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Joe MacMurray, who is now head of the Federal Home Loan Bank, really as a result of this job we got for him. Joe made a visit to Johnson in Texas and was actually, for all practical purposes, loaned by Johnson to Sparkman. Sparkman and Johnson were oh extremely good terms and Sparkman was very interested in the housing bill and did a great deal of work on it. However, the housing bill is very technical, with many sections in it, and many considerations that only people familiar with housing legislation can deal with easily when there is opposition. So, he needed an expert in this area to keep his conception of a special section for housing for older people.

I was deeply moved by his attitude about the need for housing for older people. I'd always been for housing but I'd never been involved in any housing legislation; I felt that it was probably being as well handled as it could be, and at any rate I didn't think I had any special God-given second sight about what should be done. However, I was happy that he had this feeling.

The bill authorized 37,000 new units for public housing, which was a provision the President opposed. It authorized 650 million dollars for urban renewal over a two-year period, which was 150 million more than the President requested. It provided 50 million dollars in direct loans for housing for the aged, an item not requested by the President. The bill complied with the President's requests in the following respects:

It extended the guarantee authority of FHA by eight billion dollars without any time limits for the exercise of this authority,