The Midland Journal

"PORK BARREL" MAY BE OUSTED IN TAX SLASHING

The "pork barrel," the popular characterization for Federal appropriations for local or sectional projects sponsored each session by members of Congress, may be doomed to be empty at the next Congress.

This has been indicated by the views emanating from the White House, which represented President Coolidge as seeking both the reduction of the national public debt and of taxes and a strict adherence of Congress to economy in Government administration.

The President, while he is represented as feeling the Mississippi flood problem and other related projects must be given a place in the Government budget, is understood to consider that executive approval should be given only to such projects as are most urgent and where the need is deemed imperative.

A program of $400,000,000 tax reduction has been formulated by the United States Chamber of Commerce and is being distributed to its 1500 member organizations for a referendum to determine its policy during the Congressional deliberations on revenue legislation.

The program calls for repeal of the Federal estate tax and the war excess levies and reduction of the corporate income taxes. The Government officials have placed the reduction estimate in the neighborhood of $300,000,000.

Mr. Coolidge feels that if the members of Congress co-operate with him in watching expenditures carefully there can be a reduction of the taxes and a substantial cutting down of the debt despite the estimate from the Treasury, which placed the surplus for next year short of what it has been in the past.

The President also is said to feel that the greatest boon to the people would be the wiping out of the national debt and that if this was accomplished the interest now paid on the debt would satisfy every reasonable request for funds for internal improvements that is made in any one year.