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¶The problem of Taxation had not pushed the problem of Relief off the President's desk last week. Alfred Emanuel Smith had urged that leaders cease "quibbling over words" and get on with some sort of productive public works program. Governor Roosevelt of New York had set in motion his plan to place his jobless citizens on "subsistence farms." At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Congress was boiling over with relief ideas. In the Senate, Pennsylvania's Davis had wanted Reconstruction Finance Corp. to lend a half-billion dollars to cities and States for unemployment relief. Oregon's McNary had suggested a 100-million-dollar Federal appropriation for relief to be administered through the Red Cross. New York's Wagner wanted R. F. C. to loan 300 millions to the States, $1,460,000,000 more to self-supporting public works (toll bridges, tunnels, etc.) and 40 millions to Agriculture; to float a half-billion-dollar bond issue to compete authorized Federal projects. New Mexico's Cutting asked the Senate to authorize a five-billion-dollar bond issue to finance construction of harbors, roads, etc.
On all proposals the President had frowned severely. He hoped he had shunted them definitely aside by his own relief program (main point: authority for R. F. C. to increase its debenture limit an additional billion and a half to be loaned, partly, to States unable to care for their needy and partly to self-sustaining public works and private industry) which Secretary Mills, Chairman Eugene Meyer and President Charles Gates Dawes of R. F. C. were laboring over last week. Shocked and angered was the President when Speaker of the House John Nance Garner brought out his relief program: a billion increase in R. F. C.'s funds for public construction by States and private enterprise; another billion-odd from the Treasury for Federal undertakings; 100 million more to be handled by the President as an emergency fund. To provide interest and sinking fund for the R. F. C. and Treasury financing, Speaker Garner suggested a Federal tax on gasoline of & per gallon. No sooner had the Garner bill been laid before the House than irate President Hoover addressed the nation in the strongest language he had used since taking office:
"An examination of only one group of these proposals—that is, proposed authorizations for new postoffices—shows a list of about 2,300 such buildings, at a total cost of about $150,000.000. The Post Office Department informs me that the interest and upkeep of these buildings would amount to $14,000,000 per annum, whereas the upkeep and rent of buildings at present in use amounts to less than $3,000,000. Many of the other groups in this bill will no more stand the light of day than this example. . . .
"I am advised by the engineers that the amount of labor required to complete a group of $400,000,000 of these works would amount to only 100,000 men for one year, because they are in large degree mechanical jobs.
"This is not unemployment relief. It is the most gigantic pork barrel ever proposed to the American Congress. It is an unexampled raid on the public treasury.