The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1888-02-29
The Ex-SoldierS and Sailors
Pension Bill.
RINGING THE GRAND ARMY
As Beueiciary Under the Bill
Public Buildings ana okIaho
Bills in the House-Etc'
SENATE.

SnnaI4
the claims of John B. Read against the
limited States for the alleged use OF
proiectiles for rifled ordnance, passed.
The Senate bill for the purchase OF
site and the erection of government
building in New Orleans (uot to exceed
in cost $780, OO,) passed.
The following bills were also passed
To authorize the Omaha, Hayes City,
and Southwestern Railway Company,
and Chicago, Kansas aud Western
Railway Company to build their roads
across the Fort hayes military reserVa-
ton.
The Senate then resumed considera-
ton of the bill granting pensions to
ex-soldiers ana sailors who are To-
capacitated from the performance OF
manual labor, and providing Tor pen
sions to dependent relatives OF deceased
soldiers and sailors, the question being
on the adoption of Calls amendment,
making the bill apply also to others who
served in the wars OF Mexico or, LOT
thirty DAYS, in any of the Indian
wars.
The amendment was agreed to.
A long political debate followed which
was participated If by Senators CuIIom,
Henderson and others.
Senator Plumb held that the bill did
not have the endorsement of tie GA L.
Plumb asked Senator Faulkner if he
believed the President would veto the
bill, whereupon the presiding officer,
ingalls,, interfered, saying 1t had been
always held to be breach of order to
refer in debate to the actlon OF the
Executive.
Plumb expressed his regret that the
chair had not thought so when the
Senator from West Virginia was speak
ing.
Presiding officer The chair had in
tended before this to say and do, and
takes occasion now to say that 1t has
never been held to be il order in debate
in the Sanate, to refer to the opinion OF
the Executive or to the action of the
Executive as an argument for or against
pending legislation.
Teller protested aga nst the Senate
of the United States being threatened
with the Executive veto. He had
never heard of such thing before in
the Senate, and he hoped he would
never hear 1t again: LII seemed 10 MN
to be a great degradation to the Senate,
for Senator to stand up and say that
he proposed to be gOVerned,in his vote
by what the Executive thought, or felt,
or wanted. The President was CO.
ordinate branch of the government,
but was not the legislative branch of
the government. Ii the great, nigh
body which had maintained for
hundred years decent, dignihed po
sition among the people, was to be
threatened with Executive disapproba-
ton, there would have been, and there
ought to be, an end to the American
Senate.
Beck hoped that the Senator from
Colorado would tell the Senate what he
thought of the speech of the Senator
from Nebraska (Manderson, as to the
action of the Grand Army of the Re-
public, the beneficiaries under the bill,
as to what their posts had determined
the Senator should do.
Henderson suggested that if the gea-
tleman from Kentucky proposed to take
away the right of petition from the u.
a. R., he would meet with no support,
even on his side of the chamber. He
denied that the G. a. r . as an organ
izalion, was to be telefJed by the BILL
Senator Beck denied having ever sug-
gested that the G a. r. should not
exercise the right of petition, and said
that nobody had suggested that the
President had not a right to veto an
Nebraska had told the Senate that the
action of the committee on pensions, in
reporting the bill, had grown out of the
acton of the G. A. r. which was itself
beneficiary under the bill. The Sen
ator's speech, he said, was more de-
grading to the Senate than any allu-
sions TO the Presidents action on the
bill could be.
Henderson said he was at loss to
conceive how the Executive was so i'm
macQlate and unapproachable that his
action was not to be criticized.
He claimed the right not only
in his capacity as Senator, but as a
citizen, to criticize even the acts of the
President. He had not discussed the
probable action of the President on the
bill, except to suggest desire to have
bill passed that would probably become
law. 1t was that who he felt to be q
degradation to the Senate, and he
thought that every Senator ought to
feel that it was degradation. He did
not mean to say that the President was
responsible for that. If he was, he
ought to be impeached. The President
had no business catching the ears of
Senators before bill was presented to
him.
Senator Blackburn said that he de-
precaCeo Inc VlOlaIlon OF tnaL very
proper rule which prohibited q
Senator Or Representative from I'M
dertaking to influence legislative
action by any reference to the pre-
sumed course of the Executive. He
had heard that rule violated by three
Senators, DAVIS, Henderson, and Blair,
These Senators had all said that the
bill had to be framed and fashioned to
avoid a veto message at the hands of
the Executive. He did not know what
authority they had for the statement,
but he did know that there was but one
political organization in the country
which was in peri ct working order,
ready to take the field with knapsacks,
packed and all things ready. 1t was
not the Democratic party. Flushed
with its recent victory, it had lost some
thing of its realization and of appreCia-