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Show thisim iifashington rj'iprstesj T'HE NEW TAX BILL, likelihood of another congressional look at a price control bill, step-up in military spending and production as result of world out-look, sensations sensa-tions in veterans schooling probe, living cost inc eases, political bickering and possibility of an October adjournment date were high lights of congress. The bouse passed the largest miU tary construction program in bis-'ory bis-'ory with only jive dissenting votes, carrying authorizations totaling $5,-766,720,928, $5,-766,720,928, which was $729,541,000 below the budget request. In the meantime the house had passed the foreign military aid bill with less of t cut than anticipated, and the senate sen-ate foreign relations connaittcs made a further slash and divided authority author-ity over the fund between the department depart-ment of defense, for military, the ECA for economic aid, and the state department for Point Four and other foreign assistance. " The House also passed a measure meas-ure authorizing $1,635,000,000 for housing construction in defense areas over determined opposition led by Rep. Jesse P. Wolcott of Michigan who said there "is no need for it" and that the measure was a step in the direction of socialism. so-cialism. Passage came on the heels of an investigation which showed that eve members of the armed services wre being charged unconscionable rentals for mere shacks unfit for human habitation in these defense areas and near government Installations. The appropriation authorization was split up as follows: $50 million mil-lion for government-constructed housing; $60 million for community commu-nity facilities and services; fZS million for loans to prefabricated housing builders; $10 million for land condemnation in Isolated areas and $1 billion for FHA mortgage insurance on privately constructed housing. Observers saw In the opposition opposi-tion the usual charges from men like Representatives Wolcott Wol-cott and Howard Buffet of Nebraska, Ne-braska, that any governmental help Is socialism. Congressman Thomas B. Curtis (R-Mo.) pleaded with newspapers or any body for recognition of a slash of $15 million which he said he got through in. the defense department de-partment appropriation bill. What the Curtis amendment did was not to cut appropriations and funds appropriated from the treasury by the defense appropriation bill, but reduced the amount that could be spent from proceeds of a salvage program, on salvage work. The Senate by a vote of 59 to 10 passed an army civil functions bill allowing $638,578,213 for civil functions func-tions of the army engineers, ceme-terial ceme-terial expense for the quartermaster quartermas-ter and expense of the Panama Canal Zone government in fiscal 1952. Senator Paul Douglas was beaten back three times in moves to reduce rivers and harbors funds as was Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan. Sentiment In favor of the army civil functions' bill was strengthened, of course, by the Kansas-Missouri floods, but there was every Indication that the congress would refuse to stand the cost of losses in that catastrophe. It would mark a precedent, and it was pointed ont in some sectors that neither neith-er the Kansas nor Missouri state legislatures had made a single move to help their own people who stood the losses. The congress already had appropriated ap-propriated $25,000,000 for emer- gency relief of the flood sufferers. suf-ferers. Observers here point out that in the Pick-Sloan plan for relief of floods in the Missouri river valley there is nothing but a patchwork development because there is no over-all guiding plan. These same observers declare that the great demand for completion of dams and reservoirs, some of which are included in the civil functions bill, in Kansas, will be built at the expense ex-pense of flooding great areas of farmland which under a more comprehensive plan would be perfectly per-fectly usable. Some suggestion has been made that, if the proposal of a Missouri Valley Authority is too all-inclusive, that a national committee com-mittee be named with no axe to grind, to make recommendations, possibly for breaking down the au-i au-i thorities into smaller valleys such i as the individual watersheds of the i Kaw, the Platte, the Big Blue and I other rivers. |