THE PRESIDENT

The current Congressional measure proposing material enlargement of the presidential powers on expenditure is meeting the predicted opposition of large blocs in both houses. Republican leaders fear that a dictatorship is imminent, and prefer the stagnant multiplicity which has already been so effective in impeding fiscal adjustment.

That Congress should be reluctant to bestow added powers upon the executive seems an odd stemming of the tide of political theory and practice. Even the English Parliament has accepted its proper fate in an economic and social emergency whose trends are too rapid for mass regulation. Centralization of authority in the hands of a Prime Minister with a clear majority in the Commons has caused no dictator baiting. But our representatives have a stubborn reluctance to admit that their own leadership in the crisis has vacillated long enough, and cling pitiably to the purse strings which have of late constituted their chief claim to importance.

But the sanction of the electorate is the most valid of republican sanctions, and that sanction Mr. Roosevelt undeniably possesses. His campaign, with its pledges of drastic reduction of expenditure, was couched unequivocally in the first person singular. Repeatedly he made the statement that his administration would face extraordinary problems, and the assumption that his personal powers must be exceptional was in no way veiled. The national faith in legislative remedies, and congressional budget balancing, has been seriously impaired, and it was as a result of Mr. Roosevelt's unmistakably pragmatic conception of the presidency that much of his overwhelming support was recruited.

Without these added powers, all limited to actual reduction of expenditure the president elect will be in no fair position to redeem his campaign pledges to the country. This bill proposes a centralization of action and of responsibility, a step eminently valid, and it is certainly a tragic irony which decrees that Mr. McNary, its most avowed foreman in the Senate, should have met his baptism of fame beneath the aegis of the Farm Relief Bill of painful memory.