A few days ago the Senate announced that it would block stopgap funding. Not because they didn’t agree with the budget, but due to a dispute over federal disaster aid.  It’s easy to argue for spending money on disaster aid. After all, it was a disaster, an act of God – and what about the children? My answer: that’s what insurance is for.  ”Not yours to give” by Davey Crockett was compiled in 1884 and gives a great example of how this was handled almost 200 years ago – see this PDF  or podcast. The podcast is also embedded below. It’s one of my favorites.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Mr. Speaker–I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, 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 so to 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 bill asks.” He took his seat. Nobody replied. The bill was put upon its passage, and, instead of passing unanimously, as was generally supposed, and as, no doubt, it would, but for that speech, it received but few votes, and, of course, was lost.

The rest of the article explains what drove Crockett to give that speech. It’s worth the time to listen to it.

Tags: Legislation, Politics, Quotes