OCR Text |
Show 46 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER Oddly enough, Circular a-47, which was signed by Budget Bureau Director Frederick J. Lawton, was a brainchild of the Truman administration, which the Republicans roundly scored as irresponsible wasters of the national income for infeasible water and power projects. It was issued in December 1952, and there- fore was a kind of legacy for the incoming Republicans. A-47 sought to establish a basic formula in the treat- ment of proposed public projects. It was aimed at the application of uniform policies in the matter of estab- lishing priority for projects yielding the greatest value to the nation, and in securing effective resources develop- ment at minimum necessary cost. As the police say, there was a bundle in the Budget Bureau file, showing how the proposed crsp violated the edicts of a-47. The record was long against the project, but the a-47 provision which gave Upper Basin states- men the jitters had to do with repayment of costs. There was no way the crsp could possibly repay its costs except to take money that rightly belonged to the tax- payers of the United States. This is what a-47 proclaimed: 58 "Where the cost allocated to irrigation is in excess of the sum of the anticipated repayments by the water users and other identifiable irrigation beneficiaries, and any net revenues of any separable purposes of the pro- ject, the project report shall identify these excess costs and may propose that they be borne by the federal government as a subsidy to irrigation. Where a federal subsidy is proposed, either by use of the interest com- ponent or otherwise, the project report shall clearly show the amount and composition of such subsidy, and the letter of transmittal to the Congress shall contain pro- |