Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 October 1894 — EXPENSE OF CONGRESS [ARTICLE]

EXPENSE OF CONGRESS

WHAT IT COSTS THE COUNTRY FOR ONE SESSION. Salaries of Senators. Representatives anl Their Clerks Foot Up a Large Sam Various Contingent Funds for the Comfort of Lawmakers. May Soon Reach 85,000,000. Washington correspondence: The session of Congress just closed was perhaps the most expensive Congressional experience that the country ha= ever had. By this is meant not the cost of what Congress did, nor the appropriations that it made for the general administration of the government, but for the actual cost of the two houses them-elves. It is an interesting study to watch the growth of expenditures that the two houses of Congress are willing to appropriate for, when the expenditure is for their own personal recompense, comfort and pleasure. The expense ih some of the collateral channels is simply appalling, aid it is something that will one day cause a wild spirit of icsentment throughout the country. There i* too much money spent at the annual sessions of Congress and entirely t x> much recklessness in appropriating the public funds for the purpo-e. The great waste of money is naturally in the direction of salaries. Both wings of the Capitol are loaded and overloaded with employes. Tnete are clerks to do this, clerks to do that, and clerks to supervise the other clerks. The fight and scramble and constant wrangle and furious contention i* to get on the pay roll. The earlier Congresses rarely cost as much as $1,000,030 per session. Here is what the fifty-third Congress appropriated for the last session of its terjn. It must be remembered that this is the short session, covering practically but three months, wnich expires March 4,189 a. The bulk of the appropriation, however, covers the whole period of the fiscal year, for most of the salaries are annual.

COST OF A SENATE SESSION. Senators’ Hilariesno,ooo Senators'mileage 4..000 Compensation of officers, clerks, messengers 426.313 Clerks to Senators, not otherwise provided for 30,000 Contingent expenses lT.otw Miscellaneous items lltt.UM Total for Senatesl,oß3,Blß HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. Salaries of memberssl,Boo,ooo Mileage of members 100.000 Officers,clerks,messengers in the service of the House 374.000 Clerks to members and delegates 97,000 Contingent expenses 108,000 Official reporters of debates 25,610 Expenses of Congressional library.... 71.000 Expenses of botanic garden 19,8,0 Expenses of capltol polio* 38,900

Total for Houses2,M6,7oo Expenses for both housessi,7 0,613 This does not include SIB,OOO appropriated by the two houses jointly for the salary of the Public Printer and his clerks and the miscellaneous expenses of the Public Printer's office, nor dees it include the enormous expense of printing the public documents, the Congressional Record, and all manner of public printing ordered by Congress. There are thousands of people employed in the printing office of whom it is impossible to get any record. They are employed on piece work, and it is impossible to estimate what will be needed to pay them. There is not a department of the government that does not include in its estimates a smaller or greater amount for the printing of its own department, aud that brings up the cost of the printing bureau to figures which it would be impossible to follow out. G'V'.’t Expouse ’or Cork*. The grossest ite n in the Senate and House bill of expense are the charges for clerk hire. It long ago became a byword that there often were more clerks sitting in the Senate in their employers' chairs than there were Senators. It is true. When Senators f®M that they can afford to appoint their sons, their brothers, their brothers-in-law and any other male members of their family to act as their secretary and draw the pitiful sllO a month, they ought not to be ashamed ,of their presence on the floor, and perhaps they are nor. There are Senators, and many of them who have not only placed their sons on the pay-roll-, but who have installed wives and daughters as their private secretaries and stenographers, thus keeping the amount allowed for clerk hire all in the fansily. And among the Senators who have thus provided for their dependents are those best known to the country as leaders. There is no wqy 3f getting at the names of the people who draw those salaries, but it Is an open secret that fully one-half the Senators have their sons or some member of their family on the payroll. Perhaps nobody should blame the Senators of either party for thus aiding in the support of their dependents, for they have an illustrious example in the Vice President of the United States, whose first official act after taking oath was to appoint his son his private secretary. While the House of Representatives is in a general way more co. s tly than the Senate, that fact must be attributed to its greater membership, but the House is learning fast. For years it has been trying to have a corps of | clerks, one for each member, like those appointed by the Senate. It is only within the past year that the Senate would con ent to this, but finally through means of a deal it-was accomplished. It is the c stliest innovation that the House has made in its expenses in many years. It involves, in fact, so much money that every method of disguising the real expendituie is employed. There are 36* members of the House, of whom about 203, not being chairmen o. (Ommittees, are entitled to this clerical benefit. Under the new rule each member, notachairman, is entitled to $10) per month during the session fcr clerk hire. Care was taken in the wording of the resolution that the members shall not ap l point a clerk to draw that salary, but that he should draw that sum himself ard use it as he sees fit in hiring clerical help. This serves a double purpose. First it keeps a lot of names off the pay-roll, where it is not desirable to have them, and again, if a Congressman does not want to employ a clerk, not need ng one, he can draw the money and put it in his own pocket, and it is an open secret that many of them do it. Nothing since the famous back-pay scandal years ago ha* | grated so unpleasantly upon the Con- I gressional sense of honor as this petty I means of adding to the Congressional i perquisites. As will he seen, the ap- I propriation for this clerical help is I $97,000, but that is intended simplv to i cover the short term of Congress. During the session of Congress just ended there was expended more than $200,000. To be exact, $226,530. The Packing Box Item. There are other expenses in both branches of Congress which seem ; a pually large. For instance, the item j lof contingent ex lenses, $103,0.0, is composed largely of stationery, $51,000 . being appropriated for that alone. I Theie is another item in the contingent account which always makes a

