Word: budgeteers
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Johnson refused to hurl their spending bills full-sized against inevitable vetoes, thus make an irresponsible "record" for next year's campaigns. He sought instead to shrink the proposals just enough to get under the veto, but failed in this tactic when Ike refused to compromise on the budget line. Johnson was blamed by labor for swinging key Texas Congressmen to a tough version of the labor reform bill. So by half time, Johnson had picked up a serious new handicap: many a labor leader and many a Northern Democrat have vowed to see that he gets no place...
Missouri's Symington, Harry Truman's onetime (1947-50) Air Force Secretary, who set up shop as chief critic of Administration defense policy, failed to score a direct hit in many bombing runs on and off the Senate floor. Feeling the balance-the-budget heat, he gradually backed down from his charge that the Defense Department was dangerously starved by the Budget Bureau, shifted toward a new line in favor of re jiggered priorities (more ICBMs) within present spending. Turning his attention to the farm program, he failed to score with cloudy hints of Commodity Credit scandals...
Minnesota's Humphrey, leading contender for the title of old-style New Dealer, loosed a blizzard of proposals for new alphabet agencies into the Senate hopper. Sample: a CCC-style Youth Conservation Corps. But in an era of budget-balancing conservatism, he looked like a Democratic dinosaur. Busy touring the country on his half-announced candidacy, Humphrey did not find time to carry out the one important legislative assignment that he got from Johnson: writing a completely new Democratic farm program and fighting it through Congress. Half-time prospects: dim and fading...
Perfect record or no, the President did not consider signing the bill, which still contained down payments to start 67 new civil-works construction projects not in the budget (eventual cost: $800 million) that he had objected to the first time. The only congressional change: a 2½% across-the-board cut in funds for all projects. This cynical gesture at economy, the President pointed out, would only impede "orderly work on going projects and result in an increase in costs instead of a saving...
...savored their first, sweet victory over "Government by veto." Some, however, detected a sour aftertaste. The President is not required to release funds for new projects, will probably start few of the obnoxious 67 projects. More important, in a strictly partisan decision, congressional Democrats dipped into the narrowly balanced budget to fund the oldest, most obvious form of political spending in federal politics. Cracked White House Press Secretary James Hagerty in a rare reflection of presidential cynicism: "The lure of the pork barrel was a little too much for Congress to avoid...