U.S. AID BILL

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 68, Issue 146, 2 April 1948, Page 3

U.S. AID BILL

MEASURE PASSED By HOUSE Senate .Version Differs Substantially A : (N.Z.P. A.—Copyright!. NEW YORK, March 31. The United States House of Representatives to-day passed by 329 votes to 74 its 6,205,000,000doUar Foreign Aid Bill, to provide arms, money, food,, and reconstruction supplies for China . and Europe. Goebbels wasina Seep shells fg r The legislation has been sent to the Senate, where it will almost certainly be rejected in its present form, because the Senate Bill differs in some maj,or respects from the House version. The House Bill authorises 5,300,000,* 000 dollars for the-first year of the four-year European recovery pro* gramme, in which 16 Marshall Plan countries participate along with Trieste and Western Germany. Spain also is included, but the'Senate is expected to reject this clause. The House Bill also provides / 570,000,000'dollars for China, 275,000,000 , dollars for Greece and Turkey, and 60,000,000 dollars for the United Nations Children’s Relief Fund. Most of the opposition in the House centred on the European section of the Bill. House Republican leaders hope that a. compromise with the Senate can be reached by the weekend so that the completed Bill can be sent to President Truman for signature early next week. V > The decision of the House "of Representatives to include Spain among the nations eligible for aid is strongly criticised both by the “New York Times” and the “New York HeraldTribune.” , . The “New York Times” calls it “a * grave blunder which has already done incalculable harm to the purposes of the European recovery programme and may vitiate them entirely‘unless the blunder is corrected with the ' Senate.” The “New York Herald Tribune” says: “When the House irresponsibly wrote Franco Spain into the European recovery programme it was not > necessarily wrong, but it was being stupid. One hopes that, the confer/ ence between the House ahd the Senate will strike the passage from the final Bill.”

DECISION TO ELIMINATE SPAIN EFFORT TO FIND COMPROMISES / ■ (Rec. 11.0) WASHINGTON, April 1. Senate and House conferees working out a. compromise on the difference in the Foreign Aid Bills passed by both, agreed to-day to eliminate Spain from the nations eligible for aid. The conferees acted within an hour of the White House announcement that President Truman utterly opposed the House Jo include Spain in the European recovery programme. Earlier to-day the House of Representatives, by 188 votes to 140, rejected a Democratic effort to prevent the inclusion of Spain in the ' Plan. s' f