As has been expected, the first attempt of the Administration to fulfill its pledge to balance the 1936 budget is being welcomed with revolt in both houses of the legislature. This time, yes; the Democratic caucus will support the President and prevent a two-thirds majority over his veto of the amended Independent Offices 'Appropriation Bill.

But no mere maintenance of government pay cuts is going to balance the budget in 1936. The CWA will have to go, and the rest of the new alphabet, and with it all the rabbits which have been pulled out of the hat since March 1933.

And after that, what? Certainly such a debacle will be achieved only over the dead bodies of the western Democrats and what there is left of the Progressive Republicans. And if that happens, President Roosevelt will be forced into the ridiculous position of looking for support in an ultra-conservative Republican east revolting against progressive Democrats and Republicans alike in the west.

The other and more probable alternative is, of course, that the President will change his mind about balancing the budget, lose the east to a revived Republican party, and win the election by a narrow margin of western states.

But there is going to be no middle ground; no return to normal and unsubsidized prosperity, by 1936. What success the administration has had so far in effecting an upturn in business has been quite independent of all the blood and sweat of the NRA and the codes; has, on the contrary, been only proportional to the amount of money practically created and spent by the government in wages or contracts leading to wages. Only the "artificial" remedies have had any real and lasting effect. And any attempt to substitute for them the bad economics and ballyhoo of the N.R.A. and the codes will result, if not in unprecedented economic disaster, at least in an indefinite prolongation of the present inexcusable paradox of want in the presence of plenty.

If, therefore, Mr. Roosevelt thinks he has on his hands just the old struggle to guard the treasury from pork-barrel raids, he is wrong. And what, as a politician, he does about that when he finds it out, should certainly prove instructive.