and employees, while if any other Member offers an amendment for the same purpose, it will be ruled out on a point of order. If you insist on suspending this rule in its application to the Appropriations Committee, why not suspend it in its application to all the Members and let each of them have the same privilege of offering amendments whether within the provisions of existing law or not? Why should not each Member have the privilege and opportunity of offering an amendment and having it considered on the merits without being ruled out on a point of order, which privilege and opportunity will be accorded the Appropriations Committee under this proposed resolution? The ordinary Member of the House is sufficiently hampered and circumscribed already. Many of you have been complaining and wincing under the application of the rules in force. If you adopt this resolution, you will surrender one of the prerogatives vouchsafed you. You will tie yourselves hand and foot and deliver yourselves bound and gagged into the power of the Appropriations Committee. So far as practical results go, you may as well go home and send so many wooden Indians in your places. [Applause.]

This proposed legislation should not be adopted. We should stand by the rule in force, which seems to have served its purpose pretty well in the past and avoided much unnecessary extravagance. This seems to be a "stand-pat" Congress. Only yesterday the distinguished gentleman from New York, chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, in a very able and eloquent address, notified the Members of this House and the whole country that there will be no revision of the tariff schedules; that this House will stand pat. For the sake of consistency, for the sake of economy in the public service, and for the protection of our own rights and dignity as individual Members of this body let us "stand pat" on the existing rule and reject this resolution.

The SPEAKER. The time of the gentleman has expired.

Mr. WILLIAMS. I yield the two remaining minutes to the gentleman from New York [Mr. Fitzgerald].

Mr. FITZGERALD. Mr. Speaker, while I have no sympathy with the action of the gentlemen who have been taking matters out of the legislative bill without regard to their merits, yet I do not favor this rule. It is more sweeping in its character than I have been able to find in a search of the precedents. It makes it possible to keep in this bill indefensible increases of salary for favorites of some men in this House, while those who are without influence are ignored entirely. The committee, indeed, might be said to have been tyrannical in reporting this bill, because, in defiance of the rules, points of order submitted in committee were ignored, although the rules of the House are binding there, and matters that should not be in the bill are in it and are going to be continued in it under this rule. There are other legislative provisions equally indefensible, equally offensive, equally as important for separate consideration as section 8; and yet the Committee on Rules, without

knowing what is in the bill, includes the good with the bad and compels the House to consider on this bill provisions with which few of the Members are familiar.

If this rule was framed so that these matters of importance — the matters that had real merit - I would be considered in this way, I would gladly support this rule, but unless this rule is so framed that other committees with appropriating powers are permitted to report legislation and have it considered, the exception should not be made in this

case.

This rule Rule XXI, under which the points of order have been made is of great importance and value, having originated in 1837, or else it is absolutely worthless. If it is worthless, it should be modified to meet the changed conditions. In my judgment, the action of these two gentlemen, of which complaint is made, while it has done great harm in some instances, yet they have effected considerable good in the position they have taken during the past few days. It would be an extraordinary thing to permit the Committee on Appropriations, of which I happen to be a member, to say that increases of salaries for certain persons should be considered in order on the legislative bill while increases for other men who have no friends could not be considered. [Applause.]

Mr. DALZELL. Mr. Speaker, I now yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Grosvenor].

Mr. GROSVENOR. Mr. Speaker, the rule of the House which has been so often invoked by the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Hardwick] and the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Prince] is an old and time-honored rule of the House. It was not made by a Republican House; it originated in a Democratic House. I found it in active operation when I came here twenty years ago, and it has been pretty effectually enforced ever since. On the present occasion I wish first to state, so that the Members of the House will not be misled, that the proposed rule operates upon provisions subject to a point of order made against them in the pending bill in this way: In the first place, it leaves exactly where we find it all that part of the bill which relates to aged or superannuated clerks that has gone out of the bill, and it is not proposed to put it back into the bill by the operation of this rule.

Mr. KEIFER. That provision has not yet gone out.

Mr. GROSVENOR. It has gone out under the rules as effectually as if it had never been put in. The various rulings of the Chair have that effect. Now, what next? The next operation is to make it in order that the other provisions of the bill, to which exceptions have been taken and which have been sustained by the Chairman, will still be in order, but subject to the action of the House upon each one of these provisions separately. So that a majority of the Committee of the Whole House can either adopt one of these provisions, or amend one of these provisions, or reject it altogether. It simply affords the House

the full opportunity to pass upon every one of these objectionable provisions.

