HYDE PARK —Senator Paul H. Douglas, in a letter written in Washington on July 13 and published in the New York Times on July 21, has presented a vigorous answer to the recent attacks made on the Democrats in Congress and on the Joint Economic Committee, as well as on the Senator himself. In these attacks, contained in a series of articles published in the New York Times, they are called advocates of "unlimited easy money," and the economic report made by the committee is termed a "fiasco." Senator Douglas therefore decided to set forth certain facts, and I hope the whole letter will be read by every American interested in understanding the President's budget and what attempts have been made by a Democratic committee to do what they felt would benefit the country as a whole.

In his letter, Senator Douglas made the following important points:

"The President's budget," he wrote, "includes subsidies of $260 million to the shipbuilding industry, of half a billion to newspapers and publishers, of unlimited payments of price supports for a dozen or so farm products on which no production limitations of any kind have been applied, and of the huge wastes in the defense procurement program which are now to provide some $60 billion in surplus items in the next four to five years. Furthermore, our tax system is rife with abuses and special privileges, particularly for the oil and gas industry, and for stockholders."

After reading this letter, one feels that Congress on the whole has not done so badly as a financial watchdog for the people and that perhaps the President, through lack of understanding of his own budget, has not been completely clear in explaining to the people what the budget contained. It would be well for every interested citizen to write in and obtain this letter.

An organization little known, because it numbers only about 2,000 men and women, has just opened its 13th annual convention in New York. Its members are men and women who served in our armed forces and sustained paralyzing spinal cord injuries either in the service or following their discharge. They are asking for Federal legislation to give national recognition to the paraplegic veterans, since they say that only Federally recognized veterans groups can deal with the Veterans Administration and other government agencies. The president of the organization, Harry A. Schweikert, stated that there were about 8,500 paralyzed veterans in this country. Anyone of us coming in touch with these particular veterans knows what a serious handicap they have to face and will hope they can be given any recognition which will facilitate presenting their problems to the government agencies that can be of assistance to them.