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Show HI HO, AQUALANTES 193 Similarity between the reclamation programs of the Republicans and Democrats was not coincidental. The grsp project of 1955 had not been born of political parents of the same faith. It was a Republican admin- istration product and it was the child of identifiable Democrats. Even before the new crsp bills were dropped into the hopper of the Eighty-fourth Congress, President Eisen- hower had kicked off the drive in support of them. On January 6, 1955, he marched down the center aisle of the House to the applause of a joint session, and made an appeal for what he called his partnership program in the development of natural resources. The program meant "a partnership in which the participation of private citizens and state and local governments is as necessary as is federal participation." 219 Then, almost in the next paragraph of his State of the Union Message, the President cited an important exception to the partnership plan. That was the crsp. He did not say that the only real partnership in con- nection with the project was between the Democrats and Republicans, but he told Congress: 22° "Now, of course, the Federal Government must shoulder its own partnership obligations by undertaking projects of such complexity and size that their success requires federal development. In keeping with this principle, I again urge the Congress to approve the de- velopments of the Upper Colorado River Basin to con- serve and assure better use of precious water essential to the future of the West." Persons who would be witnesses against the new crsp bill in the Senate, S. 500, understood they would go like lambs to the slaughterhouse. The situation for them |
