SiteRing by Bravenet.com

Please support Soldiers' Angels and Project Valour-IT

« Missing bodies? What missing bodies?
Main
And The Sharkigators Begin To Circle .... »

---

Davy Crockett vs. Welfare

From The Life of Colonel David Crockett,
by Edward S. Ellis (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1884)

Crockett was then the lion of Washington. I was a great admirer of his character, and, having several friends who were intimate with him, I found no difficulty in making his acquaintance. I was fascinated with him, and he seemed to take a fancy to me.

I was one day in the lobby of the House of Representatives when a bill was taken up appropriating money for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in its support – rather, as I thought, because it afforded the speakers a fine opportunity for display than from the necessity of convincing anybody, for it seemed to me that everybody favored it. The Speaker was just about to put the question when Crockett arose. Everybody expected, of course, that he was going to make one of his characteristic speeches in support of the bill. He commenced:

"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. This government can owe no debts but for services rendered, and at a stipulated price. If it is a debt, how much is it? Has it been audited, and the amount due ascertained? If it is a debt, this is not the place to present it for payment, or to have its merits examined. If it is a debt, we owe more than we can ever hope to pay, for we owe the widow of every soldier who fought in the War of 1812 precisely the same amount. There is a woman in my neighborhood, the widow of as gallant a man as ever shouldered a musket. He fell in battle. She is as good in every respect as this lady, and is as poor. She is earning her daily bread by her daily labor; but if I were to introduce a bill to appropriate five or ten thousand dollars for her benefit, I should be laughed at, and my bill would not get five votes in this House. There are thousands of widows in the country just such as the one I have spoken of, but we never hear of any of these large debts to them. Sir, this is no debt. The government did not owe it to the deceased when he was alive; it could not contract it after he died. I do not wish to be rude, but I must be plain. 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 of our own money 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.

Like many other young men, and old ones, too, for that matter, who had not thought upon the subject, I desired the passage of the bill, and felt outraged at its defeat. I determined that I would persuade my friend Crockett to move a reconsideration the next day.

Previous engagements preventing me from seeing Crockett that night, I went early to his room the next morning and found him engaged in addressing and franking letters, a large pile of which lay upon his table.

I broke in upon him rather abruptly, by asking him what devil had possessed him to make that speech and defeat that bill yesterday. Without turning his head or looking up from his work, he replied:

"You see that I am very busy now; take a seat and cool yourself. I will be through in a few minutes, and then I will tell you all about it."

He continued his employment for about ten minutes, and when he had finished he turned to me and said:

"Now, sir, I will answer your question. But thereby hangs a tale, and one of considerable length, to which you will have to listen."

I listened, and this is the tale which I heard:

[Read the rest here.]

---

Hat tip: Jay Gell (Jack Gell's son.)

Please read the rest of the post I excerpted above, and then ask yourself how Congressman Crockett would have reacted to a speech containing lines like this:

---

To carry out the first stages of the relief effort and begin rebuilding at once, I have asked for, and the Congress has provided, more than $60 billion. ...

[...]

A number of states have taken in evacuees and shown them great compassion -- admitting children to school and providing health care. So I will work with the Congress to ensure that states are reimbursed for these extra expenses.

[...]

Federal funds will cover the great majority of the costs of repairing public infrastructure in the disaster zone, from roads and bridges to schools and water systems.

[...]

I propose the creation of worker recovery accounts to help those evacuees who need extra help finding work. Under this plan, the federal government would provide accounts of up to $5,000, which these evacuees could draw upon for job training and education to help them get a good job and for child-care expenses during their job search.

---

Times are rough all over, friends. Is W going to ask Congress to pass a bill to make up the difference between my "generous" VA pension and the income I could earn if I were healthy? How about my sister's medical bills and the income she's lost due to two cancer surgeries in the last 6 months? How about the millions of people in this country working for Minimum Wage because they can't afford college or even a good vocational school? -- How much could $5,000 apiece in training funds improve their lives? The economy in my home town has never recovered from Texaco's decision to shut down and demolish the oil refinery which was our biggest employer for over 90 years -- Congress could shorten the state's welfare rolls and bring down gasoline prices at the same time by allocating funds to build a new refinery on land that's now sitting bare; Should I hold my breath waiting? How many other depressed areas are there scattered around the country that could use a "hand up," which would be more than repaid in the long run by welfare savings and increased tax revenue? Should we all be hoping for a major natural disaster or a terrorist strike to make us as visible as the people of New Orleans?

Click here to read the speech the President should have given, BTW.

As always, don't miss Greyhawk's latest Open Post, or Beth's Weekend Assignment.

Update: Click here for another good post on Big Government Katrina spending.

Update: I'm not too sure Davy would agree with Alexander K. McClure's take on the speech, either.  (Also, here's a link to Polipundit's Open Thread.)

Udate: OTOH, I think Davy and La Shawn would get along just fine.

Posted by Bill Faith on September 16, 2005 at 11:45 PM | Permalink

TrackBack

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference I Don't Think Davy Crockett Would Have Thought Much of the President's Speech:

» Pride Before a Fall from Sortapundit
Something I've noticed about certain nations - in fact, what defines their countrymen as countrymen - is that they tend to think about certain things in capital letters. For instance, the japanese don't think about honour. They think about Honour. It i... [Read More]

Tracked on Sep 17, 2005 10:18:43 AM

Comments

Note: I hate to have to do it but I'm turning on comment and trackback moderation. If you post a legitimate trackback or comment I'll do my best not to be too slow about approving it. If the only reason you're here is to advertise your porn, music, or penis enhancement site you can kiss my sweet ass.

---

Posted by: Page | Sep 17, 2005 6:13:27 AM

Posted by: Carlos Faught | Sep 16, 2008 12:41:41 AM

Post a comment