No Foot-Dragger

Reading your paper (Jan. 28), as I’ve been in the habit of doing for most of my long life, I saw where you term me a foot-dragging senator relative to the budget.

I don’t know how a person can be a foot-dragger when he hasn’t even seen the budget, hasn’t had it discussed with him at all, hasn’t had a chance to even make an educated guess as to what it might be.

Oh, I do have a hunch of where it might be, but what do you do when you really don’t know? I think if you asked yourself that same question relative to the budget for your editorial department, when Otis hadn’t paid you the decency of coming down and discussing it with you, you’d come up with the same thing.

What I’m trying to do is come up with a budget that’s not going to kill our defense, that will enhance it, and when I know the figure, I think I can go to work.

BARRY GOLDWATER

U.S. Senator

from Arizona