Mr. Speaker, the Committee on Appropriations, after very careful study, apparently - and I think I may safely say so have brought here a provision that looks to me, and, I think, looks to gentlemen even on the other side, as a proposition of great improvement, as it will completely reorganize certain of the clerical forces of the various Departments here. It is true it comes here without the sanction of the rule of the House. The gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Prince] seems to take it for granted that to bring a bill into the House with a paragraph or section in it obnoxious to the rule of the House is a sort of parliamentary crime, a crime for which the Committee on Appropriations ought to be indicted. Why, I have never known of an appropriation bill of any considerable length that did not have some provision in it that was held by the Chairman to be obnoxious to the rule that has been invoked here against provisions of the pending bill.

Mr. Speaker, here is what we have got to meet: We must abandon our proposition of reform and improvement and send a bill to the Senate that would be disgraceful to the House of Representatives — a bill that does not and would not provide for any considerable completeness in the appropriations or else, having ascertained what ought to be done, we temporarily set aside this rule for the purpose of doing exactly what the House of Representatives will decide ought to be done. It is not a revolutionary proposition; it is a proposition looking to the action of the House itself, an action which they may just as well take in this form as to take it in some other form. How can you get this proposition before the House anywhere else during this session of Congress than in an appropriation bill and in this appropriation bill? There is a large number of appropriations for salaries of clerks employed in the various bureaus of the Government that have gone out of the bill under the ruling of the Chair, which was a proper ruling and had to be made. Now, shall we stumble about here and act unwisely and inconsiderately, or shall we take up these amendments one by one and act wisely and judiciously and in keeping with a rule of the House that is higher than a written rule in the books? Gentlemen seem to think that this action in the House is in some way or other revolutionary. It is just as exactly and as completely in order and just as proper as it would be to create a new rule. Gentlemen say, "Send the rule back to the Committee on Rules and let them make a new rule." That is no more in consonance with good judgment and wise legislation than will be the correction of the difficulty by this action, this temporary action, upon this particular appropriation bill. Mr. Speaker, this is the shortest and best way to give to the House a fair opportunity to be heard upon every one of these propositions and to act intelligently and wisely. Therefore I think that gentlemen who have delayed this bill

all these days ought not now to appeal to the House to destroy the bill and compel it to go back to the Committee on Appropriations to have a new investigation and a new bill. [Applause.]1

MR. TAWNEY ON URGENT DEFICIENCIES 2

MR. TAWNEY. Prior to the Fifty-eighth Congress deficiencies in appropriations made for the public service had become so common and had increased to such an extent that that Congress deemed it essential to enact legislation to prevent such deficiencies. Theretofore many of the Executive Departments proceeded on the theory that they, and not Congress, should fix the standard of public expenditure, and if the amount appropriated for the service under their jurisdiction was not in their judgment adequate, they proceeded to expend the appropriation upon the basis of their estimates and then at the next session of Congress would submit deficiency estimates which, if not allowed, would necessitate the suspension of the service.

It was this practice which prompted a distinguished Cabinet officer during this session to state before the Committee on Appropriations that this policy was the policy of coercive appropriations and should be stopped. In view of these increasing deficiency estimates the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, the Hon. James A. Hemenway, now serving in the United States Senate, reported in one of the general appropriation bills at the last session of the Fifty-eighth Congress a provision requiring the heads of the Departments at the beginning of each fiscal year to apportion appropriations, by monthly allotment, or otherwise, so as to prevent a deficiency, and that such apportionment when made could not be waived except by the head of the

1 Commentary of the New York Evening Post upon this legislative incident: All students of legislation have agreed in denouncing the Congressional practice of passing general legislation as part of the appropriation bills. This year, at the hands of a group of embattled members, the House of Representatives got, as the phrase is, "just what was coming to it." Out of a difficulty of its own creation it extricates itself by an action which, however "practical," is without justification in logic, law or precedent. In the face of the absolutely definite rule against expenditures not authorized by existing law, the Appropriations Committee has followed its own sweet will so far that the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial bill has been "riddled" by perfectly valid points of order, and can be saved only by a special rule to the effect that it shall be passed whether legal or illegal. The point of order in Congress has long been regarded simply as a club. The speaker does not enforce the rule against new legislation or provisions not germane unless somebody brings the case to his attention. Thus many of the most necessary bills, as in the present instance, come upon the floor in a shockingly vulnerable state. As for the extraordinary expedient adopted to save the measure, we hope the incident will merely be a salutary warning to the House, and not the beginning of a line of that will still further tighten the grip of the Speaker and the Rules Commit organization.

2 Congr. Record, reported July 2, 1906.