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Show A STACKED COMMITTEE 161 The motion was adopted, and the senators went home. The crsp would be Senate business at 10 a. m. the next morning, the hour set for reconvening. As so often happened, however, the Senate got into a long argument about the Subversive Activities Control Act the next morning, and before that had ended and the routine daily business had been completed, the afternoon was nearly gone. Knowland reminded his colleagues that S. 1555 was pending, but they continued to bring up other matters - issues involving Basque sheepherders, the Railroad Retirement Act, the textile industry, the District of Columbia, the Santa Maria Project, mutual security appropriations, the illegal entry of Mexicans, the Dixon-Yates Contract, and the use of opium. At last Millikin got the floor, and addressed himself to S. 1555. The works, he declared, "would be con- structed by the Federal Government. The people directly benefitted would pay for them." 178 Quickly the ball went from Millikin to Watkins to Chavez to Anderson to Goldwater, a new senator, and around the circle again. Suddenly it was taken from them by a young man who, because of war wounds which had not healed, supported himself on a crutch. "How much," asked Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, "does the senator think this project will cost the country when it is finally developed?" 179 "I do not think it will cost anything," replied Millikin. Suffering had not prevented Kennedy from getting his homework done, and for the next half hour he stood against all the attempts of the Upper Basin senators to discredit his arguments. He talked of lost interest, of the Collbran formula, stating in a calm voice: "In the |
