Jimmy Carter vs. Inflation

Monday, Mar. 24, 1980

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relatively little. For example, Carter wants to trim only a token $2 billion from expenditures in the remaining six months of the current fiscal year, even though the deficit is estimated to be as high as $47 billion. But now that he has produced his program, the President at least has an incentive to stick to it. Cutting spending in an election year will surely lose some votes, but making a start toward lowering inflation is nothing less than a national necessity.

^{* Lyndon Johnson started, and Richard Nixon finished, running up a $3.2 billion surplus in fiscal 1969. Dwight Eisenhower balanced the budget three times, in 1955, 1956 and 1960; Harry Truman did it four times, in 1947, 1948, 1949 and 1951. Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Gerald Ford never did it at all.
* Carter inexplicably said $18 billion in his speech, but Administration officials admitted that this was a mistake.}