More Power to the CVA

When the Tennessee Valley Authority got started in the early days of the New Deal, an ear-splitting shrick burst from conservative ranks. The TVA was charged with being: (a) a power-mad bureaucracy (b) a giant Democratic boondoggle (c) a violation of states' rights, and other things too horrible to mention. Needless to say, the TVA proved to be none of these evils and in fact it brought the Middle South back to life. Its success started citizens in other areas of the nation thinking seriously about more Valley Authorities, but thus far the mercenaries of the special interest lobbies have been able to route all other TVA-like plans to an early grave. Now the lobbies are desperately trying to sink their hooks into Truman's proposal to set up a Columbia Valley Authority.

This CVA, as the Administration sees it, would take over the power-and-flood-control operations of a fistful of such federal agencies as the Army Engineers and the Department of the Interior. It would coordinate these activities into a pattern that is now significantly lacking in the Columbia Valley; it would replace the timid splinter programs of the federal bureaus with a unified plan on the order of the one that worked so well in the Tennessee Valley.

The opposition can truthfully argue--as it does--that the CVA would be "state socialism." But the charge of "socialism" alone doesn't frighten so many people in 1949 as it did in 1933, when the first Valley project was getting under way. The question is whether the Northwest needs this form of government aid or not. And when the plush opponents of CVA claim that the Northwest is doing fine as it is, they are unfortunately in error.

If private enterprise and the existing federal agencies were providing the Northwest with cheap, abundant power, and if they were effectively handling the problems of irrigation, navigation, conservation, and flood control, then a CVA would be superfluous. But private business and the bureaus are not doing even an acceptable job in these fields. So it is up to the Government--which is already socialistically entrenched in the Columbia Valley--to do its work better through the medium of an independent agency like the CVA. If the Eighty-First Congress manages to break through the power-lobby smokescreen to pass the CVA bill, it will have something, at least, to be proud of, regardless of the rest of its legislative record.