OCR Text |
Show Sen. Moss Opposes Mining Views of New Secretary of Commerce S t i 1 1-to-be-confirmed Secretary of Commerce Frederick Mueller drew the fire of Senator Frank E Moss (D-Utah) Wednesday because of Mueller's announced opposition oppo-sition to a "review of existing pro-grams" pro-grams" for the domestic mining industry. in-dustry. Senator Moss referred to a letter let-ter from Mueller to Representative Wayne Aspinall (D-Colo.) in which the Secretary stated that with a few and "for the most part minor" exceptions, mining and minerals industries had made a profit in 1958, and warned against "measures "meas-ures by the government to increase output" as "inflationary in character charac-ter or costly to the taxpayers." "This year, anything the Administration Admin-istration opposes is said to be 'inflationary,' 'in-flationary,' " Senator Moss charged. charg-ed. "Apparently, a continued depression de-pression of the lead-zinc industry which in ten years in Utah has suffered more than a 50 decline in employment is preferable to what the Administration fearfully calls 'inflation,' " he said. The Secretary is scheduled to testify August 13 before the Senate Sen-ate Committee on Interior and Insular In-sular Affairs, of which Senator Moss in a member. Subject of the hearing is a resolution reso-lution which points out that further fur-ther delay in mining industry recovery re-covery will endanger the economy and the national security, and calls for a review of existing programs "to provide for increased production produc-tion and employment." Moss assailed the principal figure fig-ure relied on by the Secretary, the Federal Reserve Mining Production Produc-tion index, which showed a drop of "only 8.6 in 1958 from the peak year of 1957," calling it "an average aver-age that is misleading to the public pub-lic and without meaning to individual indi-vidual mining operations." He stated that much of the problem prob-lem of the mining industry could be traced to Administration policy. "In the language of the resolution, 'Government purchases, contracts, loans, grants, technical assistance, barter . . . have resulted in the abnormal ab-normal and artificial stimulation of foreign metal and mineral exploration ex-ploration and development,' " he said. "All that we in Congress are here proposing is a constructive examination of a depressed industry," indus-try," Senator Moss said. "For a healthy economy and for national security, we should have a clearly defined metals policy that will assure adequate stocks of needed materials under all circumstances," he concluded. |