Address at the Cornerstone Laying of the New General Accounting Office Building.

Mr. Comptroller General, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:

We are meeting here today to lay the cornerstone of a fine new building for the General Accounting Office. This building is of special significance, because it emphasizes the fact that our Government is constantly striving for better management of its financial affairs.

Many people in the Government have wrongly considered the General Accounting Office a sort of a bugaboo that keeps them from doing what they want to do. Many people outside the Government, when they think of the General Accounting Office at all, consider it a dry and boring subject. But the General Accounting Office is neither a bugaboo nor a bore. It is a vital part of our Government. Its work is of great benefit to all of us. The people who run the General Accounting Office certainly deserve these new and better quarters. I wish we could get some like it for the President of the United States.

Under Lindsay Warren, the General Accounting Office has handled the biggest auditing job in the history of mankind and has done it well. It has continuously improved its operations so it could serve the people of this country better and more efficiently.

The General Accounting Office is an agency responsible to the Congress. But this does not mean that it works at cross purposes with the executive agencies of the Government. On the contrary, the General Accounting Office cooperates with the executive agencies, for they are working for the same great purpose, to give good government to the American people at the lowest possible cost.

One of the outstanding achievements has been the joint accounting program which the Comptroller General worked out in 1947 with the Secretary of the Treasury and the Director of the Bureau of the Budget.

As a result of this joint program, accounting improvements have been made in agency after agency of the Federal Government. These improvements have given us new machinery for tighter and more efficient control of public funds.

The success of this accounting program can be attributed largely to teamwork--cooperation of the highest degree among those responsible for fiscal affairs. On this team the Comptroller General has played a leading role.

It is especially important in this day and time for the financial affairs of the Government to be prudently managed. Taxes are high, and the people who pay the taxes are entitled to see that they get a dollar's worth of value for every dollar they pay.

Nobody likes to pay taxes. That's just human nature. A man will go to a night club and throw away $30 or $40 and think nothing of it. But let him get a tax bill for $30 and hear him scream! But we have to pay taxes--and for very good reasons. Since this is true, we are all entitled to know what those reasons are and what is done with our money.

I wish everybody in the country could read the Budget Message of the Federal Government. I don't mean the whole big book. That's full of tables and as thick as a Sears Roebuck catalog. But in the front of the book is a message to Congress, about 60 or 70 pages long, that explains what the budget is all about--where the money goes and what the citizen gets for his tax dollar.

I am proud of the budgets that have been prepared since I've been President. And I want to say to you that I know every figure in every one of them. I want people to understand them. I would not want anyone to give up his time-honored right to complain about paying taxes. If people couldn't blow off steam that way sometimes, they might explode. Half of the fun of being a citizen in this country comes from complaining about the way we run our governments-Federal, State, and local.

But I don't think anyone ought to take his complaints about the Government spending too seriously until he has gone to the trouble of finding out what it is all about. Most people talk about the budget and they don't know a figure in it.

I suppose it is impossible for everybody to get a copy of the regular budget message and read that. But it is possible for you to get a copy of a little book called the "Budget in Brief." This little book gives the highlights of the budget story. Every citizen who pays taxes ought to read it. You can get a copy by sending 20 cents to the Government Printing Office in Washington and asking them to send you a copy of the "Federal Budget in Brief." There it is [demonstrating]. It has got about 34 to 38 pages in it, and it will tell you all about what the expenditures of the Government are for, and why it is necessary to have them.

Now, I don't get any commission for selling this little book! I will be amply repaid just by having people read them. I am proud of the way the financial affairs of the Government are handled and I want just as many people as possible to know the whole story--the facts as they actually are.

I can't tell you the whole story here today. We don't have time. But I would like to mention a part of it.

The most obvious fact about the Federal budget is that it is big. Everybody knows that, but there are many people who do not know why it has to be big and what the money is used for.

I am going to tell you something about that.

In the first place, most of the money is used to provide for the national security. In the current fiscal year, national security programs will require nearly $50 billion, or 70 percent of all Federal expenditures. That is a very large sum of money. The question is: "Is it worth it?" I think the answer will come back from most of us that it is worth it. I think most of us will say that our national independence and our freedom are important enough for us to spend whatever is required to preserve them. At least, that is my answer. And I am humbly thankful that this Nation is strong and powerful enough to bear this mighty program for security.

Now, what else is included in the budget? It includes $6 billion to pay interest on the public debt. I suppose that is noncontroversial. Surely there is no one who objects to paying this interest. We can't repudiate the signed obligations of the Government of the United States, and we don't intend to.

There is nearly $5 billion in the budget for services and benefits to veterans. I hope this is noncontroversial, too. I don't believe in economizing at the expense of the man who bares his breast to serve his country.

The budget includes more than a billion dollars for grants-in-aid to States for assistance to the aged and the blind and other needy persons. Well, some people don't approve of this. I will say frankly that I welcome their criticism. I never saw any money spent for a better purpose. And I know we can afford it.

