The Chemical World This Week WASHINGTON
APRIL
5,
1965
CONCENTRATES
V President Johnson wants a huge expansion of the desalinization program. The President has asked Congress to authorize $200 million to extend the program through fiscal 1972. In 1961, Congress authorized $75 million for the program through fiscal 1967. Meanwhile, the House, following the recommendation of its Appropriations Committee, appropriated $20 million for the program in fiscal 1966, $6.5 million less than the President originally requested. Only $40 million remains in the original 1961 authorization of $75 million. Thus, if the House had gone along with the budget request, only $13.4 million would have been available to continue the program in fiscal 1967, pending approval of the latest request. • The Department of Agriculture has set up a pesticides information center in the department's National Agricultural Library. The center will disseminate scientific and technical information on pests and their control. Agriculture Secretary Orville L. Freeman says that the department may also set up additional science information centers in other subject areas. The center has already put out the first issue of what will be a biweekly publication covering literature in the pest control field. • Chlorinated paraffin from England is not being dumped in the U.S., Treasury officials ruled last week. This past fall U.S. firms complained to Treasury that imports of chlorinated paraffin, made by Imperial Chemical Industries, Ltd., in England were being dumped in the U.S. Soon after Treasury started an investigation, ICI adjusted its prices so that the likelihood of sales below fair value was eliminated, Treasury says. The U.S. firms have since withdrawn their complaint and Treasury's ruling now closes the case. • Drug makers have failed in an attempt to revise the language in the medicare bill. The
Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association had asked the House Ways and Means Committee to change the language of one subsection to give physicians more freedom in selecting drugs for elderly patients. PMA claimed that the language would rule out effective drugs of high quality because they cost too much (C&EN, Feb. 22, page 21 ). The final bill approved by the committee (H.R. 6675) makes no change in the language criticized by PMA. Clinical chemists are con-
cerned about another section of the bill which would make outpatient hospital diagnostic services eligible for payment under medicare only if they are "furnished in the hospital or in other facilities operated by or under the supervision of the hospital or its organized medical staff." some chemists fear that this would bar diagnostic services operated by clinical chemists from participating in the medicare program. • The aid-to-education bill seems headed for quick Congressional approval, perhaps as early as next week. House approval of the measure has removed the major barrier to passage; Senate approval of the bill, once it has cleared the Education Committee, should be relatively routine. In the past the Senate has approved similar bills but the House has killed them. As approved by the House, the bill (H.R. 2362) provides $1.3 billion in federal aid for elementary and secondary schools. The details of the program are substantially those recommended earlier by President Johnson (C&EN, Jan. 18, page 21). • Congress will take a hard look a t Interior's plan to move slowly in developing oil shale.
Rep. Wayne Aspinall (D.-Colo.), chairman of the House Interior Committee, says hearings will be held sometime in the next few months on the report of Interior's Oil Shale Advisory Board (C&EN, March 1, page 28). Rep. Aspinall believes that development of oil shale should be pushed ahead rapidly and that most of the work should be done by industry, not by the U.S. Government. He sharply criticizes the view of one board member that the Government should take over oil-shale development and freeze out industry. • The Senate has approved a big boost in spending for the national water research program.
S. 22 would authorize the Interior Department, which runs the program, to spend $5 million on water research in fiscal 1966. This amount would increase $1 million each year until the authorization reaches $10 million annually. Spending for the water research program, created by Congress last year, is limited to $1 million a year. Interior Secretary Stewart L. Udall points out that although the program is less than a year old, the $1 million level has already proved inadequate. Interior to date has received 36 research proposals which would require spending $1.75 million. APRIL
5, 1965
C&EN
21
