Water Resources People and Issues
But anyway, the omnibus bill was vetoed on the grounds that they didn't
include reimbursement for land enhancement in the flood control projects,
which really hit those Louisiana and Arkansas projects hard, and they had all
these projects that they didn't have complete reports on.
Do you remember the book that Elmer Peterson
Big
Foolishness.
A: Yes. Big
Well, Elmer Peterson went in to see the President
about that time and gave him a copy of the book. The President was very much
impressed by the book so the President vetoed the Corps' bill, and he vetoed
the Bureau of Reclamation's bill, but he signed the Soil Conservation's flood
control bill and it became law in 1957. Neither of the vetoes was overridden.
The next year the Corps' bill, with some modifications was passed again, in
1958. Many of the reports had been finished. I had cleared my desk and got all
the comments on the reports out, and so a lot of the objections because of the
lack of completed reports were eliminated. But there were still some they didn't
have reports on, and they were left out of the new bill. But no change had been
made in land enhancement. So the President vetoed the bill again. I don't have
as vivid a recollection of that, but we felt that we were breaking some new
ground, vetoing a Corps of Engineers' authorization bill for the second time.
Everybody said, "It's never been done before. As a matter of fact, it had been
done, and it was done many times in the 19th century. There's one thing that
people forget, that until the Republican Party was formed in 1856 and
succeeded in electing a President in 1860, Abraham Lincoln, the President had
rarely ever agreed with the Corps, had vetoed most of the rivers and harbors
bills, and they were passed over his veto. It wasn't until the liberalization of
the federal programs by the Republican Party that Presidents agreed that
undertaking internal improvements was an acceptable function for the federal
government .
Most people don't know that. I'm indebted on that, I might say, to some
research that Henry Caulfield did when he was at Resources for the Future. I
opened my eyes to the origin of the Republican Party, and I did some research
on the history of federal participation in public works later on when I was up
at the Library of Congress.
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