Editorial Note
President Eisenhower submitted his Special Message to the Congress on the Mutual Security program for fiscal year 1955 on June 23, 1954. The President stated that his recommendations were “essential to the efforts of the United States in the fields of international relations and national defense.” He added that the Mutual Security program was “based upon the sound premise that there can be no safety for any of us except in cooperative efforts to build and sustain the strength of all free peoples. Above all else communist strategy seeks to divide, to isolate, to weaken. The mutual security program is an important means by which to counter this strategy.” He asked Congress to authorize new appropriations in the amount of approximately $3.5 billion, which represented about a 40 percent reduction in the Mutual Security program in 2 years. “Because the new program is in large measure a continuation of existing programs,” he added, “its success requires reauthorization for expenditure of funds that are still unexpended.” The President recommended that his $3.5 billion request be allocated as follows: approximately $900 million for Europe; $570 million for the Near East, Africa, and South Asia; $1,770 million for the Far East and [Page 737] the Pacific; $47 million for Latin America; and $165 million for non-regional programs. The President’s Special Message is printed in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954, pages 590–594.
House hearings on the mutual security appropriations for 1955 began on Wednesday, July 7, 1954 and closed on Saturday, July 17. The hearings were printed as U.S. House of Representatives, Mutual Security Appropriations for 1955, July 1954, 83d Cong., 2d sess. Senate hearings opened on Friday, July 16, 1954, and concluded on Tuesday, July 27. These hearings were printed as U.S. Senate, Mutual Security Appropriations for 1955, July 1954, 83d Cong., 2d sess.