f
REE PEOPLE
must constantly and contin-uously challenge government if they are to re-main free people.As an excellent example, no one questions the need for flood control; the necessity for soil and water conservation; the desirability of better recreational facilities; and, the ever-increasing demand for electric energy.
But everyone has the right-yes, the respon-sibility-to challenge the methods which our government is using to attain these goals.
Elmer T. Peterson, in his book "Big Dam Foolishness", questions these methods, and the questions he raises are given added weight in Raymond Moley's recent booklet, "What Price Reclamation?" Both are recommend-ed reading if you are interestrecommend-ed in your own pocketbook and the future of your country.
Both challenge those people in government dedicated to a monumental plan to remake the face of the earth at a tremendous cost to the nation's taxpayers. The blueprints prepared by these dedicated people who enjoy moving moun-tains and pushing rivers around call for a con-servatively estimated expenditure of $750 bil-lion.
Elmer T. Peterson, veteran news-paper columnist and author of "Forward to the Land" shows in his new book "Big Dam Foolish-ness", published by Devin-Adair, that mch programs as the Pick-Sloan plan for the Missouri Val-ley, the Upper Colorado River and Fryingpan-Arkansas Projects are a stupendous waste of tax-payers' money and the biggest "Pork barrel" undertakings in history.
This session of Congress has been re-quested to authorize the start of con-struction on 39 new flood control, navigation, irrigation, recreation and water power projects. Before these new tax-spending proposals slip quiet-ly through the legislative mills in Washington, all citizens should:
Look at the cost in relation to our present federal debt of $278 billion with an annual in-terest charge of $6,5 5 8 million-more than the total cost of our federal government in 1939 and the second largest expenditure item in our pres-ent federal budget.
Remember that none of six such projects authorized in 1903 have yet paid out and chat the final payment-if there is such a thing-on thing-one of them is now scheduled to be made in the year 2063.
Consider that one of these proposed projects
-the Upper Colorado River project-will cost the nation's taxpayers an estimated $4 billion in hidden interest subsidies alone. Irrigation costs on this project "'ill run as high as 5 ,000 per acre.
Determine the financial feasibility of big power dams-the cash register for most of these projects-in an atomic age.
Question the judgmentof spending billions to construct big power dams in locations where past experience shows they will be silted over long before they are paid for.
Weigh the wisdom of spending your money with one hand to flood fertile valleys and with the other to irrigate desert wastelands.
Write your Congressmen requesting that action be debyed on these non-emergency proj-ects at least until Congress has balanced the bud-get and started paying the debt we now owe.
Additional copies may be ordered from the
OKLAHOMA PUBLIC EXPENDITURES COUNCIL
207 Commerce Exchange Building
