Samuel Jackson Randall Quotes
If you undertake to divide all these appropriations and have many committees where there should be but one, you will enter upon a path of extravagance that you cannot foresee … until we find the Treasury of the country bankrupt.
Both the House and the Senate, as they got larger, developed an Appropriations Committee. When the committee assessed a departmental appropriation, they had also the responsibility for all the other departmental budgets. However, many of the members of the Appropriations Committee tended to favor the interests of their particular constituency or the special interests to which they were beholden. Other members had little or no influence. So there was immense pressure during Reconstruction to ‘share’ the appropriations ‘plum’ by creating appropriations subcommittees. However, each particular subcommittee loses the perspective of and interest in the budget as a whole. The process has led to budget imbalance pressure ever since. But Randall, the Speaker of the House warned about exactly what would happen. He had earlier served as Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and he was exactly right.
Samuel Jackson Randall, 1828-1890, U. S. Congressman (Democrat, PA), Speaker of the House, Arguing Against Having Appropriations Subcommittees for each Budget Area, 1884
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This quotation is attributed to the Senator by hundreds of sources, many very relaiable. This indicates to us that it was a line he used on several occasions. However the Dirksen Center staff has not been able to find the quotation amongst his writings and his radio and television appearances that they have transcripts for.
Automated Teller Machine by which banks dispense cash.
He was one of the few Congressman who never engaged in the shady practice of earmarking appropriations for their own districts, states, constituents and lobbyists who contribute to their campaigns. However, like almost all members of Congress, he was very aggressive in seeking and supporting programs for his district.
This is the kind of advice that Presidents have given the Congress for years. What makes this quotation noteworthy is the person who made the statement, President George W. Bush. It was made in the 7th year of his Presidency which had in those 7 years, at his urging, gone from a balanced budget and a national surplus projected, to the largest deficit of any nation in history and a projected deficit that even dwarfed that. So the irony of the quotation was that the politician who produced the largest economic burden on future generations was lecturing other politicians on the evils of doing exactly what he himself had been doing. Bush, if nothing else, was one of the most audacious politicians in this respect, though his most severe detractors claim that he did not have the intellectual perspective to even understand the hypocrisy of his quotation,
1st Viscount Snowden
Samuel Jackson Randall was an American politician from Pennsylvania who represented the Queen Village, Society Hill, and Northern Liberties neighborhoods of Philadelphia from 1863 to 1890 and served as the 29th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1876 to 1881. He was a contender for the Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States in 1880 and 1884.
