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Show 238 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER along; that the project has merits which are convincing to senators with varied backgrounds and from widely separated parts of the country, regardless of party.' "Only two of the thirteen members of the committee - Lehman of New York and Smathers of Florida - come from east of the Mississippi. The majority of the members come from states that pay very little in taxes but want hundreds of millions of dollars spent for recla- mation of their deserts. "The Democrats on the committee, in addition to Lehman and Smathers, are O'Mahoney of Wyoming, Murray of Montana, McFarland of Arizona, Anderson of New Mexico, and Long of Louisiana. The Republi- cans are Butler of Nebraska, Millikin of Colorado, Cordon of Oregon, Ecton of Montana, Malone of Ne- vada, and Watkins of Utah. "These gentlemen, it is true, come from widely sepa- rated States, but to speak of the members of the com- mittee as men of varied backgrounds in the context of this bill is nonsense. The great majority of them start with pet reclamation projects of their own, all of them to be built at the expense of the taxpayers in other parts of the country. . ." Noting that Illinois taxpayers would be saddled with a bill for $57 million by the project, the Illinois State Journal urged its readers to write Congress to defeat it. On March 12, 1951, the Freeman Magazine declared that "if the people of Arizona wish to make such mag- nificent gifts to a few of their farmers, we in the other forty-seven states have nothing to say about it. But when the entire billion dollar cost of this project is to be borne by the taxpayers of the nation for the benefit of |