Word: mahone
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...House Appropriations Committee last week voted to slash $4¼ billion off the $51 billion U.S. defense budget for 1953, and Texas' George H. Mahon, chairman of the Military Appropriations Subcommittee, stood up to explain why. "Actually," said Mahon, "what we have done . . . is to strike a sort of happy medium between the people who want to spend more and the people who want to spend less for defense...
...military, which was already getting a pre-Korea $13.5 billion in the omnibus appropriations bill, had to have another $11.6 billion immediately for more planes, ships and men, said Congressman Mahon. The House Appropriations Committee, for which he spoke, had already approved the outlay. In addition, the committee had approved another $4 billion for the Mutual Defense Assistance Program to Europe, plus other million-dollar odds & ends for such things as the Voice of America ($77 million). The whole bill in prospect totaled another $16.7 billion...
...that all. It was necessary to advise the House, "in keeping with my policy of frankness," said Mahon, that the military leaders were getting ready to ask for still another $10 billion for National Guard, Reserves, radar, electronics...
...even this tremendous sum was based on a gamble that total war was still some distance off. "If we propose to prepare for a major war which might possibly develop within two years," said Texas' sober, veteran Congressman Mahon, then the U.S. would have to take on, "at the very minimum, a $100 billion annual business...
...take the lesser gamble in order to keep its economy from being convulsed. But in its present mood, Congress was prepared to vote the whole $44 billion with scarcely an important voice raised in protest. Before the week was out, the House, by 311 to 1,* had voted Mahon's extra $16.7 billion. The $10 billion would come next...