Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 May 1896 — VAST SUMS ARE SPENT [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

VAST SUMS ARE SPENT

PRESENT SESSION OF CONGRESS! A COSTLY ONE. Amonnta Appropriated Tliia Year WIU Not Fall Far BBort of *SI2000,000 —Great Gathering of Methodists at Cleveland. Throw Money to the Birds. Washington correspondence: ; _ '

ALL previous records in the way of large expenditures

will be broken by Tire present Congress. The appropriations will far exceed the figures of the Fifty-first Congress “the billion-dolfar Congress.” In the Fif-ty-second Co ngress, when the Democrats had the House and' the Re- . publicans the Senate, with the consequent divided responsibility,- the to-

tal reached the enormous amount of sl,and" t irat is„th-e*higheg£ record yet made by any single Congress. What the total for the present Congress will be cannot even be estimated approximately. Statements have been made that appropriations for the present session would aggregate $005,000,000. This is not strictly correct, as that figure includes not only the immediate appropriations for the next fiscal year, but the lia-> bilities in the way of contracts to be appropriated for in future years wTucEare authorized. All of the great annual appropriation bills have been passed by the House of Representatives, ,and together with the permanent annual appropriations they bring the total up to $595,079.410.88, without allowing for any increase whatever by the Senate. Even this figure is largely in excess of the appropriations for the first session of the Fifty-first. Congress, when the bills as they passed the House provided' for but $450,480,571.15, which was increased by the action of the Senate to $403,398,510.79. It will thus be seen that the presapt House has exceeded the record of the House in the Fifty-first Congress by $53,502,839.73. The only, bill which has passed the Senate up to the present time which has been largely increased is the sundry, civil bill, to which the Senate added more than SO,000,000. The river and harbor bill has been reported to the Senate with additions aggregating more than $2,000,000, and considerable increases may be expected on the general deficiency bill, which is now in the hands of the Senate Committee on Appropriations. ' All of the increases put on by the Senate r wtll not ise retained by the Conference committees. Most qf the additions to the sundry civil bill are for new public build-, ings. The House has not appropriated a dollar for public buildings except to continue work on those already commenced, and the-House Committee on Appropriations is determined that alt the public building amendments put on the sundry civil bill by the Senate shall be stricken off. Even in this case, however, a conservative estimate would place the total increase on account of the action of the Senate at not less than $7,000,000, which would bring the total for this session up to more than $512,000,000, or nearly $49,000,000 in excess of the appropriations for the first, session of the Fifty-first Congress. The contracts authorized by the present Congress will amount to over $93,000,000, and will thus bring the total of appropriations and liabilities provided for by this session up to $005,000,000. ‘There is one possibility that may nilffeß" a substantial reduction in the above figures, and that is that President Cleveland may veto the river and harbor ’bill President Cleveland has never signed n river and harbor hill. He has heretofore allowed them to become laws without his signature, thus signifying, that they did not meet his entire approval. With the present bill he is said to be very much dissatisfied, and in view of the situation of the treasury he may veto it.