generally render worthless the painstaking action of the House. The
Senate has been established by precedent in the very freest possible
privileges of amendment as regards these bills no less than as regards
all others. The Constitution is silent as to the origination of bills
appropriating money. It says simply that "all bills for _raising
revenue_ shall originate in the House of Representatives," and that in
considering these "the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as
on other bills" (Art. I., Sec. VII.); but, "by a practice as old as the
Government itself, the constitutional prerogative of the House has been
held to apply to all the general appropriation bills,"[28] and the
Senate's right to amend these has been allowed the widest conceivable
scope. The upper house may add to them what it pleases; may go
altogether outside of their original provisions and tack to them
entirely new features of legislation, altering not only the amounts but
even the objects of expenditure, and making out of the materials sent
them by the popular chamber measures of an almost totally new character.
As passed by the House of Representatives, appropriation bills generally
provide for an expenditure considerably less than that called for by the
estimates; as returned from the Senate, they usually propose grants of
many additional millions, having been brought by that less sensitive
body up almost, if not quite, to the figures of the estimates.
After passing their ordeal of scrutiny and amendment in the Senate, the
appropriation bills return with their new figures to the House. But when
they return it is too late for the House to put them again into the
crucible of Committee of the Whole. The session, it may be taken for
granted, was well on towards its middle age before they were originally
introduced by the House Committee on Appropriations; after they reached
the Senate they were referred to its corresponding Committee; and the
report of that Committee upon them was debated at the leisurely length
characteristic of the weightier proceedings of the upper chamber; so
that the last days of the session are fast approaching when they are
sent down to the House with the work of the Senate's hand upon them. The
House is naturally disinclined to consent to the radical alterations
wrought by the Senate, but there is no time to quarrel with its
colleague, unless it can make up its mind to sit through the heat of
midsummer, or to throw out the bill and accept the discomforts of an
extra session. If the session be the short one, which ends, by
constitutional requirement, on the 4th of March, the alternative is the
still more distasteful one of leaving the appropriations to be made by
the next House.
The usual practice, therefore, is to adjust such differences by means of
a conference between the two Houses. The House rejects the Senate's
amendments without hearing them read; the Senate stoutly refuses to
yield; a conference ensues, conducted by a committee of three members
from each chamber; and a compromise is effected, by such a compounding
of disagreeing propositions as gives neither party to the quarrel the
victory, and commonly leaves the grants not a little below the amounts
asked for by the departments. As a rule, the Conference Committee
consists, on the part of the House, of the chairman of its Committee on
Appropriations, some other well-posted member of that Committee, and a
representative of the minority. Its reports are matters of highest
prerogative. They may be brought in even while a member is speaking. It
is much better to silence a speaker than to delay for a single moment,
at this stage of the session, the pressing, imperious question of the
supplies for the support of the government. The report is, therefore,
acted upon immediately and in a mass, and is generally adopted without
debate. So great is the haste that the report is passed upon before
being printed, and without giving any one but the members of the
Conference Committee time to understand what it really contains. There
is no chance of remark or amendment. It receives at once sanction or
rejection as a whole; and the chances are, of course, in favor of its
being accepted, because to reject it would but force a new conference
and bring fresh delays.
It is evident, therefore, that after all the careful and thorough-going
debate and amendment of Committee of the Whole in the House, and all the
grave deliberation of the Senate to which the general appropriations are
subjected, they finally pass in a very chaotic state, full of provisions
which neither the House nor the Senate likes, and utterly vague and
unintelligible to every one save the members of the Conference
Committee; so that it would seem almost as if the generous portions of
time conscientiously given to their consideration in their earlier
stages had been simply time thrown away.
The result of the under-appropriation to which Congress seems to have
become addicted by long habit in dealing with the estimates, is, of
course, the addition of another bill to the number of the regular annual
grants. As regularly as the annual session opens there is a Deficiency
Bill to be considered. Doubtless deficiencies frequently arise because
of miscalculations or extravagance on the part of the departments; but
the most serious deficiencies are those which result from the
close-fistedness of the House Committee on Appropriations, and the
compromise reductions which are wrung from the Senate by conference
committees. Every December, consequently, along with the estimates for
the next fiscal year, or at a later period of the session in special
communications, come estimates of deficiencies in the appropriations for
the current year, and the apparent economies of the grants of the
preceding session have to be offset in the gifts of the inevitable
Deficiency Bill. It is as if Congress had designedly established the
plan of making semi-annual appropriations. At each session it grants
part of the money to be spent after the first of July following, and
such sums as are needed to supplement the expenditures previously
authorized to be made after the first of July preceding. It doles out
their allowances in installments to its wards, the departments.
