Theodore
-not in accord with the program, or is in accord with the program of the
President. But, regardless of what was said, the report went forward to
Congress, so far as I know. Now, that's different than it is today. I don't know
when it changed.
A: I don't know what's going on today, but I think Executive Order 9384 came
out of the work of the NRPB before it was abolished. I'm not sure when it
came out, but I don't think it spelled out in detail what the Bureau of the
Budget could say. I think what it said was that the Bureau of the Budget's
comments had to accompany the report to the Congress. They made simply
devastating comments on the Santa Barbara County project of the Bureau of
Reclamation. I remember arguing with Charlie
about it when I was still
with Reclamation. I don't think we won the argument, but it didn't stop the
department from sending it up to the Congress and getting the project
authorized.
Q: That's right.
A: If they said it was not in accord with the program of the President, it had to go
up saying that. Writing those letters was my job in the Bureau of Reclamation;
writing the commissioner's report to the secretary, the secretary's report to the
President, which got to the Bureau of the Budget and then when the Bureau of
the Budget comments came back, sending it up to the House and the Senate
with the comments.
Amendment to the 1944 Flood Control Act
Now,
the other thing that we haven't discussed yet is that the
amendment to the 1944 Flood Control Act-I guess I did
mention it-required the Corps to comment on the Bureau's reports, and vice
versa. The states also had to be given an opportunity to comment on any
project, and all of the comments had to go up to the Congress when a
recommendation went up. But you could send them up, no matter what the
Bureau of the Budget said, although an agency would probably try to modify
a project to get into accord with the President's program, if it could. And that's
why we had this haggling over the Santa Barbara County project, which
became the Cachuma project eventually.
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