UNCLE SAM -- THE LAST OF THE BIGTIME SPENDERS

by William Proxmire ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1972

An energetic attack on current tax policies, resource allocations, and decision-making methods. As Chairman of the Congressional Joint Economics Committee, Proxmire has a fine practical grasp of these matters, which he has already applied in his writings and speeches against ""Pentagon profligacy."" This book is far more extensive but also far more disorganized. In bits and pieces it jumps, for instance, from housing to an Eximbank president's conflicts of interest to the Federal Drug Administration to the SST. The most elaborately developed idea is a call for a full-employment policy through government job creation, financed with the flab of unwarranted, non-job-producing programs and subsidies. Some of the book's other ideas remain mere slogans: increase productivity, enhance competitiveness. In between there are abbreviated, often forceful arguments for flee trade, against worker-financed foreign aid gifts to U.S. companies and foreign plutocrats, against government bailing out Lockheed's banker creditors, against the introduction of the regressive value-added tax, as well as the oil depletion allowance, tax loopholes, transportation boondoggles, and other familiar targets. Congress is a rubber stamp and the regulatory agencies are in the clutches of the regulated; public scrutiny is needed; so is, Proxmire hints, a new President, to curb the fat cats' getting and spending, etc. This may end up on the McGovern campaign agenda -- certainly it's geared to appeal to both conservative tax-revolters and liberal anti-establishmentarians.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1972

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1972

Categories: NONFICTION