It is usual for the Appropriations Committees of both Houses, when
preparing the annual bills, to take the testimony of the directing
officers of the departments as to the actual needs of the public service
in regard to all the principal items of expenditure. Having no place
upon the floor of the House, and being, in consequence, shut out from
making complete public statements concerning the estimates, the heads of
the several executive departments are forced to confine themselves to
private communications with the House and Senate Committees. Appearing
before those Committees in person, or addressing them more formally in
writing, they explain and urge the appropriations asked in the "Letter"
containing the estimates. Their written communications, though addressed
only to the chairman of one of the Committees, frequently reach Congress
itself, being read in open session by some member of the Committee in
order to justify or interpret the items of appropriation proposed in a
pending bill. Not infrequently the head of a department exerts himself
to secure desired supplies by dint of negotiation with individual
members of the Committee, and by repeated and insistent private appeals
to their chairman.
Only a very small part of the relations between the Committees and the
departments is a matter of rule. Each time that the estimates come under
consideration the Committees must specially seek, or the departments
newly volunteer, information and advice. It would seem, however, that it
is now less usual for the Committees to ask than for the Secretaries to
offer counsel and suggestion. In the early years of the government it
was apparently not uncommon for the chairman of spending committees to
seek out departmental officials in order to get necessary enlightenment
concerning the mysteries of the estimates, though it was often easier to
ask for than to get the information wanted. An amusing example of the
difficulties which then beset a committee-man in search of such
knowledge is to be found in the private correspondence of John Randolph
of Roanoke. Until 1865 the House Committee of Ways and Means, which is
one of the oldest of the Standing Committees, had charge of the
appropriations; it was, therefore, Mr. Randolph's duty, as chairman of
that Committee in 1807, to look into the estimates, and he thus
recounts, in an interesting and exceedingly characteristic letter to
his intimate friend and correspondent, Nicholson, this pitiful
experience which he had had in performing that duty: "I called some time
since at the navy office to ask an explanation of certain items of the
estimate for this year. The Secretary called upon his chief clerk, who
knew very little more of the business than his master. I propounded a
question to the head of the department; he turned to the clerk like a
boy who cannot say his lesson, and with imploring countenance beseeches
aid; the clerk with much assurance gabbled out some commonplace jargon,
which I could not take for sterling; an explanation was required, and
both were dumb. This pantomime was repeated at every item, until,
disgusted and ashamed for the degraded situation of the principal, I
took leave without pursuing the subject, seeing that my object could not
be attained. There was not one single question relating to the
department that the Secretary could answer."[29] It is to be hoped that
the Secretaries of to-day are somewhat better versed in the affairs of
their departments than was respectable Robert Smith, or, at any rate,
that they have chief clerks who can furnish inquiring chairmen with
something better than commonplace jargon which no shrewd man can take
for sterling information; and it is altogether probable that such a
scene as the one just described would nowadays be quite impossible. The
book-keeping of later years has been very much stricter and more
thorough than it was in the infancy of the departments; the estimates
are much more thoroughly differentiated and itemized; and a minute
division of labor in each department amongst a numerous clerical force
makes it comparatively easy for the chief executive officers to acquaint
themselves quickly and accurately with the details of administration.
They do not wait, therefore, as a general thing, to be sought out and
questioned by the Committees, but bestir themselves to get at the ears
of the committee-men, and especially to secure, if possible, the
influence of the chairmen in the interest of adequate appropriations.
These irregular and generally informal communications between the
Appropriations Committees and the heads of the departments, taking the
form sometimes of pleas privately addressed by the Secretaries to
individual members of the Committees, and again of careful letters which
find their way into the reports laid before Congress, stand in our
system in the place of the annual financial statements which are in
British practice made by the ministers to parliament, under
circumstances which constitute very full and satisfactory public
explanations and the freest replies to all pertinent questions
invariable features of the supervision of the finances by the Commons.
Our ministers make their statements to both Houses indirectly and
piecemeal, through the medium of the Committees. They are mere
witnesses, and are in no definite way responsible for the annual
appropriations. Their secure four-year tenure of office is not at all
affected by the treatment the estimates receive at the hands of
Congress. To see our cabinet officers resign because appropriations had
been refused for the full amount asked for in the Secretary of the
Treasury's "Letter" would be as novel in our eyes as would be, in the
view of our English cousins, the sight of a Ministry of the Crown
remaining in office under similar circumstances. Indeed, were our
cabinets to stake their positions upon the fortunes of the estimates
submitted to Congress, we should probably suffer the tiresome
inconvenience of yearly resignations; for even when the heads of the
departments tax all their energies and bring into requisition all their
arts of persuasion to secure ample grants from the Committees, the House
Committee cuts down the sums as usual, the Senate Committee adds to them
as before, and the Conference Committee strikes a deficient compromise
balance according to time-honored custom.
