THE SECOND WAR REVENUE BILL
The Second War Revenue Bill WHAT do the millions really know about their government at Washington? What is Congress doing which concerns them? Is it serving the millions, or is it serving the...
...You have at this time a complete verification of the injustice of this legislation in your own communities...
...All this was, of course, foreseen from the beginning by the Masters of Finance in this country, and the legislation was framed so as to produce the result...
...Hence the next issue of bonds must be made even more attractive than those already issued...
...What does all this mean for the finances of the country...
...Here in the quiet of the Capitol, unnoted by the people, because scarcely mentioned by the newspapers, is being enacted another war tax measure...
...Is it serving the millions, or is it serving the millionaires...
...Because wealth and war profits have not been sufficiently taxed to meet the expenses of the war, we not only have a national debt of more than eighteen billion dollars, created in the last year and a half, and represented by bond sales and sales of war savings stamps, but we are faced with the certainty that as a result of this war vre will have a debt of nearly twice that amount...
...Already it is understood that another bond sale of five or six billion will be forced upon us by next spring...
...The annual expenses of the Federal Government before we entered the present war, were about a billion dollars a year—every dollar of which could have been properly and justly paid out of the war profits made by our profiteers who were then selling at fabulous prices munitions and war materials to the European nations engaged in war...
...This bill so eminently satisfactory to the war profitcers and Big Busines3...
...Hence this vast quantity of bonds, so stupendous in amount that the human mind can scarcely grasp its magnitude, will speedily become the refuge of the surplus capital of the very rich, for their interest provisions and their exemption from taxation, especially the sur tax, make the bonds infinitely more valuable to the possessor of a large income than of a small one...
...The continued inflation of the currency by new bond issues means higher and ever higher prices for the necessaries of life...
...Conferees of the two Houses...
...When the Conference Committee had agreed upon the differences between the two Houses it will submit the bill thus modified to the two Houses for final action...
...It is practically the consummation of the plan to let wealth off easy and saddle upon the people the great burden of paying the cost of this war...
...Senator Thomas, a member of the Senate Committee in a minority report, submitted by him on the bill, estimates that our debt, as a result of this war, will not be less than thirty-five billion dollars...
...If it does become a law, it will do more to divide the people of the United States into classes and promote class hatred than any single piece of legislation enacted in years...
...The very opposite of the principle for which I contended was, in fact, embodied in the bill...
...In the minority report, which, as a member of the Committee on Finance, I submitted to the Senate on December 6, 1918,I said: "I do protest that it is a gross injustice to the people to take by taxation as this bill does an amount which must be admitted to be less than one-half of the war profits of the corporations...
...The Secretary of War advises us that he is going to maintain in Europe an army of a million and a quarter of men for sometime to come...
...This must be followed by others and still others...
...This last measure which recently passed the Senate is now in the hands of the...
...Look about you today and see the few made wealthy by the war and the many from whom the war has already exacted the most awful sacrifices...
...The great dailies are owned by the millionaires...
...The amendments and the substitutes were voted down...
...Competition may reduce wages but it will reduce nothing else...
...When peace is declared it will no longer be possible to force the sale of bonds by war time methods...
...The Secretary of the Navy is out with a demand for a ship building program that shall enable us to over-top the strength of the English Navy...
...But this is only the beginning...
...This bill writes the last chapter in the scheme of legislation advanced at the outbreak of the war, to make the people of this country who were drafted to fight the war, pay its cost, and enable millionaires to make fabulous profits out of the war game...
...To stabilize and equalize the bond prices, the early issues must be refunded on terms to make them as valuable as the later ones...
...The people rely upon the great daily papers for their information regarding the proceedings of Congress...
...The English Navy has trebled its tonnage since the war began, while we have been loaning that country billions of dollars, ostensibly to protect itself from German militarism...
...It was framed on the theory of saving as much as possible of war profits for their possessors instead of taking as much as possible from them to pay the costs of the war...
...In the speech which I made in the Senate December 23rd last, on the Revenue Bill, (a part of which will be found elsewhere in this issue of La Follette's Magazine), and in the speeches which I made against the Revenue Bill in 1917, I protested against the rank injustice of this legislation, and I proposed amendments, and offered substitute measures, which would have corrected in some measure at least, the wrongs of this legislation...
...You know what it is...
...Thus, you will have in this country a great debtor class paying a tax on everything they eat, wear and use to meet the ordinary expenses of the Government, and paying the interest upon the colossal national debt represented by Government bonds in the hands of the favored few...
...Multiply what you see in your immediate community by many millions and then you will get an idea of the first effects of the wrongs done by the financial legislation of the war...
...At the very time when the Bolshevik idea is sweeping over Europe like a conflagration, when the disinherited and oppressed people of those countries are trampling under foot the privileges and often the persons of the favored classes there, it is a monument to the folly of the class representing the wealth and privilege of this country that they should use their present power to enact legislation as unjust and discriminating as any to be found in the codes of the empires or kingdoms of Europe at the beginning of the present war...
...All financial authorities agree that it will be years before the expenses of the government decrease to five billion dollars annually, if they ever reach that low level again...
...Already the despatches inform us that at least one investigation is under way, by the District Attorney of New York City, to determine why the last two issues of bonds are selling so low, sales being reported as low as eighty-five cents on the dollar...
...What is the answer...
...The principle that should guide is in framing this bill, is, that no man should be allowed to retain a dollar of profits made out of this war, when thousands of our people have been called upon to give everything, including their lives, for its prosecution, and millions must suffer great hardship on account of it, and generations must sweat and toil to pay its costs...
...The interest rates must be higher or they must be exempt from all taxation, or both...
...The suffering and hardship which this plan of financing the war is bound to impose upon the masses in the years to come, will prove second only in the tragic character of its consequences, to the business overseas in which we have taken part...
...Our Civil War debt, at its highest point was less than two and a half billion dollars, and we were still in debt about a billion dollars at the commencement of the present war...
...The limit of the time he will not even suggest...
...may soon become a law...
...I shall not repeat here what I said on those occasions...
...The Revenue Bill of 1917 which only proposed to take about a third of war profits was excused at the time on the ground that another bill would have to be presented during the same year in which the tax rates would be higher, but no such bill was presented...
Vol. 11 • January 1919 • No. 1
