Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 January 1920 — Favors a National Budget System; All Sense of Values Has Departed. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Favors a National Budget System; All Sense of Values Has Departed.

By CARTER GLASS.

Former Secretary of the Treasury.

lam heartily in favor of a budget system. Without effective control over governmental expenditures and limitation of them to the government’s income we shall bring down upon our heads the splendid structure which our fathers have built and which we have preserved. , s The very success (which you will pardon me if I call brilliant) with which the, treaaury haahnanced the stupendous requirements imposed upon America by the great war may become a menace. All sense of values seems to have departed from among us. The depart-

meats, bureaus and boards, all inspired by a laudable enthusiasm for their work, but some by a less laudable instinct to magnify its importance and incidentally their own, bombard the committees of congress with projects, some more or less meritorious, some of no merit whatever, but all conceived in sublime indifference to the fact that the great business of government is being run at a loss and that each one of these projects increases the deficit of the government, and consequently the burden to be thrown upon the great body of people, whether the deficit be met by increasing taxes or by floating additional loans. ——. — The congress votes with a lavish hand stupendous suras conceived in a magnificent spirit of generosity with a view to the enhancement of the prestige Of the nation, or for the benefit of this or that element in the community This it does uppn the advice of the committee of congress charged with the business of caring for such special interests. Then, speaking through the great committee on appropriations, it pursues a policy of restriction with relation to the expenditures of some of the departments of the government which makes it impossible for those departments to conduct the vast affairs imposed upon them with efficiency and economy.