Show The Dependent Pension Bill WASHINGTON March 31After routine business Reagan addressed the Senate on the bill for the issue of treasury notes on the deposit of silver bullion The bill he said was intended to relieve the country from the effects of the worse than blunder of Congress in suspending the silver coinage coin-age in 1873 He regarded it as hopeful sign that the Republican Senate would join in the great work even though the remedy proposed might not be tho best I was to be regretted that the committee has not reported a bill for the free and unlimited coinage of silver as well as gold He favored fa-vored the payment of the bonded indebtedness indebted-ness of the government in silver as well as gold the issue of coin certificates receivable receiv-able for public and private dues and taxes and the retirement of all legal tender and national bank notes of less denomination than 10 and the subtitution of coin certifi cates The dependent pension bill was then taken up the first question being on Plumbs amendment removing the limitation limita-tion as to arears of pensions Berry asked if any estimate had been made of the cost of removing the limitation Plumb replied that the commissioner of pensions estimated It at about four hundred hun-dred and seventy million dollars and the chairman of the House committee on pensions pen-sions estimated it at five hundred million dollars I would be somewhere about those figures Fryo regretted the amendment before the Senate There was danger of overleaping in the matter of pensions When Cleveland Cleve-land commenced to veto pension bills not only the Democratic party ratified what he did but many business men of the Republican Repub-lican party too He warned Senators they were imperilling the truest interests of the soldiers and creating prejudice against pensions Hawley spoke in a similar vein The American nation certainly has not been stingy The pension expenditure for the next year will be nearly one hundred and thirty million dollars No nation in the world ever appropriated for its soldiers a sum to be compared with that He begged the old soldiers to remember that tho objection to getting into another war would be not the cost of carry ing it on but the consequences of it and also asked them to remember these enormous sums of money came out of the pockets very largely of people as poor as themselves Ho related an anecdote of General Grant on the lattors last visit to Washington when in a conversation on pensions he said I I were President I would sign any reasonable bill to relieve the distress of the honest soldier or his widow or children but I should not vote one dollar to the able bodied men That last expression said Hawley sank into my memory and that is my platform I dont believe my statewatts me to add oOO000000 to the debt of the republic After further discussion Plumbs amendment was rejected yeas 9 nays 40 Yeas were Allison Ingalls Manderson Mitchell Plumb Quay Sherman Turpie and Voorhees An amendment by Call to include those who served in Indian wars prior to 1870 was rejected An amendment by Vest providing that the money to meet tho appropriation of the under bill be raised by a tax income was laid on the table An amendment by Plumb to pay a pension pen-sion of 8 per month to all who served ninety days in the late war and who are sixtyseven years old or as they attain that age was rejected 19 to 39 The bill then passed yeas 42 nays 12 |