President Arling has put his long awaited economic restructuring program before the Congress. It provides a coordinated

program of investment credits, research grants, education reforms, and changes designed to make American industry more

competitive. This is necessary to reverse economic slide into unemployment, lack of growth, and trade deficits that have

plagued the economy for the past six years.

      The most liberal wing of the President’s party has called for stronger and more direct action. They want an incomes policy

to check inflation while federal financing helps rebuild industry behind a wall of protective tariffs.

     The Republicans, however, decry even the modest, graduated tax increases in the President’s program. They want tax

cuts and more open market. They say if federal money has to be injected into the economy, let it through defence spending.

     Both these alternatives ignore the unique nature of the economic problem before us. It is not simply a matter of markets or

financing. The new technology allows vastly increased production for those able to master it. But it also threatens those who

fail to adopt it with permanent second-class citizenship in the world economy. If an industry cannot lever itself up to the leading stage of technological advances, then it will not be able to compete effectively. If it cannot do this, no amount of government

protectionism or access to foreign markets can keep it profitable for long.  Without the profits and experience of technological excellence to reinvest, that industry can only fall still further behind its foreign competitors.

    So the crux is the technology and that is where the President’s program focused. The danger is not that a plan will not be

passed, it is that the ideologues of right and left will distort the bill with amendments that will blur its focus on technology. The

economic restructuring plan should be passed intact.  If we fail to restructure our economy now, we may not get a second

chance.