Albuquerque Morning Journal

ON BONUS BILL TODAY

SITUATION WILL BE LAID BEFORE PRESIDENT, SAYS G. O. P. LEADER

Compromise Bank Loan Will Be Fully Explained: No Serious Alteration of Plans Is Expected.

NO BURDEN LAID ON TREASURY NEXT YEAR

Administration Officers Are Confident Gillett Will Suspend the Rules and Pass the Measure.

(By The Associated Press.)

Washington, March 19.—President Harding made an engagement today with republican house leaders for 9:30 a. m. tomorrow to discuss the soldiers' bonus situation.

Because of appointments made before his return from Florida he was unable to grant their request for a conference tonight.

Representative Mondell of Wyoming, the republican floor leader, said tonight that the whole situation would be laid before the president and that the compromise bank loan plan would be fully explained. Mr. Mondell would not venture an opinion as to whether the bill would be called up in the house tomorrow under a suspension of the rules, but he appeared to be confident that there would be no development at the White House conference that would cause serious alteration of the plan to put the measure through soon.

"We have a bill quite different from anything the president has expressed an opinion on," said Mr. Mondell, "and a bill that lays no more burden on the treasury next year than does the forthcoming road bill, for instance."

No Reason for Delay

"We suspended the rules two years ago to pass the first bonus bill and there is good reason to handle the measure that way.

There are men who have no responsibility in the matter who would come forward with amendments not for the purpose of improving the bill, but to make trouble. If we have about the best bill we can get, there is no reason to allow the minority to embarrass our people.

"We have got the best bill we can get and a very good one and the sooner we pass it the better."

Among those who probably will accompany Mr. Mondell to the White House tomorrow will be Chairman Fordney of the ways and means committee; Chairman Campbell of the rules committee; Chairman Towner of the republican house conference; Chairman Fess of the republican congressional committee; Representative Longworth of Ohio, member of both the ways and means and steering committees and Representative Mann of Illinois.

Gillett to Arrive Today.

Speaker Gillett, who delivered an address today in his home city of Springfield, Mass., was expected to arrive here tomorrow and to preside over the house. Whether he would see the president before the house convened was not disclosed but some administration officers today said they were confident he would not entertain a motion to suspend the rules and pass the bonus bill.

This question was one that house leaders said they would take up with the executive.

Soon after Mr. Harding returned here today he had an hour's conference with Secretary Mellon at the White House. There was no official statement as to the conference, but it was understood that the bonus question was discussed.
Attack on Measure.

An attack on the bonus measure was made in minority views made public today by Representatives Treadway of Massachusetts and Tilson of Connecticut, republican members of the ways and means committee. They declared their belief that the bill, if enacted into law, "would do more harm to the people and to the country, the veterans themselves and their families included, than it would do good to the individual beneficiaries."

The committeemen centered their attack principally on the bank loan provision of the adjusted service certificate title and the land settlement title. They asserted that the loan scheme "seems to us just about as unsound economically and unfortunate from every point of view at this particular time as could possibly be devised."

Land Settlement Title.

"The land settlement title," they said, "offers untold opportunity for reckless expenditure is dangerous at the most and uncertain at the best." They added that "there is firmly grounded belief in the minds of many that this provision has been saddled upon this bill with the hope and expectation of carrying through congress, on the sturdy backs of the veterans a measure so fraught with dangerous possibilities and uncertainties that it would receive scant support if forced to stand alone in the open on its own merits."

Calling attention that the loan provision has been disapproved by high fiscal officers of the government, the committeemen asserted that "a serious defect" in the bill was the "entire lack of amortization, taxation or refunding for an anticipated payment of the large sum the government will owe in three years" when the bank loan period would expire and the veterans holding certificates would be authorized to borrow direct from the government. They estimated at that time the treasury would have to provide $600,000,000 for advances to banks on unpaid loans made to veterans and to the veterans themselves.

Date of Certificates.

"Attention is called," says the report, "to the significance of the date the certificates are to bear, namely, October 1, 1922. With a large force of clerks and the best expert assistance possible, comparatively few certificates could be issued by that time, and it would be at least six months before any large number could be put out. The reason for the date, therefore, of the operation of the bill as October 1, next, one month prior to election, is very apparent."

"In estimating the political effect of the support of this bill," the report continued, "it would seem that rank injustice is being done the intelligence and patriotism of the ex-service man. It seems to be assumed that because each individual veteran is to receive a slight pecuniary reward, therefore, he and his friends will in turn reward those who vote it and punish those who do not, regardless of what the effect of the legislation upon the country as a whole may be. We believe this is unjust and untrue."