THE CONGRESS: Broader Than Dixon-Yates

• Share

When they were finally sure that the voters had given them control of Congress, Democrats on Capitol Hill set out to force the Atomic Energy Commission to do their bidding. Their target was the Dixon-Yates power contract (TIME, Nov. 8), up for consideration before the Joint Congressional Atomic Energy Committee. They could not prevent the signing of the contract, but they did threaten to nullify it next year. Announced Senate Democratic Leader Lyndon Johnson: "We expect that . . . the Dixon-Yates thing can be given a quiet burial."

Feet to the Fire. The best support Democrats had for their argument was the testimony of Atomic Energy Commissioner Thomas Murray, the AEC's lone remaining Truman appointee. He told the Joint Committee that some features of the contract did not serve the best interests of the U.S. AEChairman Lewis Strauss decided to negotiate for contract changes which Murray wanted, knowing he needed Murray's approval to take some of the steam out of the Democratic attack.

The AEC's representatives held the Dixon-Yates attorneys' feet to the political fire, and came away with several important concessions. Among them: 1) the U.S. will have the right (e.g., in the event that the Democratic Congress so orders) to "recapture" the Dixon-Yates facilities during the contract's first three years; 2) the company will be limited to (but not assured of) annual earnings of $600,000 (equivalent to a 10.9% return on investment). In return, the Dixon-Yates group won the right to cancel the contract after next Feb. 15 if it fails to get Securities and Exchange Commission authority to float the necessary stock issue.

Deciding that the contract was now "in the public interest," Democratic Commissioner Murray voted to go ahead with the signing. By a 10-8 party-line vote, the Joint Committee then waived a 30-day layover period required for such contracts. But the Democrats were by no means ready to admit defeat. Lyndon Johnson had cried that the next Congress, with New Mexico Democrat Clinton Anderson as Joint Committee chairman, would "expose Dixon-Yates, written in the dark of the moon, to some good New Mexican sunlight."

Inside the Question. Amid the furor on Capitol Hill, Dwight Eisenhower threw his weight more firmly than ever behind the Dixon-Yates plan for building a $107 million private power plant at West Memphis, Ark., and against the alternative of making a Government outlay of about that much for additional Tennessee Valley Authority steam-generating capacity. The question involved, the President pointed out, is broader than Dixon-Yates. It is: Should the Federal Government perpetually expand its role in the power industry? In a letter to Chairman "Stub" Cole of the Joint Committee, the President wrote: "If the Federal Government assumes responsibility in perpetuity for providing the TVA area with all the power it can accept, generated by any means whatsoever, it has a similar responsibility with respect to every other area and region and corner of the U.S."