Monday, August 15 Nice day. Sharon & Marvin called. also Cliffard Thomas & Myrell Cliffard Thomas Father and mother called this evening to see us and Royal & Cleone Very nice people. Recd letters from Thair and Oertel. Tuesday, August 16 I write to Gladys Rich work around place some EDITORIALS We stand for the constitution of the United States with its three departments of government as therein set forth, each one fully independent in its own field. Salt Lake City, Utah The Deseret News Thursday, August 18, 1949 Spending Is Not an Issue IF WE CAN keep the drive for governmental economy out of partisan politics, the chances will be much better that something constructive can be accomplished before we spend ourselves into the poorhouse of collectivism. The need for economy is not a partisan issue, nor an issue at all. It is a self evident truth that no person or people can forever spend out more than they take in. And it is Just as self evident that if government spending continues to increase, taxes must mount to the point of confiscation, leaving collectivism with no alternative. Thus there is no issue political, academic, or otherwise over the need for keeping the cost of government within its income and within what our economy can afford. The only question is. Have we reached the limit of what we can afford? This is an economic and not a political question, and the answer should be quite obvious. This country now owes 253 billion dollars. This debt represents much of the accumulated savings of the nation and its people, individually and in corporate groups. Taxes now take 25 per cent of the nations total annual income, and we are still running government deficits and talking about spending more and more. Where is the limit without changing our form of government? Many of our wisest men think we have about reached it. Speaking at a Stanford University celebration of his 75th birthday, former Pres. Herbert Hoover recently warned that the United States is blissfuly driving down the back road to collectivism at top speed. We have not had a great socialization of property, he said, but we are on the last mile to collectivism through governmental collection and spending of the savings of the people. Then he gave some alarming statistics. About one person in every seven is a regular recipient of government money; and, if these people of age were all married, they with their mates would account for about one half of the voters in the last presidential election. One out of about every eight working Americans are employed by the government. The average person works 61 days a year to support government spending, and proposed spending would add 20 days more a year to this period. Along this road of spending, the government either takes over, which is socialism, or dictates institutional and economic life, which is fascism, Mr. Hoover asserted. But the former president did not make this spending a political issue. He criticized government administrations, local, state and national, and legislative bodies, but he put much of the blame on the people, especially a great multitude of pressure groups. Our generation was branded as spendthrift on its way to rob posterity of its inheritance of integrity and freedom. The drive for government economy has crosbeu party lines in Congress and in various state administrations too. Aroused by the very great need, many prominent members of both parties are fighting to curtail government spending on all levels. With so much at stake, economy is not, and must not be, a partisan political issue.