Then the budget has close to $500 million for grants to the States to help them build highways. I'm in favor of that, too. Highways cost money. But let me tell you something else: They also help to make money. I have no doubt that the money we spend on highways more than repays itself in greater prosperity for the country. Indeed, the same thing is true of many of the expenditures of the Government.

The things I have mentioned add up to more than $60 billion out of the total estimated expenditures of $68 billion. And yet some people are saying you can cut $6 billion from the budget. If you did that, there wouldn't be anything left to maintain the ordinary operations of the Government, like the Coast Guard, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Public Health Service, and the General Accounting Office.

I could go on down through every item in the budget and show you that there is a vital reason for its being there.

I don't mean to claim that there is not a single dollar wasted. In an operation as big as the Federal Government there are bound to be some cases of waste and extravagance. One of the reasons we have the General Accounting Office is to help us find those cases and to put a stop to them.

But the main point I want to make is that, although the Federal expenditures are very large, they are all made for purposes that are necessary to our national welfare; and our budget is as tight and solid as we can make it. There is a great deal of misinformation circulated on this subject. Some of it is done in ignorance and some of it is done with just malice aforethought. But it won't stand up under an honest analysis.

Let me give you an example.

In a recent issue of a magazine which is circulated widely in this country and abroad, there appeared an article purporting to show that "waste" and "extravagance" were running wild in the Federal Government. Accompanying that article was a table of figures supposedly showing that nondefense expenditures of the Government had increased anywhere from 100 percent to 1,000 percent between 1940 and 1950. It was just a pack of lies. This table was a typical example of what I once heard described as "butterfly statistics"--statistics so meaningless that they seem to have been picked right out of the air with a butterfly net. And that is where these came from.

The fact is that the expenditures of the Government, other than those arising out of past wars or out of our efforts to prevent another world war, increased 68 percent in dollar terms from 1940 to 1950. Adjusting for changes in the price level they actually declined. During the same time the country was growing, of course, and the Government had a bigger job to do. The total national output of goods and services rose about 50 percent in real terms. In 1940 the cost of these civilian Government services not connected with our national security took about 6 percent of our national output; in 1950 this had been reduced to about 4 percent. And this year it is going to be an even smaller percentage than it was in 1950. If people want to be fair about this, it seems to me that is the way to look at it.

Now, I would like to say a word to comfort and console those who fear that we are spending our way into national bankruptcy. This alarming thought has some currency in certain circles, and it is used to frighten voters--particularly as visions of elections dance through the heads of gentlemen who are politically inclined.

I want to say to these gentlemen who are spreading this story "don't be afraid--don't be afraid." This is something that has been worrying you for a number of years now. It's something you've been saying over and over again. It wasn't true when you began to say it, it has not been true as you have repeated it over and over ever since, and it's further from the truth than it ever was.

The country is stronger economically than it has ever been before. Its people are more prosperous. After paying their taxes the people have an average per capita income that will buy 40 percent more than it did in 1939, in spite of increases in prices. Corporations are making more money than they ever did and, even after paying taxes at the new high rates, their profits are running at a higher rate than in any year except the record-breaking 1950.

I know taxes are high and I know they are burdensome, but we ought to keep this thing in the proper perspective.

The world has some great problems before it today. The United States has great responsibilities in helping to meet those problems. We must face up to these problems and do whatever is required to meet them-and it is going to cost a lot of money.

If we want to keep the country on a sound financial basis and hold down inflation, we must pay this money as we go.

One of the benefits of using the pay-as-you-go approach is that it results in a tighter check on expenditures. It is so unpleasant to increase taxes that before doing it we try to hold down on expenditures wherever we can. And that is the way it ought to be. All I ask is that we do not cut our expenditures to the point where we lose more than we gain. We must not be penny wise and pound foolish. I don't want to lose a horse by being too stingy to buy a strong enough rope to hold him, or have him starve to death because I am too stingy to buy the oats and corn to feed him.

I believe in operating the Government's finances on a sound basis. I think the record shows that. Now listen to this very carefully. Over the last 5 years we have operated the Government with a surplus--a surplus of nearly $8 billion altogether. That may be a surprise to most people, but it's true. That's something for us to be proud of.

It is difficult to overstate how much the whole future of the world depends upon the financial condition of the United States Government. We must keep it solvent. We've got to keep it sound. We've got to be sure that the Government's financial affairs are well managed. And they are, thanks to the Secretary of the Treasury.

I am sure that the General Accounting Office will be in the forefront of this effort. The Comptroller General and his staff, working in cooperation with the executive agencies, have made many notable contributions to efficiency and economy in Government.

I am confident that this splendid teamwork will continue, and that in this building we dedicate today the General Accounting Office will render even greater service in the years to come than it has in those gone by.