The Tolleson Independent

RIGID ECONOMY IS ASKED

Members of Arizona's 14 boards of Supervisors and mayors of the state's 33 incorporated cities and towns were called upon today to "join wholeheartedly in meeting the national crisis by effecting every possible reduction in public spending" in a resolution adopted by the Board of Directors of the Arizona Tax Research association.

The resolution points out that the cost of national defense makes necessary a tremendous increase in the total tax burden "which is far and away heavier and more severe than any such burden heretofore known in our country. and which will become still heavier."

Attention is called to the statements of eminent economists that unless the combined burden of federal, state and local taxes is adequately eased it will "destroy the solvency of many taxpayers in slender profit businesses."

The resolution further points out that the secretary of the treasury informed congress that normal non-defense expenditures of the federal government can be reduced by at least one billion dollars a year without injury to the public services. Other competent authorities are quoted as saying expenditures of state, county and municipal governments, if stripped of waste and unnecessary items, can also be reduced nearly one billion dollars without impairment of any essential public services.

"Such reductions, if made fully effective at once," the resolution reads, "would keep many such menaced taxpayers on a continuing basis of activity and usefulness as employers of labor and thus as supporters of homes, as purchasers of commodities produced by other of our citizens, and as payers of the taxes and other revenues which are vital to all essential governmental services, including national defense."

Attention is called to the appeal of the President to all officials and employees of every county, city and town government to join in statewide and nationwide movements for placing and keeping every unit of government on a basis of rigid economy.