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Heller has become one of the most influential members of the Kennedy team, although opinions other than his enter into the making of Administration eco nomic policies. Treasury Secretary Dillon sometimes opposes Heller—and wins—on major questions. For example: Heller wanted to include an income tax cut among the Administration's antirecession measures shortly after Kennedy took office, but Dillon balked, and Kennedy backed him up. And Heller has learned that in Government the counsels of economics have to be alloyed with politics. "An economic adviser," he says, "has to expect to take his lumps in terms of political reality."
On Memorial Day. in the lull after the stock market storm. Heller spent the day in his office, ate his lunch—hamburger—at his desk. When he went home that evening, he took a briefcase of papers, worked on them until 2:30 a.m. "Pressure has just been a part of my life," says Heller. "Professionally I've led, perhaps, an overcommitted life. I enjoy it, but people sometimes ask me, 'Do you have ulcers yet?' "
Heller can say of himself, and of the state of the U.S. economy as he sees it: "No ulcers yet." On Monday, while the stock market was plummeting wildly, he delivered before the Women's Democratic Club in Washington a prepared speech in which he said that after disappointing signs of sluggishness in January and February, the upturns in the March and April indicators—especially the surges in auto sales and housing starts—had "put the economy back into high gear." After the Monday slide, Heller saw no reason to revise that judgment. The recovery, he says confidently, "will continue into the first half of 1963." It might keep up longer, but "we don't go beyond that because the crystal ball becomes clouded."
The stock market decline, said Heller, was not reflecting imminent trouble in the economy. "Given the great potential of this economy," he said, "and given the determination of the Kennedy Administration to pursue policies that not only realize but expand that potential, I would say that the basic outlook for the economy flatly contradicts the disturbing developments of the stock market."
Heller's assessment that the economy looks robust gets sturdy backing from many non-Government economists and industrialists across the U.S. Says Beryl W. Sprinkel, top economist of Chicago's Harris Trust & Savings Bank: "I haven't changed my ideas about the economy. It looks strong, and I expect the expansion to continue into 1963." Henry Ford II looked at the road ahead and saw a "bright business picture," not just for autos but for the economy in general. As for the stock market drop, Ford leaned to one of the week's more esoteric explanations : European investors started it by "taking their short-term money out."