The Cordova Daily Times

PLACES CLAMP ON SENATORIAL EXTRAVAGANCE

WASHINGTON, June 12.—Congress still talks itself to the point of fatigue. But no longer can it talk, and have the printed eloquence circulated without limit among the dear people back home. It's a new day for Congress. Economy, mapped out by the President, is being swallowed by Congress. Congress gurgles and chokes in the process every perceptibly, but without any feeling of grave concern at the executive end of the avenue.

The President has called a real halt to the abuse of senators and congressmen jamming the mails with speeches intended to improve the statesmen's political standing. The printing bill is being cut to the bone. Uncle Sam is gaining by the process. The tax-payers also are benefited. Under the tax burden now borne they may not feel it much, but the saving occasioned by trimming the Capitol's spending for literature printed at government expense is real, and it all helps to make the economy drive genuine.

Latest figures submitted to the President show that the government's printing bill, which in former years has run about $12,000,000, will not exceed $9,000,000 during the fiscal year ending next June. A saving of $3,000,000 has been possible by restricting the demands of Senators and Representatives to actual and conservative limits. A Senator can no longer throw a demand at the public printer for odd and fancy binding unless it meets with the approval of the government's new printing committee, established as a clearing house for the Capitol and departmental needs.

Congressmen have been stopped in the game of former years of filling the mails with volumes of government reports of every kind and description, a large percentage of which may not be read or digested after they reach their destination. In fact, government departments are not squandering money as in the old days printing highly technical treatises on this or that topic of no special public interest. This waste has been checked. There must be a real reason for the publication of government documents, or they are barred.

Thousands of tons of such literature based upon government inquiries of all kinds have rolled up government expense in previous years. Not a small item, too, in the general expense has been the cost of transporting such matter through the mails. The government pays the railroads a specified rate for carrying the mails. Government publications make up an astonishingly large percentage of all government mail matter.