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Show THE THREE-RING CIRCUS 209 legislation. He, thereupon, secured an appointment with Mr. Truman, and took Reps. Engle, Murdock and Lemke with him to the White House. In the conference Murdock spoke in favor of the bill. However, Engle, who certainly was not an enemy of reclamation, reminded the President that a new Water Resources Policy Commission had just been appointed, and the purpose of the commission was to study all questions of economic feasibility and make what changes it deemed advisable in the reclamation laws. Didn't the President think that all such matters should be held in abeyance until the new commission had reported to him? Shouldn't the major considerations in HR. 1770 be reserved for study by the commission before Congress acted on them? And then, when the commission made its findings, wouldn't it be time for HR. 1770 to be con- sidered by Congress? That was, the President said, exactly what he had in mind. There were sad faces in the Reclamation Bureau. In the Eighty-first Congress, at least, HR. 1770 was dead. Debate of S. 75 in the Senate was only a few days away when the Veterans of Foreign Wars took a stand against it. A letter went to every senator, signed by the organization's president, Omar B. Ketchum, advo- cating that the bill be held up pending a decision of the water rights controversy by the Supreme Court.294 Each senator also received telegrams opposing the bill from the cio and the afl. The bill, said the afl message, "represents a grab of tax money for benefit of relatively few large landowners. In no event should project be authorized until after Supreme Court has found water available."295 The cio's wire was similar, and also |