Sluice & Bobble

The Dixon-Yates contract and its public v. private power issue landed on the floor of the House of Representatives last week and, after a noisy and bitter debate, bounced out again with an unexpectedly solid victory for President Eisenhower and for private enterprise.

At issue was a section of the TVA appropriation that would have 1) cut off the main electrical-transmission artery of the privately owned $107 million Dixon-Yates power plant at West Memphis, Ark., and 2) extended the power of the Government-owned Tennessee Valley Authority by building a rival, $100 million power plant near South Fulton, Tenn.

The provision, as drawn by House Appropriations Committee Chairman Clarence Cannon and a group of TVA advocates, was a Democratic fiasco. President Eisenhower had asked for $6,500,000 to tie in TVA's transmission lines with a Dixon-Yates line at the middle of the Mississippi River, so that the privately owned company could furnish the Tennessee Valley and the Atomic Energy Commission with needed reserves of electrical energy. Cannon & Co. sluiced off the $6,500,000 from Dixon-Yates and authorized it as a down payment on the Fulton TVA plant.

The motion to cut off Dixon-Yates would probably have failed even as an isolated issue. But Cannon, who has a massive reputation as an astute parliamentary tactician, stupidly built in certain defeat when he diverted money to the Fulton public power plant. Many Northern Democrats were willing enough to knife Dixon-Yates, but few would vote for more Government-subsidized power for the South--power that would inevitably attract more migratory industry from the North.

G.O.P. Leaders Joe Martin and Charlie Halleck were quick to recognize Cannon's blunder and to line up the Republican votes in disciplined ranks. Top Democrats were flabbergasted when they realized what Clarence Cannon had done. After three hours of debate with nearly 50 heated speeches, the House defeated the Cannon plan, 198 to 169. Having botched matters thoroughly, the Democrats let the bill--including the funds for the TVA-Dixon-Yates link--slide through on a voice vote, and glumly sent it on to the Senate.

In a busy week on Capitol Hill:

P: The Senate, by a vote of 63 to 3, ratified the Austrian independence treaty.

P: Both House and Senate passed H.R. I, the watered-down Reciprocal Trade Agreements Bill, sent it off to the White House.

P: Louisiana's Democratic Representative Overton Brooks organized 100 greedy Congressmen in a bipartisan rump caucus, blithely added $86,376,000 in home-district chitterlings to the Public Works Bill (which included the TVA appropriations) in one of the most blatant congressional pork-barrel operations in years. Lamented Republican Glenn Davis of Wisconsin, in a futile motion to send the bill back to committee: "There is but one way that we can purge ourselves of the shame that has descended upon us here this afternoon, and that is to recommit this bill to the committee on appropriations." Brooks and friends brayed his motion down in a rafter-ringing voice vote, and then shouted the bill to passage.

P: The Senate Appropriations Committee approved a Defense Department appropriations bill of $31,836,521,336--$348 million more than the House granted. Under the committee version, the Air Force will get $14.7 billion, including a 35% increase in B-52 production funds, the Navy $9 billion, the Army $7.3 billion. The full Senate also extended the draft for four years, the doctors' draft for two.

P: The House Committee on Post Office and Civil Service approved a 7 1/2% blanket raise for 1,073,262 Government employees, which will boost the federal payroll by $325 million a year.

P: The Joint Congressional Atomic Energy Committee turned down President Eisenhower's request for an atomic merchant ship.

P: The Senate granted permanent sanctuary in the U.S. to Olga Masaryk Revilliod, 64-year-old daughter of Czechoslovakia's late great President Thomas Masaryk, and sister of the late martyred Jan Masaryk.

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