Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1886-07-19
Price on Pensions.

dodger 5, pension vetoes:
1t may be well. Mr. Chairman, that
our friends who year after year have
thrown obstacles in the way OF pension
legislation should understand some of
the causes that have led to the order
under which these pension sessions are
held and TO this character of legislation.
| desire to call attention to the report
of the Commissioner of Pensions, where
he declares that the pension office has
exhausted human ingenuity in attempts
to furnish tests and barriers against
claims.
Those two lines furnish the keynote
to the whole plan of operations OF the
pension bureau under the present adj
mlnistration, and when gentlemen ask
us why we come here with our special
pension bills, answer that itls because
we have pension law that is defec-
tive in the extreme. and because that
law is administered by a man who
states that human ingenuity has been
exhausted" IN devising barrier in which
applicants for pension may be shut out.
We ask you to make broad, compre-
hensive, generous pension law, under
which any worthy claimant may make
his application, and upon furnishing an
amount of proof which would be sutfi-
eient to convict man of any crime
known to the calendar, may have his
case adiudicated, and when we make
an effort to procure such law, those
men to whom pension legislation is OBJ
iectionable say to us in substances:
You may have it if you will harness
to it, connect to it, make part of it,
some scheme foreign to it, not relevant
to it. not germane to it. but unless you
swallow that unpalatable dose you shall
not have your pension law" Does
any gentlemen deny this? There is the
plain fact staring us in the face. Now,
what are we to do? Four hundred
and one men in the two branches of
this federal Legislature say that bill
ought to pass and one man says it ought
not to pass, and he so says not on ac-
count of any constitutional objection.
but simply because he differs in opinion
with those who passed the measure.
have got instances where he has taken
charge of cases which will not bear the
light of investigation, and the apollo
gists for him do not dare to order an
investigation.
The whole administration of the pen
sion office is fraud upon the soldier,
and that everything has been thrown
around that human ingenuity can de-
wise for preventing the admission and
consideration of claims. We have
1860 pensioners who get at the rate of
81 month, or 81 cents day; &c, l34
who draw pension of 81 month, or
81 cents day; 1856 who get So
month, or 10 cents day; co., who
get "a month, or 49, cents day; 34,-
$50 who get Sc month, or 20 cents
day, and yet this man who you say the
country is going to stand by for his ac-
ton in vetoing bills will 90 on and veto
these little things and let Mrs. Han
cocks two-thousand-dollar bill go kit
ing through without murmur. Where
is the justice of such q principle?
$4,000 is the aggregate that this Con-
gress has granted 10 the dependent par
ents, widows and disabled soldiers; ana
yet the President denounces these pen
sions as an extravagant and wasteful
expenditure of the public money.
Sixty-fve thousand dollars! but very
little more than the Presidents own
salary. saw on single page of the
executive and legislative appropriation
bill that we appropriated $4,000 for
the President and his household, and
that does not take it all in. Now, all
this has been done to get up cheap
notoriety by cutting off not one-fifth of
the 5000 that we haye given our gal
liant soldiers, while at the same time we
are carrying 100000 for the President
and his household on a single page of
one appropriation bill. Yet we hear no
complaint of that. They (the President
and confederates) begrudge the poor
pittance that we undertake to dole out
here, 500, 900 in long session of Con-
gress, to throw ray of light across the
pathway of men who are to-day CROP
ing in poverty and suffering as result
of devotion to their country. In Iowa
alone there are 143 soldiers in the poor
houses. Great God, think of it! We
sitting here, the representatives of a
great nation with an overlooking treas
ury, with more liberties and more privi-
leges than any other people under the
sun, with the right to say what we
please, and the right to do nearly as
we please, and the men who made it
possible for us to enjoy all these bles-
sings compelled to take refuge in poor
houses, 143 such eases in a single state
men who are reduced to this condi-
ton as result of their sacrifices in the
cause of civil liberty, sacrifices by
which the South has been benefited far
more than we
Do not let these gentlemen raise that
question again. Let me appeal to them
to say with me that the whole revenues