Word: turnabout
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Said Treasury Secretary Robert B. Anderson in an unmistakable turnabout from his predecessor George Humphrey: "Maintaining a balanced budget is of great importance to our national welfare and so also is keeping our expenditures within reasonable and prudent limits. But we cannot adhere to absolute rigidity . . . And I want to make it quite clear that we at the Treasury are never going to take any positions which are inimical to the defense of our country...
...guess of Italy's political pundits was that crafty Pietro Nenni, impressed by recent Red gains in local elections, was taking a calculated risk that an alliance with the Communists would strengthen his party's prospects in Italy's forthcoming general election. Whatever his motives, the turnabout planted what Nenni himself once called "a heavy tombstone" on the last lingering hope that Nenni would join the Social Democrats to give Italy a strong anti-Communist left...
...Just a few weeks before, President Eisenhower, asked at his press conference if he might name a special White House scientific adviser, replied: "I hadn't thought of that." Last week he not only appointed such an adviser but gave him far-reaching powers. Indeed, the turnabout irrevocably set the U.S. on a new course in nearly all defense fields...
...general, the turnabout made good sense, and it helped revive the President's prestige when it was sinking fast. There was still confusion on details and next steps, but it was the healthy kind of confusion that comes from bustling activity, and infinitely better than the everything's-all-right serenity that had for too long confused the nation and the free world...
What caused the Pentagon's turnabout was a decision by the Administration to pay out an additional $400 million for defense programs in the second quarter of fiscal 1958 and to give $300 million of it to the Air Force. It had little alternative. Despite all economies, the Defense Department spent $10.3 billion in the first fiscal quarter, leaving only $9.8 billion for the second three months. Since program stretchouts are slow to take hold, this would have meant either 1) enormous cuts to bring the budget back into line by the end of the second quarter-something military...