THE EIGHTY-SIXTH UNITED STATES CONGRESS
On the day after the November 1958 elections, the hope of something new in the management of US foreign and domestic affairs seemed to be justified. The country had ust voted very clearly "liberal." plebisciting the "progressive" candidates, both Democrats and Republicans. Important regroupings in both the victorious Democratic Party and in the Republican Party appeared to be inevitable. Certain conservatives, alarmed, even foresaw splits in both the traditional formations and the creation of a new liberal party grouping "progressive" Democrats and Republicans, based on the trade unions, i e, almost the birth of a labor party, upsetting the traditional US political scene.
The quite conformist beginnings of the 86th US Congress, however, seem to indicate that the conservative apparatuses of both parties are still firmly in the saddle and that the "liberal" reformers will have to wait. That does not mean that the President, in the two remaining years of his term, will not have to put up with major difficulties from the new Congress, with its crushing Democratic and even "liberal" predominance — all the more so in that, backing up from the refurbished Republicanism which he had formerly called for, Eisenhower has now cramped up into a conservative orthodoxy that Taft might have envied, to the neat desp so of the ice-ales dent Nixony, imself.
to and including, some say,
Eisenhower has become the champion of the "balanced budget" as the no 1 national objective, and of fiscal orthoin face of the clamors of those who demand increased social and especially military expenditures and a more dynamic economy assuring a steady expansion.
Alarmed by the budgetary deficit of the current fiscal year, which will reach $ 12,000 million, and by the perceptible deterioration of the dollar's purchasing power that of the pre-war dollar), the US government experts are calling for strict economy in order to bring the next budget down to $ 77,000 million, eliminating the deficit.
The administration is seriously worried by the weakening of the dollar in foreign markets, the fall-off in US exports in face of revived foreign competition, and the dangers inherent in a domestic stock-market speculation that nowise corresponds to the still limited possibilities of the current economic recovery. This recovery remains slow, and the
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL limited expenditures, both state and in private investments, forecast for this year, do not seem propitious for spurring a new boom.
To this attitude of the administration, the "liberal" current answers that the best way to fight inflation is by a new and considerable increase in production and productivity, thanks to new government expenditures, independently of their immediate repercussions on the imbalance of the
Truman's economic adviser, is the budget. Leon Keyserling, theoretician who heads this current.
But independently of the immediate and rather technical aspects of current dispute between "spenders" "savers, " it is really a more fundamental debate that is again dividing leading circles in the US.
The relative stagnation of the US in the economic, ific, and military fields contrasts more and more with the dynamism of Soviet society. Since the launching of the first sputnik, a growing part of the American bourgeoisie is discovering this reality with growing anguish. The economic challenge represented by the steady annual rate of expansion of the economy of the Soviet Union and the other workers' states, the figures of the US S R's new Seven-Year Plan, -reveal the disturbing lag that has for a certain time now born a nice he proar an in of the Soit.
ment of Commerce about the gross national product at con-
17 stant prices, just published, prove that the US economy was already virtually marking time (an average annual increase of slightly over 1 %) several years before the current cession, and that 1955 was the only year since the Korean War in which production spurted - about 8%.
During this same period the Soviet economy developed at an average annual rate of expansion in any case higher than
Under these conditions, the 5 % annual rate of expansion that the Rockefeller Report called for in the coming years in order that the US economy should always outclass that of the US SR, seems already insufficient. This rate represents an essential imperative requirement for a US economic policy of any dynamism whatever that attempts to pick up the Soviet challenge.
In this case, how can one fail to be astonished that such a concern found no echo in the President's Message on the State of the Union, any more, for that matter, than did the lead taken by the in intercontinental and cosmic rockets, or in the field of scientific research and education ?
It must be expected that the almost provocative flatness of the President's line will be fought by the new Cong and States can in the future ensure the colossal expenditures