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Show BANANAS ON PIKE'S PEAK 225 after year in the past, the Bureau has come forward again with a thesis attempting to illustrate the great benefits to be derived by the nation from a proposed western irrigation project. The subject this time is the multi-billion-dollar upper Colorado River project. It is the Bureau argument that if the doors of the Federal Treasury are opened to the proponents of this fiscal monstrosity, every state of the union will get some of the loot. "The Bureau undoubtedly employs accomplished hydrologists and construction engineers, but when it comes to economists the Bureau is woefully deficient. The economics of the Bureau of Reclamation are as un- sound and as phony as a three-dollar bill. "If the Congress were to accept the Bureau's affirma- tions, then it follows that the Federal Government should subsidize all new industrial development in the United States on the ground that the spending of such public money would benefit all states. "The Bureau's thesis is that if General Motors, for instance, desires to build a new plant at Denver, the Federal Government should put up the money for it, because construction materials, equipment, and labor would come from many states, and thereby those states would benefit." Hosmer continued: "The Bureau's policies have been called creeping socialism. I submit that the Bureau's economics wouldn't be tolerated by the most ardent Socialist. And they certainly are not creeping policies. They are advancing with the speed of a jet plane, and if the Congress does not halt them, they will have the taxpayers of the nation burdened to the point of com- plete collapse, the national debt will be increased be- |