Cady was a consultant when helium reserves were later found in Texas and Colorado.

Scientists, engineers and Government officials agreed in interviews that helium reserves are adequate for the indefinite future.

In the cold calculus of the bond markets, it should make little difference whether the Government spends its resources on health care, helium reserves or hot dogs.

Regular passenger service resumed in the 1920s and the discovery of helium reserves in the United States promised increased safety, but the U.S. government refused to sell the gas for this purpose.

By this time, however, Europe was well on the path to World War II, and the United States, the only country with substantial helium reserves, refused to sell the necessary gas.

The helium reserve, it seems, was financed with $252 million in loans from the Treasury.

"Most of that money consists of interest we supposedly owe the Treasury Department for the $252 million they advanced to us to create the strategic helium reserve," Dr. Tully said in an interview.

Of all the Federal programs that have ever come under attack, perhaps none has been more ridiculed or more reviled than the national helium reserve, here on the high plains of the Texas Panhandle.

In 1996, the U.S. had proven helium reserves, in such gas well complexes, of about 147 billion standard cubic feet (4.2 billion SCM).

To say that "in the cold calculus of the bond markets, it should make little difference whether the Government spends its resources on health care, helium reserves or hot dogs" is not the case.