April 7, 1949
Paul Hoffman telephoned this morning and wanted to speak to the Secretary on the ECA legislation. The Secretary was tied up in a meeting and Mr. Bisseli, who was in the Secretary's office at the time, took the call.
Hoffman said that the Nourse speech had thrown the whole ECA legislation off balance. He wanted clearance from the Secretary to have Senator Connally get in touch with the President and have the President make a statement that our position remains unchanged - the economic recovery of Europe has priority over other recovery legislation, and therefore the obvious thing to do was to pass the ECA Act. Further, that we assume the Appropriations Committee will give careful examination to the amount requested, and that this figure must stand.
Mr. Bissell then took the above up with the Secretary, and the Secretary concurred.
DA
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