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Show "pHE Bureau of the Budget Is an important adjunct of the Executive Ex-ecutive Department of the Government Govern-ment today. As originally set up the Bureau was intended by the Congress to assist the legislative Department keep track of the expenditures ex-penditures of the various departments depart-ments by holding them In line under un-der the law setting up the budget system. As it works out, however, how the budget bureau operates largely large-ly depends upon who Is running the department, and as It is being operated op-erated today, there is reasons to suspect that the various departments depart-ments are being shown how much they can spend, under the appropriations appro-priations of Congress, rather than how much they can save the taxpayers. tax-payers. A case In point Is the Atomic Energy Commission. This important impor-tant agency has spent some $15 billion dollars of the taxpayers money In development of atomic weapons and is now at the head of the civilian and peaceful development devel-opment of atomic energy for industry, in-dustry, medicine and agriculture. The chairman of the Commission, Admiral Lewis L. Strauss, is to say the least a man of strong convictions, con-victions, many call him arbitrary. He wears two hats, in that he is at once the chairman of a regulative and licensing agency of the government, gov-ernment, and at the same time official advisor to the President on Atomic Energy. Since the weapons weap-ons divisions of this agency is under un-der direct command of the President Presi-dent and the Department of Defense, De-fense, it cannot operate in the traditional tra-ditional manner as an independent agency of the government engaged in Civilian licensing and regulation, such as the Federal Communications Communica-tions Commission. Chairman Clarence Cannon, of the House Appropriations committee, com-mittee, says that in almost every expenditure it has made in the civilian applications of atomic energy the Commission has violated vio-lated the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and the intent of Congress. Speaking on this point Chairman Cannon said: "The Commission's method of defeating the statutory direction has been to arbitrarily divide the various atomic electric power programs pro-grams into two fiscal categories." With the approval of the budget bureau, the Commission sets up part of its electric power programs as "operating expense" which un-der un-der the Act does not have to be specifically authorized by the Joint . Committee on Atomic Energy. The rest of the same project it sets up under plant acquisition and construction, con-struction, which must be author-ized author-ized by the Committee. "The result has been," Chairman Chair-man Cannon said, "that for fiscal years 1956, 1957 and 1958 the amount appropriated and requested request-ed for the civilian power reactor program totals $23G.8 million, of which only $40 million was authorized author-ized under authorizing legislation reported out by the joint committee commit-tee and approved by the Congress. Thus it is readily seen that less than 20 of this program was authorized and more than 80 of this indivisible program was not specifically authorized." Cannon pointed out that although the atomic, energy act contains a specific "no subsidy clause", on the construction of one reactor alone, the Commission in bonus prices for plutonium, waivers of fuel costs and other services had contracted with the private company com-pany to pay the company cash subsidies of $58,050,000 million. |