great deal of fun and that ia the Item of packing boxes. Every Senator and every Member b entit'ed, when he g.:e* home, to have three boxes made in which io pack hi* boons and papers. These boxes a e made under contract. Each set cnnsists O f two large bexe* a r .d one one. Those in the Senate are made elaborately. The < o t of making there boxes is not so much. Those for the Senators cost about $1,20 J, those for the Home cost about $4.0: 0, but their actual cost is but a trifle compared with what it costs the posted ce department to transport the boxes and their contents about the country. Under the franking law each Senator and member can frank anything Ke pleases that is xraosporuible iu a po ffial car. When these* Congressional b xes are filled, they weigh frem 100 to 300 pounds. All that is necessary to secure them transmission through the mails is to paste on them one corner of a Congressional envelope with the member's frank male with a rubber stamp. During the last days of Congress every postal car that went out of Washington was jammed to tbe roof with this deafiead. dead-weight stuff. On two nights the Pennsylvania Road cent out two extra postal cars which contained nothing but th s class of dqadhead matter franked by members of Congres*. The Botanic Ga den, while nominally a public instilution, is really kept up for the sole benefit of members of Coagross. It cods nearly SIO,OOO a year. Senators and members are the sole beneficiaries, for tue reason that they alone can procure cut flowers, plants, cuttings, or bulb* or propagagation. Ihe C pitol police i a necessary adjunct, although why it should cost $3 .000 a year to properly guard the Capitol Building it is hai d to say. And from year to year it is growing. I very Congress finds tome new necessity, some new comfort some new perquisite or some ether new way of spending money. If it is not ore thing it is another. If it is not a new SIOO clerkship it is a new horse and wagon or an additional bureau or a better packing box or a larger collection of printed books for distribution or more garden seeds or more roots and plants. Taking the appropriations as made for the next short session of Congress as a basis, we may soon expect to see each session of Congress, no matter which party i* in power, for they are bath alike in that respect, cost the American people something like $5,003,000.. As it is to-day, it is the most expensive* legislative body <n the face of the earth. There is nothing to equal it anywhere. The mst extravagant monarchies of Europe, while they squander money upon their royal families, and in proper maintaining of royal dignity, are exceedingly chary of their-legislative expenses. \The British Parliament does not co t one-third the amount expended by the American Congress.