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Show THE WESTERN WEB 81 of the Bureau of Reclamation, with its attempts to rewrite laws and establish new policies that would give it absolute control over all developments involving water and power. The ambitions of the Bureau were manifested by its efforts to increase the territory in which it, under recla- mation laws, was authorized to operate. The Bureau proposed that Arkansas be added to the seventeen states in which reclamation laws applied,56 and it found a strong supporter for the idea in Senator J. William Fullbright of that state. He spoke in favor of the expansion, thereby causing a strong attack to be made against the machinations and schemes of the Bureau. Senator Watkins of Utah,56 made an effort to mollify the Bureau's critics with the statement that "whatever may be wrong with the Bureau of Reclamation, I hope will be corrected early in 1949, after the election of 1948." The critics would not be hushed. Senator James P. Kem of Missouri,56 declared a number of citizens of his state looked "with apprehen- sion, I may say with fear and trepidation, upon an invi- tation of the Bureau of Reclamation to come into the valleys of the Mississippi and Missouri, in view parti- cularly of the record of the Bureau in other states." Recalling Downey's many attacks on the Bureau, Fulbright told him that "if this agency is so bad the senator from California should introduce a bill to ex- clude the Reclamation Service from California." Not Downey, but Senator William F. Knowland of California57 replied to Fulbright with the statement: "There is nothing wrong with reclamation laws that proper administration will not correct." Merely because |