Word: bonus
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...main street of Homer, Ill., one night last week War veterans burned a stuffed figure. On it hung the label: ANDY MELLON. That was what Homer's ex-soldiery thought of a Secretary of the Treasury who had dared oppose legislation in Congress to up their Bonus loans...
Last week's Battle of the Bonus between the White House and the Capitol was a fast-moving drama of legislation. The President was against it, financially, economically, morally. But that greatest of political bugaboos, the "soldier vote," had stampeded an overwhelming majority of Senators and Representatives toward H. R. 17054, regardless of their private judgment. Fortnight ago the House had rammed the measure through by a 363-to-37 vote. Last week came the Senate's turn to show its disdain of White House opinions...
...warning was almost hooted in the Finance Committee which reported (13-to-3) H. R. 17054 unchanged to the Senate. There, before galleries packed with noisy veterans, the bill came up for six hours debate. Its supporters said nothing that had not already been said many times. Typical pro-Bonus argument by New York's expansive Copeland: "In the country a man can get out and catch an old rooster, parboil him and, with a few turnips, get along well enough but when poverty comes to my city there is nothing to eat but the sidewalks of New York...
...high point of bonus opposition came in a speech by Pennsylvania's slight, drawn-faced Republican Senator David Aiken Reed, A. E. F. Major of Artillery, family friend of Andrew Mellon and fellow-Pittsburgher. With shoulders humped, intense voice rasping, Senator Reed hammered away. But as he expected, his words changed not a single ballot. By the impressive vote of 72-10-12 the Senate passed H. R. 17054. Not one Democrat voted against it. The twelve anti-Bonus Republicans were: Borah, Fess, Goff, Hastings, Hebert, Metcalf, Morrow, Moses, Phipps, Reed, Smoot, Walcott...
...order to get money to carry on the Government. The Couzens tactics brought the Senate almost to a standstill. Alarmed, Senator Reed telephoned the White House, broke the jam with the declaration: "The President has authorized me to say that it is his intention to return the bonus bill to Congress the middle of next week with a message giving his reasons for a veto...