Posted: 10/12/2009 9:14:04 PM EDT
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... by Grover Cleveland in 1887, in response to a bill passed by Congress appropriating money to Texas farmers who were suffering through a catastrophic drought; I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan as proposed by this bill to indulge a benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds for that purpose. I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should I think be steadfastly resisted to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that though the people support the government the government should not support the people. Grover Cleveland was a Democrat! He goes on to say; The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow citizens in misfortune This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthen the bonds of brotherhood conduct which strengthen the bonds of a common brotherhood. It is within my personal knowledge that individual aid has to some extent already been extended to the sufferers mentioned in this bill….” As it turned out, the "fellow citizens" that he entrusted to help donated ten times more to those farmers than the amount the president had vetoed. Reads like a fairy tale, eh?  |
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Quoted: Democrats and Republicans were a lot different back then. The Parties bear very little to no similarities to their present day counterparts That's merely a footnote, and not at all the point of the post. The attitude displayed by Grover seems to be completely alien to any politician today, much less a president. |
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Quoted: Tagging. Good info to have. You have the transcript to the whole speech? http://mises.org/story/3627 |
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"Mr. Speaker, I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, as any man in this House. But we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to so appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I have never heard that the government was in arrears to him. Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as a charity. Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much money of our own as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week's pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bills asks." - Congressman Davy Crockett |