MANY HELD MISLED ON TOWNSEND BILL
California Representative Says Revised Measure Gives
$50, Not $200, Pension. SECURITY BILL ATTACKED
Republicans Call Age Plan In- adequateIdea of 'Alladin's Lamp'
Congress Decried.
special to THE NEW YORK TIMES
WASHINGTON, April 13.As the House entered its third day of debate on
the social Security bill, a charge that Townsend plan followers throughout the
country were being deluded into believing that the proposal calls for old-age
pensions of $200 a month, when, in fact, the revised proposal embodied in the
McGroarty bill would provide only $50 a month, was
made by Representative Buck of California.
Representative Greenway of Arizona, coming to the support of the revised
plan, told the House that it "would do well to think profoundly on the bill" when
it was presented as a substitute for the administration Social Security Bill.
The new version of the Townsend plan would provide, to raise the funds, a
transaction tax of 2 per cent, whose proceeds would be divided equally among the
60-year-old beneficiaries. No pension of more than $200 a month would be granted,
however.
The first bill Mr. McGroarty introduced
provided for a flat payment of
$200 a month regardless of whether the transaction tax yielded enough money to
pay the estimated $24,000,000,000 a year needed.
Today's debate was largely taken up with Title I of the bill, which
provides for old-age assistance. The Republicans, sustaining the keynote of the
minority report of the Ways and Means Committee, criticized the bill as
inadequate. |
Resentful at having to meet on Saturday, Republican leaders tried to force
adjournment at the outset today but Representative McReynolds of Tennessee, who
was in the chair, balked them.
House rules provide that 100 members must be present for a quorum when
sitting as a committee of the whole.
Representative Treadway of Massachusetts made the point that no quorum was
present, but after a lightning-like count, Mr. McReynolds announced 101 members
were in the chamber.
Representative Eaton of New Jersey, who had been waiting patiently to make
a speech while this maneuvring went on, declared that the Ways and Means
Committee should have brought out a bill limited to old-age pensions. he felt
that the country was "wallowing in the gloom of a great moral and intellectual
collapse," and that it thought the government could insure every citizen against
any hazard of life.
"They think we only have to pass a law, rub Aladdin's lamp, and then the
millennium will come," he said.
Mr. Treadway asked him what he thought President Roosevelt had in mind at
his press conference yesterday when he said that enactment of old-age pensions
and unemployment insurance would balance the government's budget.
"He must believe one is born every minute, and sometimes two," Mr. Eaton
replied.
Representative Hoeppel of California, stung by Mr. Eaton's statement that
the New Deal was piling up a debt that would tax industry $7,000,000,000 to
$10,000,000,000 a year into the indefinite future, asked him what he and the
Republican party would do to end the depression, if they were in power.
"We would undertake to balance the budget, and not by double-barreled
bookkeeping," Mr. Eaton replied. "We would try to cut down the normal expenses of
government. We would try to run the Federal Government alone and let the States
handle their business."
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