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<br />002205 <br /> <br />ARIZONA v. CALIFORNIA. <br /> <br />31 <br /> <br />authority to contract, that authority is no less than the <br />general authority, unless Congress has placed some limit <br />on it." In this respect it is of interest that in an <br />earlier version the bill did limit the Secretary's contract <br />power by making the contracts "subject to rights of prior <br />appropriators." 80 But that restriction, which preserved <br />the law of prior appropriation, did not survive. It was <br />stricken from the bill when the requirement that every <br />water user have a contract was added to S 5.81 Signifi- <br />cantly, no phrase or provision indicating that the Secre- <br />tary's contract power was to be controlled by the law of <br />prior appropriation was substituted either then or at any <br />other time before passage of the Act, and we are per- <br />suaded that had Congress intended so to fetter the <br />Secretary's discretion, it would have done so in clear and <br />unequivocal terms, as it did in recognizing "present <br />perfected rights" in S 6. <br />That the bill was giving the Secretary sufficient power <br />to carry out an allocation of the waters among the States <br />and among the users within each State without regard to <br />the law of prior appropriation was brought out in a col- <br />loquy between Montana's Senator Walsh and California's <br />Senator Johnson, whose State had at least as much reason <br />as any other State to bind the Secretary by state laws. <br />Senator Walsh, who was thoroughly versed in western <br />water law and also had previously argued before this <br />Court in a leading case involving the doctrine of prior <br /> <br />.. In the debates leading to the passage of the bill, Senator Walsh <br />observed that "to contract means a liberty of contract" and asked <br />if this did not mean that the Secretary could "give the water to them <br />[appropriators] or withhold it from them as he sees fit," to which <br />Senator Johnson ,answered "certainly." 70 Congo Rec, 168 (1928). <br />80 See Hearings on H, R. 6251 and 9826 before the Committ.ee on <br />Irrigation and Rech;~ation, 69th Cong., 1st Sess. 12 (1926). <br />81 See id., at 97, 115. <br /> <br />99500 0-63-3 <br />