Word: barkleys
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Once called a "pump-priming" measure, the bill had been given the horrid name of a "poll-priming'' device, because of WTAdministrator Harry Hopkins' pointed comment on the Iowa primary election (see p. 16). Leader Barkley admitting Mr. Hopkins had been indiscreet, nevertheless marshaled his Administration cohorts to defeat every effort to attach penalties, however light, to political use of relief billions. New Mexico's Hatch, a Democrat, and Vermont's Austin, a Republican, each tried to prohibit WPA administrative employes from taking active part in elections. Each was voted down by a close margin...
...Mexico's Chavez stated the case with devastating simplicity: "As a practical proposal, shall we tie the hands of the Senator from Kentucky [Barkley] or any other Senator just because he happened to have recommended to WPA some honest Democratic friend who could do the job? Shall we prevent that friend from giving the Senator a lift when he needs...
...Senator Barkley was more subtle. Said he: "I have not yet reached the conclusion that all political virtue is sealed up within these four walls; and I have not reached the conclusion that a United States Senator has any more right than the humblest man or woman in the United States to express his views on anything on which he entertains views...
...when Leader Barkley proposed that all the $1,425,000,000 provided to make WPA jobs be made available to the President for direct relief, the Senate balked. It raised the direct relief appropriation from $50,000.000 to $125,000,000, but no more. The bill, as the Senate finished it, provided
...whatever utility recapitalizations may soon be necessary to release $432,000,000 in accumulated unpaid preferred dividends. Finally, though the Senate took Franklin Roosevelt's advice and voted down the suggestion that PWA be prohibited from further building of power plants in competition with private industry, Senator Alben Barkley specifically promised that the "President does not contemplate" any further such competition "unless and until such municipality as may apply for such allocation has in good faith made an offer to purchase the existing private plant...