THE "DO-NOTHING" CONGRESS

BY WILLIAM STARR MYERS

THERE is one practical facility in politics that is especially appreciated and admired by the American people. As they express it, this facility consists in the ability to "keep one's ear to the ground". In fact, the power of forecasting or anticipating the course of popular feeling and real public opinion is a priceless boon to the successful politician. Jefferson and McKinley possessed this ability to an unusual degree. So did Lincoln and Roosevelt, but they united with it the power to guide these popular tendencies along sound lines of statesmanship. Wilson told the people, in superb phrase and lofty thought, what they must believe, and then proceeded to act as though they really did so, but much to his own subsequent disillusionment.

It is exactly in this ability to sense public opinion that the members of the present, or Sixty-seventh, Congress, would seem to be most lacking. The reasons for this lack will be discussed later, but suffice it to say at the present time that in spite of the real honesty, sincerity and industry of the large majority of the members of both Senate and House of Representatives, a wave of public criticism and popular impatience has arisen during the past year, which has resulted in the nickname of the "DoNothing Congress". Whether or not this sobriquet is deserved, it is going to stick, and many a member will pay the penalty for the description at the polls in November, entirely aside from the question of actually deserving it.

In answer to the popular reproaches for inactivity and incapacity to legislate, the leaders of Congress "point with pride" to a record of accomplishment that is of no mean character. First of all comes the passage, in the early days of the Harding Administration, of the first national Budget Act. This took hold of our national financial administration and policy, hitherto not even worthy of the emulation in bookkeeping of a delicatessen

store on a back street in Bayonne, New Jersey, and placed it on a basis of sound common sense and efficiency. It is probable that future historians will rank the passage of the Federal Reserve Act as the greatest achievement of the Wilson Administrations, and the Democratic party has a right to be proud of President Wilson's leadership, which undoubtedly brought this about. In just the same way, the Budget Act will rank as an outstanding success for President Harding. With lapse of time, its enormous value will be more fully appreciated.

Along with the budgetary legislation goes an achievement that is as great in importance, although in the field of foreign relations. This is the Washington Conference, which may prove to be a turning point in the world's history as well as in that of the United States. Although President Harding and his administrative assistants are mainly responsible for the conception and accomplishment of the whole movement, yet the Senate must share with the President in the credit for its success. Within about seven weeks after the close of the Conference, the Senate had ratified all the treaties and agreements there formulated. This is remarkably quick action, when the ordinary delay in consideration of international matters is taken into account.

But not all the credit for this celerity is to be given to the Republican members of the Senate. One of the most forceful advocates of the treaties, and one whose leadership had great weight in their adoption, was Senator Oscar W. Underwood of Alabama, the Democratic floor leader, one of the ablest and most valuable members of the Upper House. His assistance was of vital importance, and it is doubtful whether ratification could have been accomplished without it. Also the dozen or more Democratic Senators who followed his leadership deserve like credit for sound and broad statesmanship. The less said about the statesmanlike abilities of both the Democratic and Republican opponents, the better. With a few exceptions, the debates were on a rather low plane of ability, and failed to arouse the interest or inspire the imagination of the American people.

Republican leaders in the present campaign, in preparation for the coming November elections, are stressing among the accomplishments of this Congress the "saving of two billion dollars

in the expenditures of the Federal Government." This is an achievement worthy of note, but only what was to be expected, for any legislative body of a minimum of sanity must know inordinate and extravagant expenditures incident to the waging of war must of necessity stop at the earliest practical moment. To have failed in this regard would be unpardonable; to have accomplished it is only the fulfilment of an obvious duty. The further claim to merit for the annual reduction of $900,000,000 in war taxes is in reality creditable, on the surface at least. But when it is remembered that the well thought-out plan as proposed to Congress by Secretary Mellon was in great part cast into the discard, and only those reductions made that would seem calculated to appeal to the votes of the unthinking and selfish class elements in our nation, the record is not so admirable. In fact, it is along the line of taxation that the greatest and most fundamental mistake of the present Congress has been made, as will be pointed out later on. The tax revision left untouched the essentially faulty principles upon which the Kitchin Bill of 1917 was formulated. The principles underlying that piece of legislation, so replete with silly, un-American and undemocratic provisions, seemed to be only those of the punishment of wealth as a crime, levying of taxes on the urban centers of our country and their tributary population, and penalizing of efficiency in business.

