THE RECESSION: Ford's Risky Plan Against Slumpflation

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partner, Democratic Floor Leader Thomas P. ("Tip") O'Neill, said: "Your conclusions were great, Mr. President, but we can't go down the same street together."

"Be charitable," said Ford, grinning.

"See if you can give us a chance."

Responded O'Neill: "I don't see how these programs can work."

Later, Ford confidently—and probably overoptimistically—told an aide: "I think I can get 85% of this program." Indeed, he plans a series of speaking trips around the nation in late January or early February to explain—and sell—the program to the public.

Whatever the economic outcome, Ford clearly has seized the political initiative as only a President can. His State of the Union speech and a televised fireside chat from the White House two nights earlier, in which he previewed his programs, marked a welcome change from the drift and indecision, the platitudes and homilies of his first five months in office. The President sounded grim and forceful. Though he still used many cliches, the very flatness of some of his phrases ("Millions ... are out of work. Prices are too high and sales are too slow ... the economic distress is global") had a kind of eloquence appropriate to a crisis.

Where the Democrats were vague, Ford was definite. The Democratic program, as outlined by Albert, advocated "substantial" tax cuts. Asked what that meant, Representative James Wright Jr. of Texas, chairman of the task force that drew up the program, replied: "Substantial is substantial." Ford gave exact figures on whose taxes should be cut, how much and when. On energy, the Democrats called for adoption of "one or more" of a grab bag of seven proposals. Ford's plans, certainly controversial and perhaps even dangerous, are at least precise down to the number of major nuclear power plants (200) and new coal mines (250) that should be opened over the next ten years.

Opening Wedge. The President's program is comprehensive and, in its way, balanced. In addition to both one-shot and permanent tax cuts for individuals and businesses, it also makes a long overdue start toward tax reform as well as reduction. The permanent cuts in income tax rates that Ford proposes for 1975 and later years give much greater relief to lower-and middle-income workers than to the rich, thus reversing a long-run trend toward taxing them more and more heavily.

For conservatives, the plan contains a promise to hold increases in several federal spending programs to 5% a year. Among these programs: food stamps and payments to the nation's 30 million Social Security recipients (Social Security pensioners otherwise might get raises of as much as 9% this year). For political liberals, there is a kind of negative income tax in the form of cash payments of $80 annually to every adult who is too poor to owe any federal taxes. Though the payments are hardly what liberals would consider overly generous, they will surely become an opening wedge for broad welfare reform later.

Congressional Democrats will, and indeed should, quarrel with parts of this program. But they cannot object to its two essential goals: fighting recession by cutting taxes, and reducing oil imports in order to break the stranglehold that the cartel of the Organization of Petroleum