A mere policy of economy without any instrumentalities for putting it into operation would be very ineffective.  The Congress has wisely set up the Bureau of the Budget to investigate and inform the President what recommendations he ought to make for current appropriations.  This gives a centralized authority where a general and comprehensive understanding can be reached of the sources of income and the most equitable distribution of expenditures.  How well it has worked is indicated by the fact that the departmental estimates for 1922, before the budget law, were $4,068,000,000 while the Budget estimates for 1927 are $3,156,000,000.  This latter figure shows the reductions in departmental estimates for the coming year made possible by the operation of the Budget system that the Congress has provided.

But it is evidently not enough to have care in making appropriations without any restraint upon expenditure.  The Congress has provided that check by establishing the office of Comptroller General.

The purpose of maintaining the Budget Director and the Comptroller General is to secure economy and efficiency in Government expenditure.  No better method has been devised for the accomplishment of that end.  These offices can not be administered in all the various details without making some errors both of fact and of judgment.  But the important consideration remains that these are the instrumentalities of the Congress and that no other plan has ever been adopted which was so successful in promoting economy and efficiency.  The Congress has absolute authority over the appropriations and is free to exercise its judgment, as the evidence may warrant, in increasing or decreasing budget recommendations.  But it ought to resist every effort to weaken or break down this most beneficial system of supervising appropriations and expenditures.  Without it all the claim of economy would be a mere pretense.

TAXATION

The purpose of reducing expenditures is to secure a reduction in taxes.  That purpose is about to be realized.  With commendable promptness the Ways and Means Committee of the House has undertaken in advance of the meeting of the Congress to frame a revenue act.  As the bill has proceeded through the committee it has taken on a nonpartisan character, and both Republicans and Democrats have joined in a measure which embodies many sound principles of tax reform.  The bill will correct substantially the economic defects injected into the revenue act of 1924, as well as many which have remained as war-time legacies.  In its present form it should provide sufficient revenue for the Government.