238 e lusive v ictories
Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee, held hearings
on the bombing campaign that brought into public view the disagree-
ments between the JCS and McNamara. Stennis made no bones about
where his sympathies lay when he explained that the hearings were
intended to examine whether the opinions of the military were being
heeded so as to end the war quickly and save American lives. In its
report issued at the end of the month, the subcommittee sided strongly
with the military leadership. Bowing to this pressure from the right,
Johnson overruled his defense secretary and authorized bombing several
targets that had been placed off -limits earlier. His action refl ected his
appreciation of the political danger conservatives represented to his
agenda. Although the administration did not believe hawks might
make common cause with the antiwar opposition, the possibility that
they would prefer a hard-line Republican in 1968 weighed heavily on
the president.
Further, conservative lawmakers held in their hands the fate of John-
son’s domestic legacy, the Great Society. Th e president had sought from
the beginning of the Americanization of the war to minimize its fi scal
price tag. He went so far as to keep his budget planners out of meetings
with defense offi cials to discuss expenditures for the war and to insist
that war appropriations be approved by Congress outside of the regular
budget process. By the beginning of 1967, though, rising military
expenditures coupled with the Great Society–induced surge in domestic
outlays led to a widening federal defi cit and worsening infl ation. Th e
president called for a 6 percent tax surcharge to slow the infl ation rate,
even as he held fast to his commitments abroad and at home. Hawks
were prepared to support tax increases to pay for the war. But they
made it clear that in exchange they would expect full-scale mobilization
or the scaling back of Johnson’s domestic agenda. Representative
Wilbur Mills, chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Com-
mittee and a Democrat from Ohio, rejected any tax bill that did not
include domestic spending cuts on the same order. To sustain the
scale of the American commitment in Vietnam, Johnson grudgingly
conceded to their demands.
As more and more political leaders rejected administration war
policy from either left or right, public opinion followed. Th e initial
broad backing for the war gave way to a downward trend, as did