Taft Sees Budget Cut 
Of $3 Billion Despite 
Poor Start in House 
By J. A. O'Leary 
Senator Taft, Republican, of 
Ohio, predicted yesterday Con¬ 
gress may cut $3 billion from 
the Truman budget for the year 
commencing July 1, despite the 
meager savings the House made " 
last week on the first appropria- ji 
tion bill. j 
“I don’t think that proves any¬ 
thing,” said the Ohio Senator, 
commenting on the fact the 
House was able to chop only $39.2 
million, or about 1.3 per cent 
from the $2,958,000,000 the Bud¬ 
get recommended for the Treas¬ 
ury-Post Office supply bill. 
He pointed out those two de¬ 
partments are not as susceptible 
to economy cuts as some of the 
others may be. 
Senator Millikin, Republican, 
of Colorado, agreed that Con¬ 
gress will have to do more cut¬ 
ting on the other appropriation 
bills than it did on Treasury- 
Post Office if a deficit is to be 
avoided next year. 
Would Exceed $3 Billion. 
The Coloradoan, ranking mi¬ 
nority member of the Finance 
Committee, doubts this session 
will be able to raise all of the 
$16.5 billion in new taxes the 
President asked to go along with 
his $71.6 billion spending budget. 
Senator Taft made it clear he 
thinks Congress should aim higher 
than $3 billion as its economy goal. 
He indicated he used that figure 
as a prophecy of what is likely to 
be realized. 
The Ohio Senator hastened to 
add that even a $3 billion saving 
may not mean much in offsetting 
the need for new taxes because 
“the President may come in with 
more budget estimates” as the 
session progresses. 
After a one-year experiment 
with a single-package money Dill 
for the normal expenses of all 
Government departments, the 
House has returned this year to 
the old system of splitting the 
budget into a dozen bills. 
Single Package Abandoned. 
Leading economy advocates in 
both houses are convinced the 
single-package 1950 bill resulted in 
greater savings that will be possible 
under the old system, but a ma¬ 
jority of the House Appropriations 
Committee voted this year to 
abandon the 1950 experiment. 
Without commenting on how 
that decision may effect the econ¬ 
omy drive in the House, Senator 
Taft agreed that handling the 
budget in a dozen departmental 
bills will make it harder to effect 
savings in the Senate. 
When the funds for each de¬ 
ll, partment are taken up separately, 
in or in small groups, it is not pos¬ 
sible to apply overall budget cuts, 
as the 1950 session did in the 
single-package experiment. In 
that bill the two houses made 
specific cuts all through the de¬ 
partments, and then directed the 
budget Bureau to find further sav¬ 
ings" of at least $550 million. 
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