The Invisible Government Part 7

A. William Loos, Executive Director of the Church Peace Union, is a member of the Executive Committee of the FPA-WAC. Mr. Loos attended the CFR meeting with high communist party officials in the Soviet Union in May, 1961.

Henry Siegbert, formerly a partner in the investment banking firm of Adolph Lewisohn & Sons, is a member of the Executive Committee of the FPA-WAC, and also a member of the CFR.

Chapter 4

COMMITTEE FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

On June 20, 1961, _The San Francisco Examiner_ published a United Press International news story with a June 19, Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C. date line, under the headline "J.F.K. Backs Tax Cut Plan."

Here are portions of the article:

"President Kennedy today urged Congress and the people to give a close study to a monetary reform proposal which would empower him to cut income taxes in recession periods.

"He issued the statement after receiving a bulky report from the Commission of [sic] Money and Credit....

"The 27-member commission was set up in 1957 by the Committee for Economic Development (CED). Its three-year study was financed by $1.3 million in grants from the CED and the Ford and Merrill Foundation.

"One of the key recommendations was to give the President limited power to cut the 20 percent tax rate on the first $2000 of personal income, if needed to help the economy....

"The report also recommended extensive changes in the Federal Reserve System, set up in 1913 as the core of the Nation's banking system...."

This _San Francisco Examiner_ article is a cla.s.sic example of propaganda disguised as straight news reporting.

A story about the President supporting a plan for reducing taxes could not fail to command sympathetic attention. But the truth is that the tax reform proposals of the Commission on Money and Credit would give the President as much power and leeway to _raise_ taxes as to lower them.

In its 282-page report, the Commission made 87 separate proposals. One would permit the President (on his own initiative) to reduce the basic income-tax rate (the one that applies to practically every person who has any income at all) from 20% to 15%. It would also permit the President to raise the basic rate from 20% to 25%.

The idea of giving the President such power is as alien to American political principles as communism itself is. The proposed "machinery"

for granting such Presidential power would violate every basic principle of our const.i.tutional system. Under the Commission's proposal, the President would announce that he was going to increase or decrease taxes. If, within sixty days, Congress did not veto the plan, it would become law, effective for six months, at which time it would have to be renewed by the same procedure. That is very similar to the Soviet way.

It could not be more foreign to the American way if it had been lifted from the Soviet const.i.tution.

Other proposals in the report of the Commission on Money and Credit, filed on June 18, 1961, after a three-year study:

1. The Federal Reserve Act would be amended to give the President control over the Federal Reserve System--which, as set up in 1913, is supposed to be free of any kind of political control, from the White House or elsewhere.

2. The Commission recommends elimination of the legal requirement that the Federal Reserve System maintain a gold reserve as backing for American currency. A bill was introduced in Congress (May 9, 1961, by U. S. Congressman Abraham Multer, New York Democrat) to implement this Commission recommendation. The bill would take away from American citizens twelve billion dollars in gold which supports their own currency, and enable government to pour this gold out to foreigners, as long as it lasts, leaving Americans with a worthless currency, and at the mercy of foreign governments and bankers (see the _Dan Smoot Report_, "Gold and Treachery," May 22, 1961).

3. The banking laws of individual states would be ignored or invalidated: banking laws of 33 states prohibit mutual savings banks; the Commission on Money and Credit wants a federal law to permit such banks in all states.

4. The Commission would circ.u.mvent, if not eliminate, state laws governing the insurance industry: the Commission proposes a federal law which would permit insurance companies to obtain federal charters and claim federal, rather than state, regulation.

5. The Commission would subject all private pension funds to federal supervision.

6. The Commission would abolish congressional limitations on the size of the national debt--so that the debt could go as high as the President pleased, without any interference from Congress.

7. The Commission recommends that Congress approve all federal public works projects three years in advance, so that the President could order the projects _when he felt_ the economy needed stimulation.

Remembering how President Kennedy and his administrative officials and congressional leaders used political extortion and promises of bribes with public money to force the House of Representatives, in January, 1961, to pack the House Rules Committee, imagine how the President could whip Congress, and the whole nation, into line if the President had just _some_ of the additional, unconst.i.tutional power which the Commission on Money and Credit wants him to have.

The objective of the Commission on Money and Credit (to finish the conversion of America into a total socialist state, under the dictators.h.i.+p of whatever "proletarian" happens to be enthroned in the White House) can be seen, between the lines, in the Commission's remarks about the "formidable problem" of unemployment.

The Commission wants unemployment to drop to the point where the number of jobless workers will equal the number of vacant jobs! And the clear implication is that the federal government must adopt whatever policies necessary to create this condition.

Such a condition can exist only in a slave system--like the socialist system of communist China where, for example, all "farmers" (men, women, and children) enjoy full employment; under the whips of overseers, on the collective farms of communism.

The Commission on Money and Credit was created on November 21, 1957, by the Committee for Economic Development (CED). In the 1957 Annual Report of the CED, Mr. Donald K. David, CED Chairman, gave the history of the Commission on Money and Credit. Mr. David said:

"CED began nine years ago [1948] to call attention to the need for a comprehensive rea.s.sessment of our entire system of money and credit.

"When the last such survey of the economic scene was made by the Aldrich Commission in 1911, we had no central banking system, no guaranteed deposits or guaranteed mortgages. There were no personal or corporate income taxes; no group insurance plans, pension funds, or Social Security system....

"Although CED had envisaged a commission created by government, the inability of government to obtain the consensus required for launching the study became as apparent as the need for avoiding further delay. So, after receiving encouragement from other research inst.i.tutions, leaders in Congress, the Administration, and from various leaders in private life, CED's Trustees decided to sponsor the effort, a.s.sisted by a grant from The Ford Foundation...."

Here is the members.h.i.+p of the CED's Commission on Money and Credit:

Frazar B. Wilde, Chairman (President of Connecticut General Life Insurance Company)

Hans Christian Sonne, Vice-Chairman (New York; official in numerous foundations and related organizations, such as Twentieth Century Fund; American-Scandanavian Foundation; National Planning a.s.sociation; and so on)

Adolf A. Berle, Jr. (New York; Berle has been in and out of important posts in government for many years; he is an anti-communist socialist; he resigned from the Commission on Money and Credit to accept his present job handling Latin American affairs in the State Department)

James B. Black (Chairman of the Board of Pacific Gas and Electric Company)

Marriner S. Eccles (Chairman of the Board of the First Security Corporation; formerly a.s.sistant to the Secretary of the Treasury under Roosevelt; Governor of Federal Reserve Board; and official in numerous international banking organizations, such as the Export-Import Bank)

Lamar Fleming, Jr. (Chairman of the Board of Anderson, Clayton & Co., Houston, Texas)

Henry H. Fowler (Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.; resigned from the Commission on February 3 to accept appointment from Kennedy as Under Secretary of the Treasury)

g.a.y.l.o.r.d A. Freeman, Jr. (President of the First National Bank, Chicago)

Philip M. Klutznick (Park Forest, Ill., resigned from the Commission on February 8, to accept appointment from President Kennedy as United States Representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Council)

Fred Lazarus, Jr. (Chairman of the Board of Federated Department Stores, Inc.)

Isador Lubin (Professor of Public Affairs at Rutgers University)

J. Irwin Miller (Chairman of the Board of c.u.mmins Engine Company)