YOUR

YOUR

CONGRESSMAN

REPORTS

B lift. Rvr B. Harrisor

Washington—-Behind the current deb..te in Washington over Administration proposals to raise tve national debt limit and take oil *ht ceiling interest rates wh.ch Ulicit; Sam may pa)' On the money be borrows lies a confusing and controversial complex pi economic t.ic. and theory. The financial “experts,” some bearing credentials of repute and other seLf-stvled, a>'c filing the news columns, and the hearing testimony of Congressional committees, with a varied array of^rynie tary proposals. Most of therfi are directed toward making borrowing easier, debt mere palatable and spending more feasible. Only a few voices are raised >n behalf of what seems to bo an idea of scant appeai .....that everyone, including all levels of government, should repair to a once-horiored standard, Living Within Income”. We cannot examine adequate!/ here the pros and cons of President Eisenhower’s request that Congress sanction another, increase in both temporary and permanent debt limits and abandon a government-bond interest rate limitation which has been in effect 40 years. We, g.i.i look at a few of thte symptoms of the present fiscal distress, however as outlined in the testimony of Treasury Secretary Robert B. Anderson in bis recent appearance before the House Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. Anderson told us, for example: \ , “The public debt rose last mont 1 to an all-time high of $287.2 billion and is now only slightly below that figure. This represents over $1,600 lor each man. woman and child in America. Tile bedera! Government owed as much money as all of the correlations in the United States put together. Ou debt is a« large as the debts of all the individual hr rowers in the country put together plus the debts of all our State»and local govern