No U.S. Aid for Welk’s Hometown

The Farmers Home Administration decided Friday that there will be no federal money to help develop a tourist industry in Lawrence Welk’s hometown of Strasburg, N.D.

The agency announced that it would not provide a $500,000 grant that Congress first approved last fall and then voted to oppose this year after it became a national symbol of wayward government spending.

The grant would have helped build a German-Russian museum in Strasburg and provide loans for developing businesses around the community five miles from the bandleader’s boyhood home. State FmHA officials approved the grant because they said all the money would have been spent in Strasburg, not on the Welk home, which was restored with private money.

Besides the congressional opposition, the project was not economically feasible, Rob Sweezy, an FmHA spokesman, said. “There was just no guarantee that it would bring in the money that it proposed,” he said.

Lawmakers were besieged with complaints about the Welk project after the late Rep. Silvio O. Conte (R-Mass.) lampooned it during a bitter congressional struggle over the federal budget deficit.

“What will they do for an encore? Earmark funds to renovate Guy Lombardo’s speedboat?” Conte asked.