Jasper County Democrat, Volume 23, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 June 1920 — ECONOMY CLAIM IS FALSE [ARTICLE]

ECONOMY CLAIM IS FALSE

Economy claims advanced by Republican leaders in the House, where Representative Mondell and others assert that the majority party has through a policy of retrenchment saved, the taxpayers a billion gnd a half dollars, are based on liaise

premises and their figures are arrived at by tricky methods. The appearance of retrenchment is offered by claiming that cutting appropriations under departmental estimates is a saving, which Democrats declare Is an utterly transparent and fraudulent device. Automatic reductions in expenditures by reason of the termination of the war are also claimed to be a Republican saving, but the trickiest method resorted to by these party leaders is to reduce appropriations for the ensuing fiscal year below amounts actually necessary in order that the various Federal bureaus may function, then make them up in deficiency bills after the election, as well as the practice of concealing large sums of money by merely authorizing departments to expend unexpended balances as well as amounts that accrue to various departments from their operations, without requiring them to be paid into the Federal treasury and then appropriated in the regular way. By this process, nundreds of millions of dollars authorized to be expended by Congress do not appear in the appropriation bills at all. By such manipulation of figures do Representative Mondell and his colleagues attempt to make a show of economy, whereas an honest comparison actually shows that this Congress has increased the amounts carried in the annual appropriation bills over those of the last Democratic Congress.

Senator Harding, the Republican nominee for president, is one of the old standpat crowd and his nomination was put over by the senatorial cabal of Lodge, Penrose, Watson, et al. As Senator Harding’s manager stated several weeks ago, the Republican candidate for president was “named on the fourth or fifth day of the convention by less than a half dozen tired men sitting around a table in a hotel room in Chicago, in the wee small hours of the morning,” the work which insured Harding’s nomination having been done by these “few tired men” during the early hour* of Saturday morning.

Secretary Colby having, advised the House Republicans that he knows, of no reason, relating to the country’s foreign relations why they should- not take “any action whichis dictated by good judgment” in respect to the Irish resolution, on which, lengthy hearings were held and loud expressions of love so Ireland were voiced, there seems to be no reason why they should not go ahead and prove their good faith; else confess that they were- merely angling for site' Irish vote. But the Irish were turned down cold at their national convention.

From a high Republican , isathority, The Washington Post, the following confession of the complete failure of the present Repuh' , can Congress is taken: “The Republican party will! have to go into the presidential' campaign confronted bj’ the necessity- of dodging or apologizing forthe sorriest record ever made bp any (Congress in recent years.”

It may not be out of order to lot quire if Republican leaders in Com press calculate that pruaing appropriation to stimulate agriculture, thereby curtailing production, will tend, to, reduce the cost of living? A diarrhoea of words and a com stipation of ideas, expresses in a very brief sentence the general opinion of the Republican “platform" adopted at Chicago last 'week.