Word: congressmen
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Three weeks ago President Roosevelt sent a budget message to Congress strongly urging economy and at the same time presenting estimates of revenues and expenditures showing a 1938 deficit of $418,000,000. Contrary to all recent precedent, most Congressmen passed over taxes and expenditures to seize on Economy as the thing which appealed to them most (TIME. May 3). There was still doubt, however, whether the President would drive a reluctant Congress, or the Congress would drive a reluctant President, to the first specific beginnings of Economy. Last week Congressmen gave indications that their good intentions were going...
...while I recognize many opportunities to improve social and economic conditions through Federal action, I am convinced that the success of our whole program and the permanent security of our people demand that we adjust all expenditures within the limits of my Budget estimate." All last week Congressmen pondered these words, the first they had heard in such a vein from Franklin Roosevelt in nearly four years. Most were pleased that the President's good intentions towards the Budget corresponded with their own-pleased and a little uneasy as they wondered just how much action such good intentions required...
This news put Congressmen in an economizing mood. Senator Byrnes made another proposal, to knock a flat 10% off the Budget estimates for all expenses except payments on the public debt. In the House Republican John Taber of Aubun N. Y., moved to send the Department of Agriculture $925,000,000 appropriation bill back to the Committee to have 10% lopped off. The House did not want to economize on the farmers and New Dealers did not want to adopt a Republican's motion. Only 32 members voted...
Economy? Would history be paved with good intentions of the 75th Congress? Congressmen felt twinges of fiscal uncertainty in their joints. They could see that the President's example was not so strong as his precept. Although urging them to economize and promising "to use every means at my command to eliminate this deficit during the coming fiscal year," he did not reduce his own net aggregate of Budget requests. The expected $418,000,000 deficit of fiscal 1938 was accounted for by a reduction of $387,000,000 in revenues and an increase...
...prospect of economy rested chiefly on Franklin Roosevelt's intention of keeping Congressmen from voting funds for new schemes, on the unanimous feeling of such legislative leaders as Vice President Garner, Senators Byrnes and Harrison, Representatives Doughton, Rayburn and Speaker Bankhead, that the Budget must be balanced and new taxes not imposed. But the prospect of economy was not for any material reduction in expenses. It was for holding expenses at about present levels...