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Show LAST LEGISLATIVE FIGHT 249 $2,075 million which the Secretary of the Interior estimates will have to be borne by the taxpayers of the nation. Meanwhile, it leaves available to the Interior Department, for such other uses as it sees fit, the money derived from the three percent interest on power sales. This practice, if extended to many other projects which the department proposes, will cost the taxpayers of the nation many, many billions of dollars. For instance, in connection with the Columbia River Basin program, it is estimated that this interest component would amount to $4.25 billion. Add to this the amounts involved in the Missouri River Basin program and the countless other projects which have been proposed, and one can only guess at the eventual cost to the taxpayers. Some of those who have studied this matter - and who are regarded as experts on reclamation and water develop- ment works - warn that the continued use of this "interest component" constitutes a very real financial threat to the nation and suggest that the Central Arizona Project is per- haps a part of a definite pattern to expand this practice. With the committee again in session in Washington, California Engineer M. J. Dowd hammered on the interest component issue, supporting with his own findings those of the Tax Foundation, and recalling Secretary Chapman's statement that the project would mean a loss to taxpayers of more than two billion.351 He reminded the committee that interest on the money loaned to construct Hoover Dam was being repaid to the Treasury on time each year by agencies which had contracted to buy the dam's power. Murdock made a bitter attempt to discredit Dowd's arithmetic: 352 "I would like to ask you this question: A hundred years ago, or 102 years ago, as a matter of fact, the United States acquired the area now occupied by Cali- |
