Word: byrds
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Virginia's Harry Byrd, 75, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, had been ailing for weeks, and Washingtonians freely surmised that the old budget watchdog had lost not only his bite, but also his bark. Little did they know. Last week Byrd came out roaring like a lion after reading in the Washington Post that "Budget Director Kermit Gordon told a congressional committee yesterday that a balanced budget would lead to increased unemployment, higher taxes and a general economic decline...
...that account was correct, growled Byrd. the President ought to fire Gordon forthwith.* "I submit that a man who thinks a balanced budget would be a catastrophe does not have the frame of mind to direct the budget . . . Responsible fiscal positions should be filled with sound men. If we do not get crackpot economists out of these positions, the American system will be lost...
...Democratic Congresswoman Martha W. Griffiths, Gordon added that a balanced budget, achieved through either higher taxes or lower expenditures, would lead to "a sharp decline in gross national product" and an unemployment rate "approaching 10%" of the labor force (the figure is now 5.8%). His denial of Byrd's charges was based on the fact that he was talking about "current conditions," had never said that a balanced budget would be economically harmful as such...
...Byrd previously had called for the firing of two other budget directors. Gordon has been on the job only five weeks...
Strange Gods. With the death of Oklahoma's Bob Kerr, Long ranks next to ailing Harry Byrd among Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee, and is the logical shepherd for Administration fiscal programs opposed by Conservative Byrd. But Long, like Kerr, often conditions his support on what his own state gets in return, and his stands are even harder to categorize than Kerr's. On many issues -such as antitrust legislation-Russell seems proper heir to his father's red-clay radicalism. But. like Kerr, Long bitterly fights any attempt to alter the oil-depletion tax allowance...