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Show ADMINISTRATION OF PUBLIC GRAZING LANDS 621 purposes he felt the subcommittee had quite forgotten.29 In a longer and more detailed report of the subcommittee investigating the administration of the Grazing Service of January 31, 1947 (its authority had been twice extended) the officials of the Grazing Service were subjected to a merciless attack, as "self-seeking, opportunist administrators," who were "dominated by an obsession to increase, at all costs, the areas of land under their administration; and never, no matter what the cost, to permit any diminution of the administered areas ..." They were accused of having "virtually nullified those sections of the Taylor Grazing Act intended to permit homesteading and the sale of isolated tracts," of discouraging appeals from decisions of administrative officers, of having misused funds, and worst of all of trying to raise the fees despite, the concerted opposition of the livestockmen and their associations and lobbyists. Rarely has a government agency been so excoriated. Some members of Congress who had participated in the attacks of the subcommittee on the Grazing Service were themselves personally interested in the livestock industry and they were particularly distressed at the proposed increase in fees.30 Before the final report of the subcommittee was prepared a difference of opinion between the House and the Senate emerged that was to cause the funds available to the Grazing Service to be drastically reduced, necessitating a contraction of its services. Jed Johnson, Representative from Oklahoma, speaking for the House Committee on Appropriations for the Interior Department for 1945, recommended a reduction for the Grazing Service from $1,359,500, the Budget estimate, to $425,000. Johnson 29 Cong. Record, 79th Cong., 1st sess., March 30, 1945, pp. 2970-73. Senator McCarran replied but merely reiterated the charges he had included in his Second Partial Report, pp. 2973-75. 30 Senate Reports, 80th Cong., 1st sess., No. 10. (Serial No. 11,114) offered a little homily about the necessity for reducing government expenditures, stated that he was "shocked" to learn that the already beleaguered agency, which was under attack in the Senate for contemplating raising its fees, "had no intention" of raising them. He rightly declared that its charge of 5 cents per month for cattle "in most areas, was out of line with fees charged by other persons or agencies leasing such lands" and recommended "an adjustment of grazing fees, to the end that the service would become self-supporting, as was originally intended."31 Senator McCarran got wind of this contretemps and quickly sought to protect his position, that there was no necessity for raising the grazing fee, by saying that the Appropriations Committee "had been incorrectly and inadequately informed with respect to the essential facts and interests involved." He repeated that the members of the House committee "have been greatly misinformed by grossly misleading statements and data presented to them by the Grazing Service." The true facts were set out, he declared, in his report. He then went on to amplify his charge of "ambitious and unscrupulous dealings" by the Grazing Service with both Congress and the livestock industry. He denied that the stockmen asked any favors, averred that they were quite willing to pay a reasonable price for the value of the forage but feared the alarming expansion of the Grazing Service and "its insatiable demands for ever larger appropriations, especially if they were to be charged back against the users of the grazing districts." He believed the livestock industry would be quite willing to pay larger fees if an unbiased study justified them, though there was nothing in the hearings that indicated such willingness. Actually Senator McCarran, the subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Public Lands and Surveys, and 31 House Reports, 79th Cong., 2d sess., May 7, 1946, No. 1984, p. 7.(Serial No. 11.024) |