Theodore M.
So the Bureau of the Budget hired Ed Ackerman. He was a full-time staff man
for the Bureau of the Budget, and a number of panels were set up to critique
and develop the action-you remember, the commission didn't make any
legislative recommendations. In fact, it was not within their charter to make
legislative recommendations. There was a draft of a bill prepared by someone
which I don't think was ever introduced. I remember seeing a copy of it printed
up as a congressional bill. It may have been printed at the Government Printing
Office as a service for one of the members of one of the congressional
committees who was interested in implementing the Cook Commission
recommendations.
But none of it really satisfied the Bureau of the Budget by giving them the peg
that they wanted to hang their hat on to stop all this nonsense of building
projects where the economic justification was somewhat specious. And so Ed
Ackerman set up all these panels at the Bureau of the Budget following the
submission of the report to the President, which I guess was either early in
1951, or late 1950. The President's commission could only operate for one
year.
I think it was actual ly 1950. They operated during the year of 1950.
A: So it came out in `50, and it was probably in 1951 that Ed Ackerman worked
with of these panels. I was on a couple of them representing Interior, trying
to develop ways to implement the Cook Commission report. I cannot say how
they got from that to Budget Circular A-47, except that a lot of attempts were
made by the panels to reach a consensus. I was on the panel dealing with
navigation, for example, and I'm sure they had people from the Corps of
Engineers on the one dealing with irrigation. They were trying to get down to
some agreement but we were all defending the interests of our own agencies.
The Corps representative on this navigation panel was
Faison, a very
distinguished looking gentleman. I think he was from the Board of Engineers
for Rivers and Harbors. We were working with Ed Ackerman, trying to get
some kind of agreement on some principles which would satisfy the Bureau of
the Budget and which would give a rational basis for making water project
decisions on the basis of sound policies.
Out of all those working groups or panels came report after report after report,
and then the whole project seemed to die on the vine and then disappeared until
Previous Page
