Generosity v. Generosity

Last week the U. S. Treasury reported a cash balance of $5,004,000,000. That was an alltime record, almost double the high of $2,515,000,000 that the Treasury had in 1917 after floating the First Liberty Loan. More than half the Treasury's five billions was due to devaluation of the dollar and the rest came not from government income but government borrowing. Nonetheless, Congressmen looked at the five billion figure and felt that their government was rich indeed. Was not President Roosevelt spending this Treasury horde at the rate of $46,000,000 per day on CWA workers, CCC woodsters, cotton planters, hog raisers, wheat growers, rail-road constructors, public works contractors, battleship builders and so on and so on? His generosity last week began to infect Congress and on Capitol Hill were made two significant moves to upset the President's spending plans.

Chief upsetter in the Senate was a 57-year-old native of Reno, Nev., named Patrick Anthony McCarran. Nevada never sent a native son to the Senate before Pat McCarran arrived on March 4, 1933, a rotund man with a double chin, wavy hair and a high-pitched voice, who often says "My hide yearns for the alkali dust and the desert"-- a reference to his 2,200-acre cattle ranch east of Reno. His appearance, however, is deceptive. Senator McCarran, a sturdy Roman Catholic (the two eldest of his five children are nuns in California) went to Washington with a distinguished legal record. As a lawyer he had fought in many a famed case including Mary Pickford's divorce from Owen Moore. As a judge he was proud of the fact that none of his decisions was ever reversed by a superior court. In 1917 he became Nevada's Chief Justice.

When he Went to Washington he was something new in the way of a Democratic Senator. Within a week after his arrival he stood out against the new President's economy bill for cutting veterans' pensions, only to be outmaneuvered by his more experienced colleagues. He voted for the National Recovery Act but last August flatly told the American Bar Association that NRA was an "avalanche that sweeps away the structures fought for and reared by the great Jefferson." Despite that he does not rate as a conservative, nor as a radical, nor as an opponent of the President. Already one of the best liked members of the Senate, he is considered intellectually honest, frank, logical, and has a way of coming to the point without a smoke screen of oratory. Therefore he is potentially a bigger upsetter of Administration plans than almost any other member of the Senate.

Last week that potentiality became real. The Administration, which cut the pay of all Federal employes by 15% last March, had agreed to restore one-third of that cut as of Feb. 1, one-third more on July 1 and the remaining third at the President's discretion. This would affect the pay of 1,221.505 Federal employes, including the Army, the Navy. The cost of the Administration proposal would be about $126,000,000. Last week, when the Independent Offices Appropriation bill was up in the Senate, Senator McCarran, whose logical mind could see no reason why Federal employes should be kept on short pay when the Government is spending billions directly to raise the pay of other workers, came forward with an amendment that would restore the full pay cut on July 1. The total cost of his project was $63,000,000 additional -- a small sum compared to the cost of the whole recovery program. Shipstead, the Farmer-Laborite, 27 of the 35 Republicans, and 12 other Democrats swung in behind him. The McCarran amendment carried 41 to 40. The Administration forces realized they had suffered a serious defeat. If the House, which passed the same bill under gag rule, got a chance to vote on the McCarran proposal it would almost certainly be approved.

While Senators were thus contesting with the President the question of who should be generous, Representatives were likewise seeking credit for generosity. First house bill introduced in the current congress was Texas' Wright Patman's perennial measure to pay the soldiers' bonus in cash at once. This form of generosity involved $2,400,000,000, not from cash on hand, but in greenbacks. The Ways & Means Committee allowed the bill to lie fallow because 1) the House, as it did during the last Congress, would pass it if it got a chance; 2) the Administration, busy borrowing billions of dollars, did not want to frighten the country with greenbackery.

Only way to force the bill on to the floor was for 145 Representatives to sign a petition to withdraw it from the Ways & Means Committee. The petition was started, kept in a black notebook on the desk of the journal clerk. Day after day Representatives sidled up to the desk and signed. When 113 names were on the list Democratic Leader Byrns gloomily prophesied the total number would be reached. When the list neared 140 Speaker Rainey, who cannot control the House as Speakers Longworth and Garner used to do, paid a hurried visit to the White House, returned with the announcement: "I am authorized by the President to say this is not the time to pay the bonus and he cannot approve any legislation to that effect."

Asked whether Administration followers would be made to withdraw their signatures, the Speaker grumbled helplessly: "They can do as they damn please."

A few minutes later there were 144 signatures. Representative Isabella Greenway of Arizona, wearing a garnet colored sports dress and a red scarf, wandered in and sat down. Immediately several Representatives went to her, proposed that she take the credit of being the 145th. She pounded a small determined fist on the arm of her chair, said, no, she would not do it for any amount of publicity. A minute or two later, Representative Roy E. Ayres, 200-lb. Congressman from Lewiston. Mont, who has never made a speech in the House, claimed the honor, signed. He was so excited that he forgot his glasses case as he went back to sit down. It was his first claim to fame and not a newshawk in the gallery knew who he was.

But the bonus boosters were not long celebrating their victory. With the petition completed, the House under its rules would shortly be forced to a record vote on the issue. Many a Representative was thus put in a tight hole. If he voted for the bill he could be accused of greenbackery. If he voted against it, veterans would never forgive him. About the House Chamber circulated pitiful pleas that the Administration help its friends out of their predicament by getting the Ways & Means committee to report the bill unfavorably before the petition becomes effective, a piece of parliamentary hocus-pocus that would stave off a record vote.

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