Evening star., 1934-03-11

Impatience with the lelSurelnesS
Of Congress in the dispatch of public
business has been
congressional perennially ex-
Ineficiency. pressed in this
cially In the days before the change
of the rule of the House of Repre-
sentatives to effect more speedy trans
actions In that body. The Star Of
March II. 1884. says:
The House calendars have already
swollen into quite a bulky pamphlet.
There are 90 reports referred to the
Committee Of the Whole, 81 on the
House calendar. 279 on the private
calendar, special orders, an un-
finished election case, House bill
reported back from the Senate with
an amendment and 100 bills from
the Senate-in all, 544 bills passed
by the Senate are considered in COM
mittee and reported to the House for
action. Twelve of these reports are
adverse, leaving 532. or. without the
special orders, 526 pending meas
ures which the Senate or a stand
ing committee of the House has in
dorSed and recommended for passage.
If now. Congress passes IA bills
and resolutions in three months. as
was shown the other day, how long
would it be obliged to sit to pass the
525 bills? Any schoolboy. as Mac
aulay would say, will answer at once
-nine years and four months. But
Congress will die Of old age in less
than a year, and will only pretend
to attend to business for six months
OF that time: hence we can guess
what proportion of even the work
now pending will be dispatched.
1T will be urged that during the
last few days of Congress most of
the actual bill passing is done This
is true, but the flicker of energy ex-
cited by the touch of the hand of
death does not compensate for the
sloth of the long months of leisure
wasted in adjournments. talk. dead
locks, roll calls and alleged eulogies,
Fifty or a hundred bills, generally
of a small and unimportant. and in
many instances, of a shady character.
are squeezed through at the last mo-
ment by luck or good management,
but the great body of work which the
Senate and its own committees have
petitioned the House to adopt, fails by
default. At the adjournment of the
Forty-seventh Congress, for example,
over 1000 favorable reports and Sen
ate bills we're pending when the gavel
came down like the stroke of fate on
all plans and hopes.
congressman have been dinning
it into our ears of late that We have
no Navy: and We might reciprocate
by asserting that We have no Con-
gress. The machinery Of our Fed
eral legislature is fully as clumsy,
obsolete and shameful as the old tubs
and Quaker guns which misrepresent
us at sea. Neither stand for the prac-
tical, energetic spirit of young Amer
lea.
"One argument, which Is always
raised when the ineficiency of Con-
gress Is mentioned, should not be
treated by any American with pa
tience. This claim is that the rules
ought to be as obstructive as possible
on the ground that the only way to
keep Congress out of mischief Is to
prevent IL from doaIg anything
Those who raise this plea ought to
insist on a king at once-or maybe
an imported English duke would do
and organize a governing class for
their claim is confession of the
experiment of self-government. But
those who still believe that liberty is
practicable should not hold that the
governmental machine is sound only
when it is broken down. or the body
polite well only when paralyzed."