QUARTER CUTIN AID OF MARSHALL PLAN

Grey River Argus, 5 June 1948, Page 5

QUARTER CUTIN AID OF MARSHALL PLAN

PROPOSED BY CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE WILL GOVERNMENT INSIST ON FULL TOTAL ? > - (Rec. 9.0) WASHINGTON, June 3. The Appropriations Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, in reportirig the Bill carrying funds for the Marshall Plan and for the other U.S. foreign aid programmes, has recommended a cut of twenty-seven per cent, from the figure, proposed by the Administration. The measure now provides a sum of 5,980,710,228 dollars for global assistance in a fifteen-month period ending on Jiilyf 31, 1949, whereas President Truman had asked for 6,553,710,228 dollars for the twelve months ended April 30, 1949.

The Committee cut the amount for European aid to four thousand million dollars. This is a slash of 245,000,000 dollars from the figure asked. The Committee said that it is dissatisfied with the progress of the rehabilitation of Germany.

The Appropriations Committee said ♦ that, since July 1, 1945, the United States has provided foreign aid totalling 18,182 million dollars, . much of which “has been wasted”. The Committee has approved four hundred million dollars of the 463 million dollars requested for aid to China, and has agreed ' also to the Administration's request for 424 million dollars for the relief of Japan and the Ryukus, and 107 million in Korea. The Committee has completely erased 150 million dollars for Japanese economic reconstruction, which had General MacArthur’s support, and it also expressed misgivings about further aid to China. .'•REINSTATEMENT ASKED When informed of the Committee’s action, the Economic Co-operation Administrator, Mr Paul Hoffman, promptly requested a reinstatement of the full amount of 4,245 million dollars for European aid. He said: “The less money we have the less recovery we can expect”. The Committee stipulated that all wool bought under the Economic Cooperation Administration programmes should come from the stocks at present held by the Commodity Credit Corporation, instead of being bought in foreign countries. The chairman of the Committee, Mr John Taber, said that the Economic Co-operation Administration had proposed to buy wool from other sources than the Commodity Credit Corporation at prices higher than the

42 cents per lb the C.C.C. had paid for its. stock of 240 million lb. The Committee also stipulated that the Economic Co-operation Administration should not buy goods anywhere at prices higher than those in the United States.

Explaining the Committee’s reductions, Mr Taber said he was satisfied the Economic Co-operation Administration could operate for 15 months on the money allocated, and accomplish proper rehabilitation. The Committee had eliminated one item of 288 million dollars to meet the balance of exchange between the participating countries, and the United States, because the expenditure of such a sum would have meant that the ■ United States would have been paying debts due to itself. Mr Taber said that another reason for the reductions was that European grain crops were estimated to be nearly at pre-war levels, and accordingly large-scale relief should not be needed.

“Any kind of prudent management should provide for the real needs of these countries, without the enormous expenditures which have been proposed”, Mr Taber said.

Any unbiased analysis of European production figures and the Economic Co-operation Administration estimates “gives substance to a doubt about the Foreign Aid Programme’s real aims. If it is E.C.A.’s purpose to raise production in the participating countries to a level beyond that of pre-war, we are tackling a project which has been grossly misrepresented to the American public", he said.