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Show Under the CAPITOL DOME With $56,000,000,000 appropriated appropria-ted for the Defense Department by the recent session of Congress, and with rearmament headed for new peaks, some workers for Federal economy in both Houses have decided de-cided that military and naval spending must be scrutinized carefully. care-fully. They want the Defense Department Depart-ment to have all it needs to insure national security. They feel, however, how-ever, that with the Army and Navy getting the bulk of Federal funds, their expenditures must be pruned where it is possible if any sizable proportion of the budget is to be sliced off. One proposal is to appoint a permanent joint House-Senate sub-committee to examine ex-amine military expenditures with the help of experts who would spend all their time finding out what's needed and what it should cost. Senator Douglas of Illinois has pointed out that the army and navy are still duplicating equipment equip-ment and services at heavy cost to the taxpayers. As one instance, he cited paralled medical supply systems. sys-tems. In Oakland, Calfiornia Mr. Douglas Doug-las said, there was a Navy medical depot which utilized only two-thirds two-thirds of its space storing an inventory in-ventory worth $13,367,000, and an Army medical depot which utilized 53 of its space storing an inventory inven-tory worth $8,150,000. Operating costs for the Navy's depot were $776,000, while Army's were $695,-000. $695,-000. The senator wondered why the Navy, with proportionately lower costs, couldn't merge the depots and operate both. He likewise like-wise pointed out that a naval air station in Florida has been getting medical supplies from its depot at Edgewater, N. J., although there is an Army medical depot in Atlanta, At-lanta, while an Army post' near Edgewater gets its medical supplies sup-plies from Schenectady, N. Y. Expenditures at Camp Shoemaker, Shoe-maker, near San Francisco, also are being questioned. About two years ago the Navy tore down its $50,0000,000 installation there, leaving concrete foundations intact in-tact for possible future building. Now the Air Force has taken over the camp for a $30,000,000 to $60,000,000 indoctrination center. The Air Force's first move, it was reported, was to let contracts for tearing out the Navy's concrete con-crete foundations. |