The Invisible Government Part 10

Congressman A. S. J. Carnahan (Democrat, Missouri) floor manager for the Foreign Aid Bill, rose to explain Section 6, which established the Development Loan Fund, saying:

"The United States, in order to provide effective a.s.sistance [to all underdeveloped countries of the world] ... must have available a substantial fund upon which it can draw. The fund must be large enough so that all of the underdeveloped nations of the free world will feel that they will have an opportunity to partic.i.p.ate in it.

"We cannot wisely say that we should make a small amount available the first year and see how things work out. If we are able to offer a.s.sistance only to the select few, we will inevitably antagonize many other countries whose future friends.h.i.+p and cooperation will be important to us ... in addition to an initial authorization of an appropriation of $500 million, the bill includes authorization for borrowing from the Treasury $500 million beginning in fiscal 1959, and an additional $500 million beginning in fiscal 1960."

Thus, Congressman Carnahan, arguing for foreign aid, outlined some of the absurd fallacies of foreign aid: namely, if we give foreign aid at all, we must provide enough so that every foreign government in the world will always be able to get all it wants. We can exercise no choice in whom we give or lend our money to. If we give only "to the select few" we offend all others.

Congressman H. R. Gross (Republican, Iowa) asked a question:

"What interest rate will be charged upon the loans that are to be made?"

Congressman Carnahan:

"The legislation does not designate the interest rate."

Mr. Gross:

"What will be the length of the loan to be made?"

Mr. Carnahan:

"The legislation does not designate the length of the loans. The rules for the loans, which will determine the interest rates, the length of time the loans will run, the size of the installment repayments, and other administrative details, will be taken care of by the Executive Department."

Congressman John L. Pilcher (Democrat, Georgia) made the point that the manager of the Development Loan Fund, appointed by the President, could lend money to:

"any foreign government or foreign government agency, to any corporation, any individual or any group of persons."

Congressman Carnahan:

"That is correct."

Congressman Pilcher:

"In other words, it would be possible for an individual to borrow $1 million or $5 million to set up some business in some foreign country, if the manager so agreed; is that correct?"

Congressman Carnahan:

"If they met the criteria set up for loans."

Congressman Pilcher:

"The manager ... has the authority to collect or compromise any obligation in this fund. In other words, he can make a loan this month and if he so desires he can turn around and compromise it or cancel it next month which is a straight out grant in the disguise of a soft-loan program."

Congressman Porter Hardy, Jr. (Democrat, Virginia) said:

"The manager of the Fund has almost unlimited authority to do anything he pleases."

Congressman Barratt O'Hara (Democrat, Illinois), trying to quiet fears that this bill was granting unlimited, uncontrollable power to some appointed manager, said that the blank-check grant of authority was not really being made to the fund manager at all. The power was being given to the President of the United States, and the manager would merely "perform such functions with respect to this t.i.tle as the President may direct."

Congressman Gross said:

"That is more power than any President should ask for or want the responsibility for."

Congressman Leon H. Gavin (Republican, Pennsylvania) pointed out that we already have 5 or 6 lending agencies in this field: The International Co-operation Administration; the Export-Import Bank; the International Bank; the International Monetary Fund; the International Development Corporation; and the World Bank. Why, then, do we need this new one, the Development Loan Fund?

Congressman Walter H. Judd (Republican, Minnesota) had already answered that question, explaining that Development Loan Fund money would go to foreigners who could not qualify for loans from other agencies.

Congressman Gross said that all foreign nations which will borrow from this Fund could get all the American private capital they need if they had political systems which made lending to them sensible or feasible.

In short, the Development Loan Fund (which the Committee for Economic Development boasts paternity of) is a scheme for giving American tax money to foreigners who have proven themselves such poor credit risks that they cannot obtain loans even from other governmental and UN agencies--and who will use the money to line their own pockets and to build socialistic enterprises which will eliminate possibilities of freedom in their own land, and will compete in world markets with American enterprise.

In its 1957 annual report, the CED also boasted about the work of its Area Development Committee. At that time, the two leading members of this particular committee of the CED (who were also members of the Council on Foreign Relations) were Mr. Stanley Marcus, President of Neiman-Marcus Co., in Dallas; and the late Dr. Beardsley Ruml, widely known New Deal socialist "economist." Mr. Jervis J. Babb, Chairman of the CED's Area Development Committee (President of Lever Brothers Company) said:

"The new area development program, approved by the Trustees [of CED] at their May [1957] meeting in Chicago is underway....

Already, close relations.h.i.+ps have been established with organizations, both public and private, that are conducting research and administering programs relating to area development....

"Five of CED's College-Community Research Centers ... have been selected as a starting point of CED's area development pilot projects. The five centers are: Boston, Utica, Alabama, Arkansas, and Oklahoma."

The CED's Area Development work has brought CED personnel into close cooperation with the collection of tax-exempt "munic.i.p.al planning"

organizations housed in a Rockefeller-financed center at 1313 East 60th Street, Chicago, which has become national headquarters for the production and placement of experts--who fabricate "progressive"

legislation for government at all levels; who rewrite our "archaic"

state const.i.tutions; and who take over as city managers, or county managers, or metropolitan managers, or regional managers whenever people in any locality have progressed to the point of accepting government by imported experts as a subst.i.tute for government by elected local citizens.

In other words, through the Area Development activities of the Committee for Economic Development, the invisible government of America--the Council on Foreign Relations--has a hand in the powerful drive for Metropolitan Government. Metropolitan Government, as conceived by socialist planners, would destroy the whole fabric of government and social organization in the United States.

Metropolitan Government would eliminate the individual states as meaningful political ent.i.ties, would divide the nation into metropolitan regions sprawling across state lines, and would place the management of these regional governments in the hands of appointed experts answerable not to local citizens but to the supreme political power in Was.h.i.+ngton.

(For detailed discussion, see _The Dan Smoot Report_, April 13 and 20, 1959, "Metropolitan Government--Part One," and "Metropolitan Government--Part Two.")

Through the Area Development activities of the Committee for Economic Development, the Council on Foreign Relations has supported the Urban Renewal program.

Urban Renewal with federal tax money was authorized in the National Housing Act of 1949, and enlarged in scope by amendments to the Housing Acts of 1954, 1956, and 1957; but it did not become a vigorously promoted nationwide program until late 1957, after the Council on Foreign Relations (through the CED) started pus.h.i.+ng it.

Urban Renewal is a federally financed program of city planning which requires city governments to seize homes and other private property from some citizens and re-sell them, at below cost, to real estate promoters and other private citizens for developments that the city planners consider desirable.

Under the ancient, but awesome, right of eminent domain, city governments do not have the power to take private real estate from one citizen for the profit of another citizen. But in November, 1954, the Supreme Court in an urban renewal case, said that Congress and state legislature can do anything they like to the private property of private citizens as long as they claim they are doing it for public good.

Federal urban renewal has opened rich veins of public money for graft, corruption, and political vote buying; and it is destroying private property rights under the pretext that clearing slums will eliminate the causes of crime. Moreover, urban renewal authorizes the seizure not just of slum property, but of all private property in a whole section of a city, for resale to private interests which promise to build something that governmental planners will like.

Federal urban renewal--since the Council on Foreign Relation's CED started supporting it--has become a national movement with frightful implications and dangers. (For detailed discussion of urban renewal, see _The Dan Smoot Report_, September 29, 1958, and October 6, 1958.)