Great Falls Tribune

SELF PRAISE IS NO PRAISE

Hardly anyone is praising the present congress. Nearly everyone condemns it. Therefore Republican House Leader Mondell feels it necessary to stand forth and sound his horn in praise of the present congress. Yet he is almost alone in his testimony, being contradicted by many utterances of his own party members and the republican newspapers.

Although the military affairs committee had made a favorable report on the Muscle Shoals project and the bill was ready for discussion, the republican agriculturists of the house could not be held longer in session. One must be a hard-hearted person to blame them, however, after the results in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Iowa and North Dakota, not to mention what happened to Ira C. Copley, multimillionaire veteran member of the ways and means committee of the house, out of Illinois.

It ought not to be necessary for the Democrats to make any extended reply to Mr. Mondell's eulogy of this congress, which is really not a eulogy, but an elegy.

The republican press and republican spokesmen who still retain a sense of proportion and are not afraid to speak the truth, have anticipated him and have already answered his principal assertions.

For instance: Mr. Mondell says: "No congress ever sat under this dome that was more faithful, diligent, painstaking, earnest or intelligent or sounder in its judgment and decisions than the present congress. Never in the same length of time has so much legislation been considered in committee, etc."

The Boston Transcript, a typical orthodox republican newspaper, which voices the opinion held generally by the most intelligent of the republican press, says:

"The record of the house of representatives in the first year of the new administration stamps it unmistakably as the worst house in twenty years. Taken as a whole the house of representatives as controlled by the republican party as judged by its record to date, is unworthy of another lease of life."

Secretary of War Weeks in a recent speech at Cleveland, O., declared that the present republican congress "has reached the lowest ebb of any congress in the history of the country," and his remarks were approvingly commented upon by the leading republican newspapers of the country.

Last November William R. Wood (Rep. Ind.) declared upon the floor of the house that "Everybody is giving congress hell," and justified it on the ground of its failure to do what it promises and what it was expected to do.

One of the important measures passed by this congress was the tax revision bill. Mr. Mondell admits that the tax burden was not reduced to the extent that congress would have been glad to reduce it, but adds, "there was not only an honest but a successful attempt to relieve fairly and equitably so far as was possible under the circumstances the tax burdens of all classes of the people."

Of this bill the late Senator Penrose said that the tax revision bill was a make-shift" and that the work would all have to be done over again. With this view Senator Smoot (Rep. Utah) concurred, and what Senator Smoot does not know about taxation he will never learn from Mondell.

Of the Fordney tariff bill now pending in the senate Leader Mondell said: "The progress of the tariff bill thus far serves to strengthen the opinion we formed at the time of the wise and beneficial character of this legislation as it passed the house."

This is the bill to which the senate made 2057 amendments. This is the "wise and beneficial legislation" which is condemned by every great republican newspaper in the United States, by every great independent newspaper in the United States, by the leading farm journals of the country, by the financial and commercial press, by the great financial and commercial interests, and endorsed only by the big manufacturing interests to whom it grants special privileges at the expense of every other interest.

Mr. Mondell's boast of republican economy in reduction of expenditures finds its best answer in a statement by Representative Byrns (Dem. Tenn.) "that the president's budget estimates for the fiscal year 1923 were $200,000,000 more than the regular annual appropriations for 1922, and that this congress has appropriated for 1923 over $74,000,000 more than was appropriated in the regular supply bills for 1922."

Continuing his statement, Representative Byrns says: "Representative Mondell refers to a reduction of estimates of the democratic administration by a republican congress for the year 1921 in the sum of $940,000,000. Why was he not sufficiently frank and candid with the people to say that this same republican congress passed deficiency appropriations during that year of over $482,000,000, thus restoring the estimates to that extent? Why did he not explain to the public that the reduction was made possible by a heavy reduction of the army and navy after the estimates were submitted by the Democratic administration, and not through the efforts of a republican congress?"

Leader Mondell boasts of the amendment to the federal reserve act providing for the appointment of an agriculturist on the federal reserve board, but does not credit this legislation to the farm bloc--a bloc criticized and condemned by President Harding.

The boasts of the excellent progress made by the department of justice in the prosecution of war frauds, but does not tell that the only person tried and convicted so far was a person who had accepted a $500 bribe.

Like Senator McCormick, republican Floor Leader Mondell claims credit for all the legislation passed with the aid of democratic votes and about which there was no serious contention, such as the veterans' bureau act, hospitalization, refunding of foreign debt, (amended into present shape by democrats), federal highways act, stockmen and farmers' war finance act, immigration restriction, packers' control, etc. In his list also he includes bills passed by the house which have no chance of passing the senate.

The general opinion is, despite all that Leader Mondell can say, that the republican congress has been a gigantic failure and that the failure of the house is due largely to Mr. Mondell's lack of capacity and ability as its leader.