Water Resources People and Issues
Anyway, this was what Senator McGee, in particular, was driving at, but I
think they were really trying to use it, you might say, to beat the Eisenhower
administration over the head for not recognizing the national interest and for
vetoing all these bills. And I think that was the original concept that led
Mansfield, perhaps unknowingly, to introduce the resolution.
Let me go back now to a question I wanted to ask earlier, and we got on to
something else, because it seems to me this does require some clarification.
You started off the discussion by suggesting that this resolution, Senate
Resolution
was, to a large extent, a response to A-47 and the Bureau of the
A: No, I was talking about Senate Resolution 281 and Senate Resolution 148 of
earlier Congresses being responses to A-47. I said that Senate Resolution 48
of the 86th Congress was a response to the Eisenhower vetoes of a number of
water resources
Okay.
A: -the veto of the Army authorization bill, the water quality bill, the
Reclamation small projects bill, and the public works appropriations. They had
to cut the appropriations bill down to pass and also reduce the scope of the
water pollution control bill.
Would it be fair to say that there had been growing congressional
disenchantment with administration policy for the eight years of the Eisenhower
administration; that the vetoes culminate, in a sense, that dissatisfaction, and
that, therefore, you have this Senate Resolution.
A: You've said it much better than I. That's the thing: growing disenchantment
and the vetoes were the last straw, and an election coming up there
Q .. I wanted to pursue this area a little bit further about the relationship between
the federal government and the states, and what concern, if any, the Kerr
Committee had about that relationship, whether in fact the committee saw some
necessity on the part of the states to assume a greater burden in the research
and planning and even constructing of water projects.
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