The repeal of the excess profits tax, one of the most uneconomic taxes ever laid in the long history of national finance, was accomplished only after a long struggle. The small reduction in the inordinate surtaxes on income merely saved the consistency of those members who were honest enough to look facts in the face; while the exemptions adopted were calculated to help just a few of our people, on the plea that those of narrow circumstances must be assisted. Instead of boldly recasting the whole of our iniquitous tax laws, reducing normal and surtax rates to a fair measure of the actual ability of our people to pay without exhausting the sources of revenue and discouraging individual initiative; instead of broadening the basis of taxation by means of a sales tax levied upon wholesale transactions at least, if not upon retail sales of a certain minimum amount-we have the recent

halting and ineffectual amendments of 1921. The country is still burdened by these ill-conceived taxes, and normal times and real prosperity will not come until the necessary reforms are made upon a basis of sound economics and fair politics.

The extending of emergency credits to farmers and the enactment of laws regulating and restricting immigration were necessary, and the latter was of prime importance. Probably the frank entrance upon a policy of restriction and discrimination in immigration, according to the ability of the country to assimilate the foreigner, will prove to be second only to the Budget Act in value and in importance to the welfare of the United States and the preservation of American institutions. The experiences with so-called hyphenates during and since the World War have awakened the people of this country to the extreme danger confronting them; but it took courage of no mean sort for the members of Congress, many of them from urban districts with large foreign populations, to vote for these restrictive measures.

In adding up the credit side of the ledger of Congressional achievement, due place should be given to the passage of the numerous appropriation bills and routine legislation, all of which absorb so much time and energy, but which pass unnoticed by the public. Probably no harder work, requiring sustained mental application and ceaseless energy, is to be found anywhere in our business or professional world. The men who have the responsibility for the laborious committee work, and the aggravating course of parliamentary procedure, with its trifling and irritating accompaniments of obstruction, selfishness and narrowminded criticism, deserve the thanks of the American people for the tasks they have successfully accomplished.

When we leave the subject of the real accomplishments of the Sixty-seventh Congress, and consider what the people of the country at large seem to think are its shortcomings, the task of assessing praise or blame is not so easy. The three most contentious subjects before Congress during the whole course of the past year or more have been the tariff, the soldier bonus, and ship subsidies. Taking them in the order of their mentioning, it is not an exaggeration to say at the outset that the tariff was not a real political issue in any sense, during the campaign of 1920, with the

possible exception of a few isolated districts. The heavy majority of our people had no thought of tariff in their mind when they voted, but their attention was wholly absorbed by other and more important issues. But when the present Congress convened in special session in the spring of 1921, old-line and Bourbon leaders were in control, and to their limited political intelligence the only salvation of any nation on the face of this green earth consisted in tariff legislation; the more protective the better. At that precise time the agricultural interests of the country, among the first of our people, were feeling the severe shock of the necessary deflation that must follow the mad economic saturnalia that accompanies every war. Naturally they cried out with pain, and also naturally the sympathetic ears of these same leaders caught their plaints. The Fordney Emergency Tariff, one of the most ghastly failures ever placed upon our statute book, was the result. Since that time, the members of Congress have been busy upon the formulation of a so-called permanent tariff, and the longer their labors have continued, the greater has been the popular opposition, irrespective of party, and the more unpopular has the whole Congress become. The thinking people of this country, irrespective of party, soon came to the conclusion that the chaotic and changing conditions following the war were no proper time for any general tariff legislation. Futhermore, when such legislation does take place, the lasting results of the war must be the primary matters of consideration. The facts that we are no longer a debtor but a creditor nation; that we also are changing from an importing to an exporting people; that we have become a leading world power whether we like it or not-these are the things that are of dominant influence in the minds of the thoughtful American people today. They also realize that depreciated currencies, economic exhaustion and the possibility of "dumping" of products by foreign nations are of but transient moment, and that in spite of the shrill cries of our calamity howlers, the trade reports of the United States Government prove beyond cavil that even the "dumping" danger is almost non-existent.

And the people also realize in addition that this same tariff legislation, accompanied by the most extensive political bargaining between various classes and interests in the country, has