THE RECESSION: Ford's Risky Plan Against Slumpflation

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much conservation. Jackson plans to introduce a bill that includes both rationing and quotas—but only in the form of stand-by authority for the President to use if other measures fail. That does not go much beyond Ford's own program; the President has asked for stand-by rationing authority, even though he has explicitly rejected the idea of rationing now.

The Democrats stress mandatory conservation—a good idea but one that might not work fast enough. Jackson's bill, for example, will probably list such actions as Sunday closings of gas stations, federal regulation of hours of commercial businesses, forced reductions in commercial lighting and regulation of temperatures in commercial and public buildings. But the bill would only give the Federal Energy Administration power to order those standards; it would not compel the agency to do so. There is at least some danger that the final product will be a mishmash of Ford's tariff and a number of halfway conservation rules that would raise prices without cutting imports much.

Happily, though, there is also a good chance that the final result will be an economic-energy package better than the one that Ford himself has proposed. It could include bigger tax cuts than he has asked and an energy policy of gasoline taxes and tough conservation standards. The one outcome that seems impossible is continued drift. By proposing a sweeping and specific program—although one with grave flaws—and emphasizing the need for fast action, Ford has thrown down to Congress a challenge that it cannot ignore. A year or so from now, Ford might even be able to say—if he cared to borrow the phraseology of another Democratic President —that he got the country moving again.

* He got exactly what he predicted: nine perfunctory rounds of hand clapping, mostly by Republicans, during his 41-minute speech.

* The Joint Economic Committee of Congress, on the other hand, estimates that spending under current federal programs would total $346.4 billion in fiscal 1 976 — which suggests that Ford's $46 billion deficit projection for that year may be an overestimate. There are involved technical differences in the calculations, but a scary deficit estimate does not hurt Ford's efforts to persuade Congress to hold down spending. Taxable income is the amount left over after all deductions and exemptions are taken. Considering the deductions, a family of four that has a taxable income of $6,000 typically has a gross income of about $10,600; a similar-size family that has a taxable income of $44,000 typically has gross earnings in the area of $56,600.