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~' .~.. 00237~1 . . - 4 - It is respectfully suggested that, even though the present-day National financial outlay for defense and international purposes is held to be necessary and justified, the relatively snaIL amount of money required to maintain a reasonable investigational program for water development in the West by the Bureau of Reclamation should not be denied by the Congress. The inevitable effect of such denial will be strangulation of the Reclamation program for an indefinite period of time. This does not look like good National economy, and certainly is not in the interest of the crying need for the utilization and control of the limited water supplies of the arid and semi-arid sections of the Country, I have made a computation of the total amount expended for the activities of the Bureau of Reclam~tion for water development in the West (administration, construction, and investigations), for the fiscal year 1951 and find that it is only 58/100ths of 1% of the total Federal budget; and the estimated amount which will be expended in the present fiscal year for such activities would be 34/100ths of 1% of the total Federal budget. Of course, the in- vestigational part of this expenditure is a very minor part of the total Bureau of Reclamation program each year. This is a small expenditure, indeed, when such an expenditure by the Federal government is in the nature of an investment which will aid materially in making the Nation economically strong. It is not my purpose here to question the desirability of making avail- able the amounts of money now being expended by our gO'Ternment to aid the natural resources development in foreign lands, but I respectfully suggest that, in such an undertaking, the natural resourcES development of our own country, for the present and future, should not be reduced to a status of strangulation.