Mr. FOWLER. Yes, sir. Mr. BATES. So that the whole thing will tie in together. What you must have by way of revenue to meet the ordinary expenses of government, and then the total expenditures including capital expendi tures in the year 1948? Mr. FOWLER. Yes, sir. Mr. BATES. And that will answer that question all right, Mr. Commissioner. (The document above referred to is as follows:) GlenDale Sanatorium: Apartment house for medical officers.. 170,000 400,000 Public works: Office of Chief Clerk: Reconstruction of wharves- $112,000 Convert power plant to electricity-.. 34, 800 NOTE. A recent reestimate of revenues increases real-estate taxes for 1948 by $1.350,000. It should also be noted that there would remain in the public-works investment fund at the end of the fiscal year 1948 a balance of $3,698,307.46. Mar. 31, 1947. Mr. BATES. You may proceed. Commissioner YOUNG. I neglected to say that we are happy to have Senator Buck with us this afternoon, and I am sorry that he has not been with us all through the hearings. Your hearings have been very helpful, and very productive. I would like to take this opportunity for the record to say that we are very proud of the statements and the showing made by our various department heads. I think you will agree that we have got pretty fine men running our departments. As I said this morning, Mr. Chairman, after I had finished my statement, that Commissioner Mason, who has probably three of the hardest departments we have, three very large and costly departments, the schools, health, and welfare, I think that it might be enlightening and it might help you in some of your arguments, when you argue this on the floor, if Mr. Mason could tell us some of the problems of those three departments. Mr. BATES. We would be glad to hear you, Mr. Commissioner. STATEMENT OF GUY MASON, COMMISSIONER, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Commissioner MASON. Mr. Bates and Senator Buck, I would like to preface with just a few over-all observations. I think personally, and I am not speaking for anybody but myself, that we have approached this question-and when I say "we." I mean your committee and the Commissioners and probably the citizensfrom a wrong standpoint. We are not a State. We are not just another city. We are the Capital of the 48 States, with its appendixes, Territories, and what not. This city is open to them at all times under all circumstances and for their benefit primarily. All of the rest of us are camp followers, and are here incident to the Government. I came here as a camp follower because I thought there were opportunities here, and I seized them, and there were opportunities, and I have always been willing to pay taxes incident to the growing out of that, but the city has grown so that since its beginning, 147 years ago this year, they almost had to hock the land that they got to lay out the city to build the Capital, and they have been proceeding on that basis ever since. The closest they ever got to fiscal policy for the Federal Government for its Capital of the 48 States was in 1878. We kept that until 1923 and then out the window it went, and we have had nothing since, except whatever it might be from session to session of Congress. Whenever you present a budget. It is that way now. We got $8,000,000 this year. Last year we had $6,000,000. Before we had $6,000,000. It is almost impossible, Mr. Bates, and gentlemen, to forecast any type of development for the Nation's Capital. We could take our revenues as they now stand, and operate an organized city, and Capital, fairly well within the budget. We may get over or under a little bit, but when you come along to this city, it is to be the greatest capital in this country, and one of the greatest in the world, and we are talking in a different language. We are not another city. We are the Capital of the United States, and not of Washington, D. C., or the people of Washington, D. C., and I think from that angle we have approached the question. My own personal view, I am for the primary obligation for operating the Capital, not on the camp followers or on the Members of Congress here or their families that are here incident to their duties. They would not be here otherwise. It is on the Nation as a whole. They should assume the primary responsibility. Then say, "All right, you are getting benefit here." Yes, we are getting benefit. We cannot measure the benefits by any yardstick that we have got. We have no criteria to go by. It is not an engineering problem at all where you can get a fixed basis and terminals, for you cannot do it here. One year you have got something nationally. The next year it is something internationally, and it all upsets the orderly operation of this city. That is in any aspect you may approach it. Therefore, I say the primary duty is on the Federal Government to see that its Capital is operated in the manner it wants to operate it, and then assess the people who are living here, making a good living or a bad living, or whatever it may be, make them pay the difference. Then we would have a yardstick to project of what the Federal Government wants in the way of its Capital. As it is, we are operating another city with the benefits flowing to both the local residents, to the Federal Government, and still it does not meet the yardstick of a Capital. Mr. BATES. It is all a relative question, as to just what obligation the Federal Government is under, and to what extent we ought to recognize that obligation. Commissioner MASON. That is another way of stating it. Mr. BATES. That is the issue you are trying to express here. |