National Affairs: Parting Shot

Almost by definition, it is easier to write a budget than to keep it. This week President Eisenhower submitted a delicately balanced budget for fiscal 1962—and left it up to President-elect Kennedy to keep it that way. While calling for history's biggest peacetime expenditures—$80.9 billion, up $2 billion from fiscal '61—Ike's final budget was based on the expectation that the economy will speed up by the time the new fiscal year begins this July 1. That would boost income by some $3.3 billion, to a record $82.3 billion. Result: a surplus of almost...

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