President v. Senate

A warlike atmosphere last week enveloped the Senate. Senators had received threats of bombs to be hurled into the chamber. Special police stood guard. It was even suggested that buckets of water be set about the Senate floor so that brave members might quickly douse any explosive tossed from the galleries. Senators complained that they were being mysteriously spied upon, that their offices had been ransacked at night. A counter espionage was established by Sergeant at Arms Barry. The Senate wing side door was locked and all visitors had to file through a single entrance under the sharp inspection of special guards. Night sessions on the tariff only added to members' nervous apprehension.

Against this tense background the Senate and the President enacted another unseemly wrangle. The issue between them was the threat, real or imaginary, of increased expenditures Congress might or might not authorize. Universal is the practice among Congressmen and Senators to introduce, chiefly to impress their constituents, measures authorizing huge expenditures which they know will never be passed, will never cost the U. S. a cent. As political gestures, some 10,400 bills have been so far offered in the House of which only a bare hundred or two will ever become law.

No connoisseur of the gestures of politicians, President Hoover took sudden and inexplicable fright at this mounting stack of legislation in the House which, if really enacted, would certainly have emptied the Treasury. A White House breakfast was called, with House and Senate Republican leaders and Treasury officials in attendance. Alarm was felt. The President was told, falsely or otherwise, that the pressure behind all these bills was inordinate, that something would have to be done to check the drive on the Treasury.

After breakfast, White House Secretary Newton issued a statement in behalf of the President which prompted scare headlines about 40% increase in taxation.

Said the Newton statement: ''The Director of the Budget has prepared a survey of the various projects which have been presented to Congress which will involve additional expenditure. . . . The amounts below are a summary of these projects [here follows a list of 24 items totalling $1,735,000,000]. Such a program would imply an increase in taxes of 40%. Other projects, not regarded as imminent, would impose a further expenditure of fully $1,500,000,000 per annum."

Many a member of Congress was amazed to find President Hoover taking his political gestures so seriously.

The Senate, its nerves torn by spies and bomb threats, frothed at the White House scare. Some Senators had the feeling that President Hoover was trying to stir up more public hostility against the Senate, to create the impression that Congress was on a spending spree. Up rose Virginia's sharp-tongued Carter Glass to declare:

"The President is setting up a straw man merely for the purpose of knocking him down. His own secretary could have warned him against such a cheap exhibition of partisan politics. I say deliberately that nothing more shameless has emanated from the White House in my 30 years' service in Congress. ... I can scarcely trust myself temperately to characterize an astonishing performance of this kind by the President."

As proof that Congress was really more economical than the President, Senator Glass cited the potent fact that Congress had cut $28,000,000 from the President's own budget figures in passing appropriation bills thus far.

Lumberingly, awkwardly, Indiana's Senator Watson made a defense of President Hoover's warning. When he expressed a "grave fear" that these extravagant measures might pass, Senator Glass complimented him on his ability to keep a straight face. Idaho's Senator Borah, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee agreed that expenditures should be kept down, promptly got his committee to cut in half President Hoover's specific request for $50,000 to send a U. S. delegation to The Hague to help codify international law.

Next day President Hoover, always conciliatory, tried to mollify the Senate by issuing another statement, absolving Congress of extravagance. Instead, he blamed citizens throughout the land for the pressure behind these menacing measures. Said he:

"I hope the people at home will realize that the Government cannot undertake every worthy social, economic, military and naval expansion, and will support members of Congress in their cooperation with the Administration to hold down these new proposals."

Significance. A prime argument for Herbert Hoover's election was that he was a master builder, that under him would come a period of great expansion. Therefore Congressmen and Senators offered thousands of bills for such public developments on the theory that President Hoover, true to campaign promises, would endorse them. In his first annual message to Congress President Hoover did call for increased expenditures for public buildings, river & harbor improvements, flood control, roads, social welfare for women and children--items to be found on the Newton list.

When the stock market crashed, President Hoover called for a tax cut and increased public works as offsets to unemployment. Revenue receipts indicated a 10% drop. The Treasury anticipated a pinch. Master builder plans had to be shelved. Badgered with demands to show party leadership, President Hoover struck out at the first thing in sight--the usual stack of House and Senate bills. His purpose was good; his target was bad. He gave the uncharitable Senate an opening for attack. Such astute Washington correspondents as Harry Suydam of the Brooklyn Eagle boldly suggested that the President's Treasury raid scare was de-signed to divert, none too successfully, public attention from other Administration troubles like the tariff.

Whatever comedy there was in this situation lay in the spectacle of the autocrats of the House--Messrs. Longworth, Tilson & Snell--confessing their impotence to deal with the robot Republican majority in stemming the legislative tide.

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