Washington, Aug. 4.
Not many years have passed since the dominant party in the! House of Representatives was taunted by the opposition with! monstrous extravagance in having appropriated $1,000,000,000 for' the expenditures of the country for two years, the Congress guilty of such prodigality being stigmatize ed as the Billion Dollar Congress."
The appropriations voted by the session of Congress that was broughs to an end just in time to! permit of its Republican members attending the recent National Convention at Chicago aggregated $5,000,000,000 for the 12) months ending June 30,1921, or tween nine and ten times' the corresponding total appropriations of 20 years ago and more than seven imes the amount that was sufficient for all purposes as recently as 1916.
In' explanation—perhaps in extenuation—of the Republican party's responsibility for so huge an expenditure a year and eight months after ~the termination of the war, it is claimed by the chair man of the Appropriations Gommittee that to the extent of $2,500,. 900,000 the expenditures recently provided for are a direct heritage from the war. But that still leaves more than $2,250,000,000 for ordinary expenditures, or considerably! more than three times the sum appropriated only four years ago. The ordinary expenditures for the army and navy, including pen. sions, fof the ensuing year will exceed $1,000,000,000 or 50 per cent, more than total expenditures of the government for all purposes, only four years ago. What an
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.