There is in the House another appropriations committee besides the
Committee on Appropriations. This is the Committee on Rivers and
Harbors, created in December, 1883, by the Forty-eighth Congress, as a
sharer in the too great prerogatives till then enjoyed by the Committee
on Commerce. The Committee on Rivers and Harbors represents, of course,
the lately-acquired permanency of the policy of internal improvements.
Until 1870 that policy had had a very precarious existence. Strenuously
denied all tolerance by the severely constitutional Presidents of the
earlier days, it could not venture to declare itself openly in separate
appropriations which offered an easy prey to the watchful veto, but
skulked in the unobtrusive guise of items of the general grants, safe
under the cover of respectable neighbor items. The veto has never been
allowed to seek out single features in the acts submitted to the
executive eye, and even such men as Madison and Monroe, stiff and
peremptory as they were in the assertion of their conscientious
opinions, and in the performance of what they conceived to be their
constitutional duty, and much as they disapproved of stretching the
Constitution to such uses as national aid to local and inland
improvements, were fain to let an occasional gift of money for such
purposes pass unforbidden rather than throw out the general
appropriation bill to which it was tacked. Still, Congress did not make
very frequent or very flagrant use of this trick, and schemes of
internal improvement came altogether to a stand-still when faced by
President Jackson's imperious disfavor. It was for many years the
settled practice of Congress to grant the States upon the sea-board
leave to lay duties at their ports for the improvement of the harbors,
and itself to undertake the expense of no public works save those upon
territory actually owned by the United States. But in later years the
relaxation of presidential opposition and the admission of new States
lying altogether away from the sea, and, therefore, quite unwilling to
pay the tariffs which were building up the harbors of their eastern
neighbors without any recompensing advantage to themselves who had no
harbors, revived the plans which the vetoes of former times had
rebuffed, and appropriations from the national coffers began freely to
be made for the opening of the great water highways and the perfecting
of the sea-gates of commerce. The inland States were silenced, because
satisfied by a share in the benefits of national aid, which, being no
longer indirect, was not confined to the sanctioning of state tariffs
which none but the sea-board commonwealths could benefit by, but which
consumers everywhere had to pay.
The greatest increase in appropriations of this class took place just
after 1870. Since that date they have occupied a very prominent place in
legislation, running from some twelve millions in the session of 1873-4
up and down through various figures to eighteen millions seven hundred
thousand in the session of 1882-3, constituting during that decade the
chief business of the Committee on Commerce, and finally having a
special Standing Committee erected for their superintendence. They have
thus culminated with the culmination of the protective tariff, and the
so-called "American system" of protective tariffs and internal
improvements has thus at last attained to its perfect work. The same
prerogatives are accorded this new appropriations committee which have
been secured to the greater Committee which deals with the estimates.
Its reports may be made at any time when a member is not speaking, and
stand in all respects upon the same footing as the bills proposing the
annual grants. It is a special spending committee, with its own key to
the Treasury.
But the Appropriation Committees of the two Houses, though, strictly
speaking, the only committees of supply, have their work increased and
supplemented by the numerous Committees which devote time and energy to
creating demands upon the Treasury. There is a pension list in the
estimates for whose payment the Committee on Appropriations has to
provide every year; but the Committee on Pensions is constantly
manufacturing new claims upon the public revenues.[30] There must be
money forthcoming to build the new ships called for by the report of the
Committee on Naval Affairs, and to meet the charges for the army
equipment and reforms recommended by the Committee on Military Affairs.
There are innumerable fingers in the budget pie.
It is principally in connection with appropriations that what has come
to be known in our political slang as "log-rolling" takes place. Of
course the chief scene of this sport is the private room of the
Committee on Rivers and Harbors, and the season of its highest
excitement, the hours spent in the passage of the River and Harbor
Bill. "Log-rolling" is an exchange of favors. Representative A. is very
anxious to secure a grant for the clearing of a small water-course in
his district, and representative B. is equally solicitous about his
plans for bringing money into the hands of the contractors of his own
constituency, whilst representative C. comes from a sea-port town whose
modest harbor is neglected because of the treacherous bar across its
mouth, and representative D. has been blamed for not bestirring himself
more in the interest of schemes of improvement afoot amongst the
enterprising citizens of his native place; so it is perfectly feasible
for these gentlemen to put their heads together and confirm a mutual
understanding; that each will vote in Committee of the Whole for the
grants desired by the others, in consideration of the promise that they
will cry "aye" when his item comes on to be considered. It is not out of
the question to gain the favoring ear of the reporting Committee, and a
great deal of tinkering can be done with the bill after it has come into
the hands of the House. Lobbying and log-rolling go hand in hand.
