Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 May 1888 — WASHINGTON ITEMS. [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON ITEMS.

The consideration of Senator Paddock’s bill providing postoffice buildings for the small cities has stirred up a good deal of interest, not only in the Senate, but in the House, on the subject. The 1 author of the measure has been felling the pulse of the lower branch of Congress, and gives it as his best judgment that it will become a law. He says that he does not see how any Representative in Congress can refuse to support the measure, liecause there is not a single congressional district that will not get some buildings by it, and that votes against tile proposition will be votes against local interests. The expenditures for the buildings will run froju $15,000 upward, and some of the congressional districts will get eight or ten buildings, worth $40,000 or $50,000. This meaps the expenditure of that much money for labor and materials, and the local interest in the bill is being agitated throughout the country. President Cleveland’s peculiar and high standard of requi sties of cities to enable them to be entitled to a federal building under the preseift arrangement of legislation, lias given almost universal dissatisfaction, and while some of the cities which have been clamoring for buildings worth from $75,000 to $150,000 will only get structures worth from $25,000 to $50,000 under the Paddock bill, they are willing to accept the cheaper structures rather than to stay out of the benefit of them during the public career of the present President: The hill will undoubtedly be amended so as to raise? the limit of cost of buildings before it isilnally acted upon by both houses. The more the proposition had been agitated the greater has become the ideas of liberality of members in both houses.

A dilemma confronts the House Committee on Rules in the shape of the “Arrearages of pension bill, which threatens to prove as embarrassing as was the direct tax bill. Representative •Johnson (Ind.) lias introduced a resolution, which is now before the committee, making the pension bill a special order w ith the provision that its consideration shall continue in the House from day to day until the bill is finally voted upon. Heavy pressure is being brought to bear upon the Committee on Rules to report this resolution along with a number of other special orders. If the committee yields it is believed that the bill would pass the House upon a final vote. The large appropriation required in that event would negative the idea of tariff reduction. On the other hand, should the opponents of the measure, as in the case of the direct ax bill, succeed in defeating action upon the bill, it may be at the expense of the tariff bill, as the defeat -will„have -la-.be accomplished through the adoption of filibustering tactics, which would consume an indefinite period of time. The mere pendency of the resolution jeopardizes all other special orders, for if any such should be reported from the Committee on Rules, a motion might be made in the House with success, to amend it so as to assign time for the consideration of the arrears bill. The Senate committee on agriculture has ordered a favorable report on the Hatch bill to enlarge the duties of the Department of Agriculture and make it an executive department. The committee has, however, struck out all that portion of the bill which looks to the transfer of the weather bureau to the Department of agriculture. The G. A. R. charge that. Public Printer Benedict has not kept faith regarding the employment of soldiers and sailors and -their orphans, .