CHAPTER X. APPROPRIATIONS AND EXPENDITURES. 1865-1885. IF progress has been slow in improving the mode of appropriating public money, nearly every step has been forward. In 1790, all the appropriations were included in one bill, which was of a very general nature. With a considerate regard for economy and clear knowledge, the appropriations have been specified more and more minutely, and classified. When the items in a bill became very numerous, a portion of them was put in another bill, and thus the number has increased to a dozen. As soon as possible after their passage, the secretary of the Senate and the clerk of the House make a complete record of the appropriations and of the new offices created, which is sent to the secretary of the treasury. The bills are framed on information furnished by the secretary of the treasury. He requests the departments to send estimates to him of expenditures for the next fiscal year, those for the treasury department are added, and the "letter" containing all of them is ready by the opening of the session. The Appropriation Committee are given a month to prepare and report the bills, but the law is rarely observed. Of late the practice has been growing for the departments to send supplemental estimates, which delays action. The committee cannot do much until the wants of the departments are fully known, and they are without excuse for neglecting to make careful and complete estimates in the beginning. The appropriation bills, when reported, contain the information on which the recommendations of the committee are founded. This consists of statements from different officers in the departments explaining for what purposes money is desired, and the reasons for the amount asked. The action of the House on the bills is variable. If considered, this is done in the committee of the whole, but very often the bills are not reported until late in the session, when no time remains for discussion, and consequently they are passed without debate. In the Senate, more time is bestowed on them. The Appropriation Committee usually reduce the estimates of the departments, but many are restored by the Senate. The bills then go to a committee of conference, and an agreement is effected by retaining the increase in some cases and reducing it in others. Every bill has a different history in some respects, and what we have written, it must be remembered, is merely the general course of these measures. The newest bill of the twelve is called the sundry civil, and was originated in 1862. It is of a miscellaneous composition, containing items not mentioned in other bills-a kind of omnium gatherum, or record of human forgetfulness. The appropriations for public buildings, which have been very large for several years, are put into this bill; if, however, an appropriation of this kind goes through both houses solitary and unharmed, the reason is that friends not far away expect to go along soon, either alone or in company. The deficiency bill is one of the oldest, and requires brief explanation. Although no money can be drawn from the treasury without an appropriation, nothing prevents a person from doing things for the government with the expectation of receiving compensation. So services of one kind and another are rendered every year, and money is regularly appropriated to pay for them. One of the tricks occasionally employed by political parties to win the favorable regard of the people is to make the appropriations in eleven of the bills as small as possible, and cover up the deficit thus incurred in the deficiency bill of the following year. This is like the method of some corporations that make larger dividends than have been earned, borrow the money to pay them, and charge it to the "construction account." The plan was never patented by the inventor, consequently all parties have used it whenever they imagined this cheap cunning would yield votes. The last Napoleonic usurper in France covered up $350,000,000, expended in fifteen years, by a mysterious system of bookkeeping; in our country political parties are too watchful of each other to permit a game of that kind to be long played without exposure. In reporting the deficiency bill for 1875, the committee1 remarked that under the Acts then in effective operation prohibiting the use of unexpended balances of appropriations unless specifically rendered available, and requiring that expenditures should only be made pursuant to appropriations made therefor, the requisitions for deficiency appropriations were decreasing from year to year. "This, aided by the rigid scrutiny of all estimates, and exhaustive study to reduce them, has caused a more careful method of making the same on the part of the departments, resulting in a much more exact and economical use of the appropriations when made." The deficiency appropriations did, indeed, shrink until 1877, when 1 No. 270, 43 Cong., second session. they were only $834,695, but since that time they have been increasing. The appropriations are divided into three classes, annual, permanent annual, and permanent specific. The first class of appropriations are for the current ordinary expenditures of the government; the chief item in the second class is for interest on the public debt; the third class are for improving rivers and harbors, fortifications, buildings, and the like, and which remain appropriated until expended. Appropriations of each class may be definite or indefinite; in other words, a definite fixed amount may be appropriated for anything, or an indefinite amount. All the permanent annual appropriations are indefinite, but Congress could make them definite by specifying fixed sums for all the objects for the service of each fiscal year. The only difference between a definite annual and a definite permanent annual appropriation is, that the former is made by a law passed annually "for the service of" one designated fiscal year, and the latter by a law operating until repealed for the service of each subsequent year without limit or designation.1 At the close of the Mexican war in 1847, more than onehalf of the national expenditures belonged to the second class of appropriations. The number have been reduced, but the departments have sought to maintain them in order to simplify and reduce the estimates. Many abuses have their origin in permanent annual appropriations. One illustration may be given. During the war, when authorizing a great loan, Congress enacted that a fixed percentage should be used to pay the expense of negotiating and printing the bonds. In 1872 the 1 See Com. of Secretary Sherman to Speaker of the House, Dec. 14, 1877, and further documents on the same subject, 1 U. S. First Comptroller's Decisions, chap. 14, 2 ed. Committee of Ways and Means recommended a bill, which passed without debate, making a permanent appropriation of one per cent of all notes and bonds and fractional currency issued and re-issued in any year as the expense of the national loan. In the year 1874 paper amounting to $500,000,000 was printed at the treasury department. Thus the authority existed for expending $5,000,000 without legislative action. From these appropriations arose the bureau of engraving and printing, with twelve hundred employees, whose salaries were regulated solely by the secretary of the treasury. The salaries of five hundred clerks and employees in four of the offices of the treasury department were regulated in like manner and paid from this appropriation. In 1874 this permanent annual appropriation was swept away, and the number and compensation of persons employed to manage the national loan, print the bonds, etc., were fixed in the annual legislative, executive and judicial appropriation bill. If Congress did wisely in subjecting those expenditures to annual scrutiny, why has not a more intelligent regard been shown in the expenditure for collecting duties on imports? Prior to 1849 the expense of collecting them was paid from the gross receipts, the balance going into the treasury. By the Act of that year the gross receipts were paid into the treasury, and estimates were submitted to Congress for the expense of collecting them. In June, 1858, a backward step was taken. A permanent semi-annual appropriation was made, and collectors were authorized to apply certain customs fees toward the cost of collection. The amount of the appropriation has been increased from time to time, as the receipts became greater and more difficult to collect. In 1882 Congress required the secretary of the treasury to include in his annual estimate of |