rainfall brought lush crop prospects, notably in the long-parched Great Plains, and the department's outgo estimate mushroomed to $6 billion—more than twice the combined outlays of the State, Justice, Interior, Commerce and Labor departments. In a rational world, good crop weather ought to count as a national blessing, but under the archaic, surplus-spawning price-support laws, it only serves to boost the already scandalous cost of subsidized farming by another billion dollars.

Is there any prospect of a balanced budget in fiscal 1960, beginning a year from now? In reply to this press-conference question, the President said that he expected the deficit to "diminish" in 1960, but that it would take an "awful shrinkage" to bring $10 billion down to zero. In short: no.