THE BUDGET: Balanced, but Big

In the 1,027 pages of the 4 lb. 4 oz. tome sent to Capitol Hill this week lay one of the major achievements of the Eisenhower Administration: a budget offering a small surplus (est. $70 million) for the fiscal year that begins next July 1. But almost overlooked in the light of that achievement was another fact: the fiscal 1960 budget, despite its balance, is also the largest in U.S. peacetime history.

The balanced budget, result of a determined, top-to-bottom Administration drive, calls for expenditures of $77 billion. That is $5.2 billion more than the amount that, in 1957, moved then-Secretary of the Treasury George M. Humphrey to warn of "a depression that will curl your hair." And it is $3.1 billion more than the President's original budget for the current fiscal year, in which the U.S. is running a gaudy $12.9 billion into the red. In its modest surplus, the 1960 budget picks up the pre-Sputnik, pre-recession trend of Eisenhower budgets:

Underlying the President's budget balance is an optimistic prediction that "a rapidly advancing economy" will produce a $9.1 billion increase in the Government's income. Insisting that his revenue forecast is "realistic," the President noted that after the 1953-54 recession, the jump in federal revenues ''was more than the increase estimated in this budget." He asked Congress to extend corporation and excise taxes at present rates for another year, also requested Congress to up the federal gasoline tax from 3¢ to 4½¢ a gallon and slap a new 4½¢ tax on jet fuels (to be paid by commercial airlines now entering the jet age). For the plain, suffering taxpayer, the President held out only the hope that his program would bring "tax reduction in the reasonably foreseeable future."

More for the Newest. On the other side of the ledger, the budget calls for an overall spending decrease of $3.8 billion. Some $300 million is trimmed from what budgeteers label "Major National Security" defense, atomic energy, stockpiling and foreign military aid, which together add up to $45.8 billion, 59% of the $77 billion total.

The defense budget comes to $40.9 billion, an increase of one-fourth of 1% over this year, not enough to cover price up-creep. A 12% boost in research and development funds is balanced by a 15% cut in military construction outlays. Procurement outgo stays about the same, $14 billion, with no money for Air Force interceptors or phased-out missiles such as the Navy's Regulus II, more money for newer missiles. The Air Force's missile-of-the-future, the solid-fuel Minuteman, is scheduled for a 40% increase to $270 million. Within the defense budget, the shares of the three services remain about the same, with the Air Force getting $18.6 billion, the Navy $11.6 billion, the Army $9.3 billion.

In the other departments of Major National Security, the budgetmakers raise atomic energy funds a lean 4% to $2.8 billion, trim strategic stockpiling funds, slice foreign military aid a surprising 20% to $1.8 billion.