Public Men in and out of Office

BY ROBERT S. RANKIN

THE CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS in the House of Representatives is a powerful figure, not only in Congress, but in American political life. The usual descriptive term that is applied to the Committee on Ways and Means is that of "all powerful." If this appellation has been deserved in the past, the importance of the committee and its chairman, Robert Lee Doughton, in this day of huge budgets and higher taxes is indeed hard to measure. The size of the United States budget today makes the job of determining the nature and the extent of taxation one of the most important in Washington. Claude Kitchen and Joseph Fordney, past chairmen of this committee, thought they had done good jobs when they raised a billion dollars. Today Congress approves revenue bills that raise nearly fifty billion dollars in taxes. The job of determining the nature and extent of taxation is shared by many, but it falls particularly upon the broad shoulders of Robert Lee Doughton, the Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means.

Each year as the budget grows in size, new and heavier taxes are made necessary. The need for additional revenue today is always present. No matter how much money is raised, the government invariably demands more. Each year the taxpayer, as he scans the mounting spiral of expenditures, realizes that his tax bill in the year to come will be much greater.¹ Is there a limit to the amount that the government should collect be

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