"BALANCE the budget" is the war cry with which the anti-Administration forces will advance against Mr. Roosevelt in the coming campaign. In the words of the mellifluous Governor Talmadge, "Shall we continue to borrow and spend, or settle down and settle up?" Without the Georgia Governor's fireworks, even Governor Landon, in a discussion of the unbalanced budget, declared that "relief appropriation has been more than ample," but that bureaucracy has taken more than its share of the amount that should have been spent on the unemployed.
In the light of these criticisms it is pertinent to inquire just how much the federal government is spending for relief, and how wide an area these appropriations are covering. Estimates of the number of unemployed in the country today vary from nine to seventeen million. The American Federation of Labor estimates 11,672,000 as of November, 1935. For the week ending January 4, 1936, there were approximately 3,550,000 persons on the federal work-relief pay roll. With the termination of the FERA approximately 1500,000 unemployables were transferred from federal relief to state or local aid. Assuming that all of these persons are now obtaining some form of government assistance, we have a total of a little over 5,000,000 being cared for today by the state, leaving, according to the A. F. of L., about 6,500,000 unemployed for whom no such provision is being made.
Last spring an appropriation of $4,800,000,000 was made for federal relief the eight hundred million to be expended before the end of the fiscal year in June, 1935, the remainder to be used for relief in the current year. An article in the Annalist for January 24 estimates that something like a billion of this will be still unexpended on June 30 next. The annual expenditure for relief this year, therefore, will be almost the same as it was last, namely, three billion dollars. Assuming that every dollar of this sum is used for direct relief of the unemployed, it means an expenditure of $850 a year each for 3,500,000 people; each of these, however, represents a family unit of three and a half persons. What it amounts to is that the federal government supports 3,500,000 families at $850 a year each, or about half the subsistence-level income as it is generally estimated, and that the remaining 8,000,000 unemployed--also presumably representing families and not individuals--are dependent upon admittedly inadequate state or municipal relief, the casual benefits of private charity, or their own dwindling resources.
From this standpoint it is seen that although the federal government is spending enormous sums of money, it is hardly plunging the beneficiaries into luxury. Elsewhere in this issue Mr. Feinstein indicates what these expenditures mean when separated into geographical and personal units. At best, in the New England states, where the relief rate is highest, they mean enough to eat, of a sort, shelter, and fuel, with almost no allowance for clothing or household necessities. At worst, in the Southeastern states, where the average monthly relief grant per family is $17.50, they mean something less. Yet even this meager allotment is considered extravagant by the advocates of a balanced budget, and Mr. Roosevelt himself wishes to give the impression that some attempt will soon be made to scale down relief expenditures.
The Annalist article offers general criticism of the over-costly federal relief program, and suggests an alternative which may be taken as the program of many Administration critics. It is simply a return to the dole, as the least expensive way of meeting what is admittedly a problem of large-scale distress. This would have the additional advantage of eliminating government competition with private industry, so objectionable to Mr. Smith's Liberty Leaguers. It is perfectly true that as it is now administered the work-relief program of the government is not all that could be desired. There is undeniably a good deal of boondoggling and extravagant overcrowding at the top. But when useful work is economically performed, work relief is obviously preferable to the dole. In the January Survey the directors of thirteen national organizations discussed relief now and in the future. None of them could see an immediate prospect of smaller government expenditures. Most of them thought, with the inevitable decline of private resources attendant upon six years of depression, that this would be the "worst winter yet." Almost without exception the called for a federal program that was definite and consistent and that at the same time recognized relief as a more or less permanent problem. Even with the return of "recovery," estimates of probable unemployment range from six to eight million. These recommendations are made by persons in direct, daily contact with the suffering and insecurity that unemployment brings. Without adequate social-security legislation, based on increased taxation, proposals to "balance the budget" are bound to seem unrealistic and remote.