So much for estimates and appropriations. All questions of revenue are
in their first stages in the hands of the House Committee of Ways and
Means, and in their last, in charge of the Senate Committee on Finance.
The name of the House Committee is evidently borrowed from the language
of the British Parliament; the English Committee of Ways and Means is,
however, the Commons itself sitting in Committee of the Whole to
consider the statement and proposals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
whilst ours is a Standing Committee of the House composed of eleven
members, and charged with the preparation of all legislation relating to
the raising of the revenue and to providing ways and means for the
support of the government. We have, in English parliamentary phrase, put
our Chancellorship of the Exchequer into commission. The chairman of the
Committee figures as our minister of finance, but he really, of course,
only represents the commission of eleven over which he presides.
All reports of the Treasury department are referred to this Committee of
Ways and Means, which also, like the Committee on Appropriations, from
time to time holds other more direct communications with the officers of
revenue bureaux. The annual reports of the Secretary of the Treasury are
generally quite full of minute information upon the points most
immediately connected with the proper duties of the Committee. They are
explicit with regard to the collection and disbursement of the revenues,
with regard to the condition of the public debt, and with regard to the
operation of all laws governing the financial policy of the departments.
They are, in one aspect, the great yearly balance sheets, exhibiting the
receipts and expenditures of the government, its liabilities and its
credits; and, in another aspect, general views of the state of industry
and of the financial machinery of the country, summarizing the
information compiled by the bureau of statistics with reference to the
condition of the manufactures and of domestic trade, as well as with
regard to the plight of the currency and of the national banks. They
are, of course, quite distinct from the "Letters" of the Secretary of
the Treasury, which contain the estimates, and go, not to the Committee
of Ways and Means, but to the Committee on Appropriations.
Though the duties of the Committee of Ways and Means in supervising the
management of the revenues of the country are quite closely analogous to
those of the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, the lines of policy in
which they walk are very widely separated from those which he feels
bound to follow. As I have said, the object which he holds constantly in
view is to keep the annual balances as nearly as possible at an
equilibrium. He plans to raise only just enough revenue to satisfy the
grants made in Committee of Supply, and leave a modest surplus to cover
possible errors in the estimates and probable fluctuations in the
returns from taxation. Our Committee of Ways and Means, on the other
hand, follow a very different policy. The revenues which they control
are raised for a double object. They represent not only the income of
the government, but also a carefully erected commercial policy to which
the income of the government has for many years been incidental. They
are intended to foster the manufactures of the country as well as to
defray the expenses of federal administration. Were the maintenance of
the government and the support of the public credit the chief objects of
our national policy of taxation, it would undoubtedly be cast in a very
different pattern. During a greater part of the lifetime of the present
government, the principal feature of that policy has been a complex
system of duties on imports, troublesome and expensive of collection,
but nevertheless yielding, together with the license taxes of the
internal revenue which later years have seen added to it, immense
surpluses which no extravagances of the spending committees could
exhaust. Duties few, small, and comparatively inexpensive of collection
would afford abundant revenues for the efficient conduct of the
government, besides comporting much more evidently with economy in
financial administration. Of course, if vast revenues pour in over the
barriers of an exacting and exorbitant tariff, amply sufficient revenues
would flow in through the easy conduits of moderate and simple duties.
The object of our financial policy, however, has not been to equalize
receipts and expenditures, but to foster the industries of the country.
The Committee of Ways and Means, therefore, do not concern themselves
directly with regulating the income of the government--they know that
that, in every probable event, will be more than sufficient--but with
protecting the interests of the manufacturers as affected by the
regulation of the tariff. The resources of the government are made
incidental to the industrial investments of private citizens.
This evidently constitutes a very capital difference between the
functions of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and those of our Committee
of Ways and Means. In the policy of the former the support of the
government is everything; with the latter the care of the industries of
the country is the beginning and the end of duty. In the eyes of
parliament enormous balances represent ignorant or improper management
on the part of the ministers, and a succession of them is sure to cast a
cabinet from office, to the lasting disgrace of the Chancellor of the
Exchequer; but to the mind of Congress vast surpluses are indicative of
nothing in particular. They indicate of course abundant returns from the
duties, but the chief concern is, not whether the duties are fruitful,
but whether they render the trades prosperous. Commercial interests are
the essential consideration; excess of income is a matter of comparative
indifference. The points of view characteristic of the two systems are
thus quite opposite: the Committee of Ways and Means subordinates its
housekeeping duties to its much wider extra-governmental business; the
Chancellor of the Exchequer subordinates everything to economical
administration.