Statement Criticizing Legislative Riders.

The Public Debt Act of 1943 is before me for signature. This bill increases the limitation on the face amount of obligations issued under the Second Liberty Bond Act that may be outstanding at any one time from 125 billion dollars to 210 billion dollars.

I pointed out the need for this increase in my Budget Message on January 6. A bill to authorize the increase was introduced in the House of Representatives on January 25 by Chairman Doughton of the Ways and Means Committee. The Treasury informed the Ways and Means Committee that the present debt limit would be insufficient to cover the necessary bond issues which would be required during the month of April.

The Treasury has advised me that, to permit the execution of its war financing plans the Public Debt Act must become effective without further delay. I am accordingly allowing the bill to become law without my signature, in order to avoid embarrassment to our war financing program.

If the circumstances were otherwise, I should veto the bill. Even so, I cannot permit this legislation to become effective without registering my protest against the attachment to this bill of an irrelevant and unwarranted rider.

There was attached to this bill in the House a provision which would have taken from the President the right to stabilize salaries until they were raised above $67,200 or the annual rate paid on December 7, 1941, whichever was the greater. This rider would have destroyed the entire stabilization program. It would obviously have been unfair to stabilize wages, and yet leave salaries free to rise to $67,200.

This patently indefensible provision was eliminated in the Senate. But instead of dropping it altogether, the Senate substituted a provision removing from the Act of October 2, 1942, the President's authority, granted in terms by that Act to reduce wages or salaries "to the extent that he finds necessary to correct gross inequities and also to aid in the effective prosecution of the war." The effect of this provision, which was accepted in conference, is to terminate the authority given to and exercised by me to prevent the payment during the war of salaries in excess of $67,200.

The reasons which prompted me to exercise the authority conferred upon me are fully explained in the letter which I sent to Chairman Doughton of the Ways and Means Committee on February 15. As I explained in my letter, I agree with those who say that the limitation on salaries does not deal adequately with the problem of excessive incomes. Practical limitations ought by appropriate taxation to be placed on all income, earned and unearned. I urged and would have welcomed a special tax measure applicable to all excessive incomes from whatever source derived in place of the flat $67,200 salary limitation.

But the Congress has chosen to rescind my action limiting excessive salaries without even attempting to offer a substitute. The result is that Congress has authorized the drafting of men into the Army for $600 a year regardless of whether they are earning $1,000 or $100,000 a year, but has refused to authorize the reduction in the salary of any man not drafted into the Army no matter how high his income may be.

At the same time the stabilization program enacted by the Congress requires wage increases to be denied to workers earning $1,500 a year even when their employers are willing to pay those wage increases. The essence of stabilization is that each should sacrifice for the benefit of all. This principle the Congress has failed to recognize.

Some two or three thousand persons who on September 15,1942, were receiving salaries in excess of $67,200 may continue to receive them. About 750 persons will be able to receive salaries in excess of $100,000; about 30 persons, salaries in excess of $250,000; and 3 or 4 persons, salaries in excess of $500,000.

One hundred and thirty million Americans can make the stabilization program work even though a relative handful of persons are not obliged to cooperate as they should. The exemption accorded these excessively high salaries does not help morale, but American morale is too strong to be permanently injured by this ill-considered action.

The Act of October 2, 1942, set up a stabilization program covering wages, salaries, and prices. It could, of course, be revised or repealed by the Congress but subject, under the Constitution, to the approval or veto by the President.

The Congress, however, did not adopt this constitutional method.

It chose to take away the authority of the President to adjust salaries which were grossly inequitable, not by a separate law, but by attaching a rider to a bill increasing the debt limit.

This system of attaching riders to bills relating to a wholly different subject has been used by former Congresses in a number of notable cases. Such abuses of sound legislative procedure have been protested by many former Presidents, and the practice has been condemned by sound opinion. It is noteworthy that the Constitutions of many States require that a proposed law shall relate to only one subject.

In this particular case the problem is easy to understand.

If I veto this bill, with its rider, the Treasury's war financing plans may be seriously retarded. I have no means of assuring prompt action by the Congress prior to a great bond issue, the sale of which is about to start. I have no means of preventing indefinite delay if either branch of the National Legislature should decide to recommit the measure to a committee for further study.

If I sign the bill I would be accused of giving my approval to salaries which most persons regard as excessive in the midst of a war for the survival of this Nation.

Thus the Congress has successfully and effectively circumvented my power to veto.

All that remains to me is to permit the act to become a law without my signature.

I am doing this with two earnest objections. The first is against the practice of attaching extraneous riders to any bill. The second is to make clear to the country that I still hope and trust that the Congress, at the earliest possible moment, will give consideration to imposing a special war supertax on net income, from whatever source derived, which after the payment of all taxes exceeds $25,000.

I still believe that the Nation has a common purpose- equality of sacrifice in wartime.