Volume 20, Number 4 · March 22, 1973
Taps for Liberals
By Leonard Ross, Peter Passell
Setting National Priorities: The 1973 Budget
by Charles L. Schultze, by Edward R. Fried, by Alice M. Rivlin, by Nancy H. Teeters
Brookings Institution, 468 pp., $3.50 (paper)
Shelter and Subsidies: Who Benefits from Federal Housing Policies
by Henry Aaron
Brookings Institution, 200 pp., $2.95 (paper)
Even without LBJ's death, January would have been a month of epitaphs for the Great Society. First the White House announced an unprecedented freeze on appropriated funds for public housing and sewage treatment. Then it proposed a budget liquidating the most ambitious social projects of the 1960s—a Republican version of the withering away of the state. Although total federal spending in the new budget will actually increase by $19 billion, that figure hides the degree of implicit retrenchment. Large increases would be necessary just to cover inflation. And most of the new money reflects no social priorities: $4 billion more for the military, $3 billion for debt servicing and veterans' benefits, $10 billion for mandated Social Security increases (much of which the Administration had opposed).
Review, 3215 words
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