Word: congress
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Last week, three months after it met, the 70th Congress had the aspect of a thoroughly political Congress, which is what any truly professional Congress is expected to be in a presidential year. Its routine work was pretty well out of the way, but matters of intimate consequence to citizens, and therefore of private anxiety to Congressmen, were in a state of turmoil which portended a legislative jam when it comes time for the Congress to adjourn in June...
Work Done. The first thing the 70th Congress did in December was to make amends for things left undone in the filibustering 69th Congress, by passing a Deficiency Bill of appropriations to pay the back bills of assorted Government branches. Also, the House shoved along to the Senate with dutiful promptitude, appropriation bills to run the Government until July 1, 1929. By last week all but two of the ten Departments, and most of the independent bureaus, had been provided for. The two Departments yet to be provided for were Agriculture and the Navy and last fortnight the Agriculture moneys...
...fourth time in five years, the Senate passed Senator Norris's common-sensical resolution to amend the Constitution so that Congress, including newly-elected members, would meet on a set date (Jan. 2) each year and remain seated until its business is finished, instead of making new Congressmen wait 13 months to be seated and adjourning on March 4 every other year, as now; also, so that the President would take office Jan. 15 instead of March 4. Last week the House hemmed and hawed as usual over this attack on "lame duck" sessions and modified Senator Norris...
...would lean over backward to enforce what he does not believe in. On the other hand, is the theory of the Ku Klux Klan that Smith would open a bar at every corner. Possibly a more realistic theory than either of these predictions is that the Volstead Act, for Congress, has ceased to be a cause and has now become a routine, with an annual appropriation bill which never varies, and a game of political appointments played by Congress, the President being more or less a mere bystander...
...Reorganization of the Government. This is Smith's one supreme and abiding interest. Mr. Coolidge, whose chief interests lie in other fields, has asked Congress four times to reorganize the archaic and unwieldy machine that grinds out its work in Washington. Congress has done nothing. Smith has succeeded, as single-handedly as any man ever achieves results in politics, in taking the topsy-turvy Government of New York and remaking one hundred and sixty miscellaneous bureaus into twenty-one permanent departments...