OCR Text |
Show REA Should Pay Fair Interest Rate Encouraging news for the nation' s taxpayers is contained in a press release which reports that the Kentucky Rural Electric Cooperative Coopera-tive Corporation has adopted a resolution urging that the interest rate on REA loans should equal 'the fair cost of money to the United States Government." The resolution also urges the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association Asso-ciation to institute a study to ascertain this cost and submit proposed legislation requiring payment of the fair cost of money on REA loans. This is indeed a heartening and highly significant break in the relentless drive of public power advocates to exploit to the fullest the tax and interest advantages of the Rural Electric Cooperatives. Since the original purpose of the Rural Electrification program--bringing power to farms--has long since been fulfilled, many REA leaders have sought to use the Rural Electric Cooperatives to implement a nation-wide drive to socialize the business and properties proper-ties of taxpaying, investor-owned electric companies. The action of the Kentucky Rural Electric Cooperative is the first ' formal move by any cooperative group to make the co-ops stand on their own feet as the commercial business ventures they have become. be-come. The .resolution recognizes that taxpayers will not indefinitely support government commercial enterprises in the electric power field, or any other field, that pursue a policy of destroying the very businesses that must help pay the taxes that support their below true cost operations. |