Steamboat Comin1 Roun' de Bend

Freshman Senator Paul Douglas stood virtually alone. For two weeks he had been hacking at the $1.5 billion rivers and harbors bill, trying to eliminate a list of projects which he thought were "flagrant examples of pork." Bravely he argued that the country could get along without spending $7,500 to make bathing pleasanter at Palm Beach; $21,000 to improve navigation for the crabbers of Twitch Cove, Md.; $34,500 to improve yachting at Stonington harbor, Conn. He thought that $1.3 million for dredging the Detroit River would benefit no one but the Detroit Edison Co., and that $36.9 million to improve the Ouachita River in Arkansas and Louisiana was not justified. In all, he listed $840 million of projects from Prouts Neck, Me. to Westport Slough, Ore.--many of them not even requested by the Administration--which he thought could be lopped off.

His colleagues stared at him in stony-eyed silence, then, rushing to the mutual defense of each other's pork, shouted down the idea.

But Douglas had only begun. Stubbornly he laid his sights on even bigger targets, and last week his mild, cheerful Midwest voice sounded again across the Senate floor.

"Build Us... O My Congress." "There is a delusion," he said, "which causes America to sink large quantities of money into our American rivers, and that is the toot of a steamboat whistle. Somehow it is believed that if we can only have a steamboat whistle tooting through the heart of the corn belt there will be enormous riches . . ." He was attacking the feasibility of authorizing $250 million more for the celebrated Pick-Sloan development on the Missouri River. Said Fair Dealer Douglas: "I think it is a very serious question whether the United States of America needs a nine-foot channel from Sioux City to Kansas City."

Congress had already authorized $360 million for the project. Actually, the exuberant Army Corps of Engineers had gone beyond that authorization to make contracts which would cost the Government $757 million. "The motto of the Army engineers," Douglas observed, "is 'Build us ever higher and more costly dams and more costly levees, O my Congress.' " He thought it was time to call a halt until Congress could study the whole vast Missouri River project, "which, if carried through, will be a monument to the mistakes and errors of man." He had studied the project carefully, he said. He doubted that there would even be enough water from the Dakotas to fill the channels and irrigation ditches which the Army engineers were busily scooping out. Whether Douglas was right or wrong, the Senate apparently did not care. Alert to the demands of their constituents, the Senators turned that amendment down.

"My Last Amendment." Patiently, as the day wore on, Douglas tried to knock out $200 million for flood control on the lower Mississippi River, $100 million of projects in the Ohio River Basin, $89 million for the Arkansas River Basin. Except for Delaware's John Williams and Virginia's inveterate economizer, Harry Byrd, he had almost no support. Most of his colleagues sat, exasperated.

"For the relief of my colleagues," Douglas finally said, good-naturedly, "I may say that I am about to offer my last amendment." There was loud and mocking applause. His last amendment--to assess half the cost of levee and drainage projects against adjoining real estate--was duly defeated. Douglas had to give up. By a vote of 53 to 19 the Senators tooted the pork-barrel bill around the bend and on its way to becoming law.

Echoing Toot. From the House came an echoing toot. There, while economy minded Republicans ineffectually pecked away at the $29 billion omnibus bill, Ways and Means Committeemen voted not only to cut wartime excise taxes on a number of items which the President had suggested, but on a lot of other items. The list ranged from furs, jewelry and musical instruments to key cases, purses and baby oil. Consumers would no doubt welcome the savings on the prices of such goods. But estimates were that the committee's cuts would cost-the Government upwards of $1 billion in annual revenue.

A few experts waved a warning. Studying the currents, a joint committee on taxation announced that the Administration's own estimates of the size of the 1950 and 1951 deficits were too small. Walter George,* head of the Senate Finance Committee, released the report, which said that the 1950 and 1951 deficits would total $14 billion instead of the $10.6 billion the Administration estimated. If they were right, the national debt--which was $16 billion in 1930--would hit $267 billion. But the 81st Congress, steering its fiscal steamboat around the bend, did not seem to care.

*Georgia's George nevertheless went along with the other 52 who voted yea on the pork-barrel bill.

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