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Joe Dodge drove the "formidably entrenched army of Government spenders" as far back as he could, and rebuilt the budget barricades. Hughes operates somewhat more snugly behind them. Nonetheless, he is out of bed, in his northwest Washington apartment, at 5:30 a.m. to read for an hour. At 7 o'clock his wife, Dorothy (they met at a Science church in 1918 in Shanghai, where her father, James Cowen, worked for Millard's Weekly and Hughes was working for the National City Bank branch), announces that she is ready with breakfast: orange juice, one egg, two strips of bacon, hot lemonade. (Hughes's other culinary tastes are mostly simple. He likes steaks, roast beef and pudding, but also has a flaring passion for curry—derived from a four-year tour of bank duty in Bombay.) He is usually in his office by 8:45, works until 6:30 p.m.
His job rates a chauffeur-driven Cadillac, but, to set a budgetary example, he turned it down. The Hugheses used to show up at the "must" parties in a hired limousine (at $20 a night), but abandoned that custom after the limousine broke down on the way to pick them up for a White House dinner for Queen Mother Elizabeth; they skinned in just as the band broke into Hail to the Chief. Now they drive everywhere in their Ford Victoria, and some legitimate government expense eats its way into their own stern personal budget. (Hughes took a 75% salary cut to come to Washington for the Budget Director's $17,500.)
Behind the Figures. Hughes began work on the 1957 budget last May, when he sat down with the President, Treasury Secretary Humphrey, a group of economists and other brass to block out the broad policies that would shape the year. At that first meeting they aimed toward a balanced budget, assumed continued prosperity and no hot war. In June the Cabinet approved the basic assumptions. Then Hughes wrote policy letters to each agency head, giving him the broad guide lines, asking for a 5% cut, setting a tentative department budget ceiling, and requesting estimates by Sept. 30.
Many departments were already deep in their planning for fiscal 1957; thanks to the long haul, the Air Force, for example, had been programming fiscal 1957 since Oct. 7, 1954. Through the summer, all departments worked out their tentative figures, with assists from the bureau's corps of 150 specialists. ("They're very good," admits Navy Secretary Charles Thomas.) Most agencies met the Sept. 30 deadline, sending in their appropriation requests on the notorious "green sheets," and their justifications on white "language sheets." Soon afterward, the Budget offices buzzed with final hearings, as the bureau's examiners delved deep into controversial items. For example, in considering the money request from the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corp., Budgetmen asked to see maps of dam locations, asked why one dam was not located at a narrows. Answer: rock formations made construction more costly at the narrows than elsewhere.