[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 112 (Thursday, June 29, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3848-S3849]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           150TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, last night in the Kennedy Caucus Room, the 
U.S. Capitol Historical Society honored the Senate Appropriations 
Committee with a celebration of its 150th anniversary. Past and present 
committee members and staff gathered to reflect on the history of the 
committee, and Senate Historian Betty Koed gave a wonderful keynote 
address.
  Established on March 6, 1867, the committee's powers are rooted in 
article 1, section 9, of our Constitution which states, ``No Money 
shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations 
made by Law.'' The Founders recognized the power of the purse as one of 
the most important tools Congress has to ensure our system of checks 
and balances and to conduct oversight of the executive and judicial 
branch--but it is much more than that. The Appropriations Committee is 
where we translate the priorities of a nation into the realities of the 
people.
  Our country is not a business, where we allocate resources only 
according to the bottom line. We do not invest in order to make a 
profit or a one-for-one dollar in return. We invest in those areas 
where it is uniquely right for government to take the lead. We invest 
in the areas that make a difference in the everyday lives of Americans 
and that help build the foundations of our country and our economy--
infrastructure, national security, our environment, education, science 
and research, healthcare.
  I want to thank the U.S. Capitol Historical Society for organizing 
this anniversary celebration, and I ask unanimous consent that the text 
of the remarks given by Senate Historian Betty Koed be printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:


               Appropriations Committee 150th Anniversary

                        Wednesday, June 28, 2017

                    Betty K. Koed, Senate Historian

       On March 6, 2017, the Senate reached an important milestone 
     in the history of its committees. The Committee on 
     Appropriations turned 150 years old.
       For its first quarter-century, the Senate operated without 
     permanent legislative committees. Instead, it relied on 
     temporary ``select'' committees to manage proposals and write 
     bills. In 1816, having created nearly a hundred of these ad 
     hoc committees, the Senate decided on something more 
     permanent.
       In December of 1816, it created eleven standing committees, 
     including Judiciary, Foreign Relations, Commerce, and 
     Finance. However, it did not create a Committee on 
     Appropriations.
       Over the next five decades, the Finance Committee handled 
     most appropriations, but that overworked committee struggled 
     with the haphazard funding requests of executive agencies.
       Wishing to appear frugal, agency directors often 
     understated their funding needs to the House of 
     Representatives and then, in the hectic final days of a 
     session, quietly turned to the Senate for emergency funds.
       The threat of suspended operations usually convinced 
     Congress to replenish the coffers. If agencies ran a surplus, 
     directors simply spent those funds as they pleased.
       By the 1860s senators realized that they needed to gain 
     better control over appropriations. The Civil War had vastly 
     expanded federal spending. In fact, in 1865, expenditures 
     passed the billion-dollar mark for the first time in our 
     national history.
       The lack of centralized control over appropriations also 
     played to the president's advantage, and the executive often 
     spent millions without first securing formal congressional 
     appropriations.
       In other words, by the end of the Civil War, no less than 
     the power of the purse was at stake.
       On March 6, 1867, two years after similar action taken by 
     the House, Senator Henry Anthony of Rhode Island proposed a 
     new committee to consider spending bills.
       The Senate agreed--by unanimous consent--and passed 
     subsequent legislation to better regulate how such funds were 
     used.
       Before long, this new committee became a Senate powerhouse. 
     Led by strong chairmen like Iowa's William B. Allison, the 
     Appropriations Committee reached new heights of influence 
     during the Senate's Gilded Age.
       Not surprisingly, senators who did not serve on the 
     committee began to complain. Did this upstart committee have 
     too much power? Chairmen of the legislative committees, as 
     well as the heads of executive agencies, said yes, and looked 
     for ways to wrest back some of that power.
       In the 1890s, senators curtailed the jurisdiction of the 
     Appropriations Committee, giving control over spending in 
     certain areas, such as agriculture, military affairs, and 
     pensions, back to legislative committees.
       Committee chairs were delighted, but with no centralized 
     control over the budgetary process, the committees ran amok. 
     Spending increased with little or no accountability.
       And so, in 1921, again prompted by war-related costs that 
     had pushed annual spending to more than $25 billion a year, 
     Congress passed the Budget and Accounting Act.
       Signed by President Warren G. Harding, the 1921 law 
     required an annual budget from the president, created the 
     General Accounting Office (now GAO), the Bureau of the Budget 
     (now the OMB), and led to the establishment of permanent 
     subcommittees for Appropriations.
       But passage of that bill was just the beginning. In 
     implementing the new law, Chairman Francis E. Warren of 
     Wyoming shaped the future of the committee.
       In 1922 Warren introduced a successful resolution to again 
     centralize the appropriations process. He also included in 
     his resolution a revision to Rule 16, requiring that all 
     general appropriation bills, and amendments to such bills, be 
     referred to the Committee on Appropriations.
       This, in essence, established the broad jurisdiction that 
     the committee enjoys today.
       Since that time, the Appropriations Committee has continued 
     to evolve as its duties and workload were amended by 
     subsequent legislation.
       Of course, the biggest change came in 1974 with the Budget 
     Act, which created the House and Senate Budget Committees 
     along with the Congressional Budget Office. But, again, the 
     Appropriations Committee remained intact.
       In the 1980s and 90s, other elements were added--Gramm-
     Rudman, budget summits, PAYGO, CRs--but you know that history 
     better than I do. You've been living it.
       Today--150 years after its creation--the Senate Committee 
     on Appropriations, ably led by Chairman Cochran and Vice 
     Chairman Leahy, continues to be a powerful and influential 
     voice in national policymaking.
       Of course, that doesn't mean that the appropriations 
     process has always been easy. In fact, at times, it has been 
     downright testy.
       For example, on a hot day in August of 1950, as the Senate 
     continued working past its targeted adjournment date, tempers 
     inside the committee room got to be nearly as hot as the 
     scorching summer sun.
       ``The Senate is beginning to show signs of overwork,'' 
     observed newspaper columnist Jack Anderson. ``Sessions are 
     growing longer,'' he wrote, ``and tempers shorter.''
       Among the confrontations that caught Anderson's eye was a 
     battle between two of the Hill's best known curmudgeons, 
     Tennessee senator Kenneth McKellar and Missouri 
     Representative Clarence Cannon.
       They were the chairmen of the Senate and House 
     Appropriations Committees and for years they had argued 
     bitterly over federal spending. That battle reached a climax 
     in 1950.
       ``A gavel-bashing, name-calling clash between 81-year-old . 
     . . McKellar, and 71-year-

[[Page S3849]]

     old . . . Cannon, was broken up . . . just short of physical 
     violence,'' noted the Washington Post on August 19, 1950.
       While meeting in conference, Senator McKellar had sharply 
     commented on Cannon's personality, using language peppered 
     with words such as blind, stupid, and pigheaded.
       Infuriated, Cannon sprang from his chair, rushed towards 
     McKellar, and shouted, ``I've taken all I'm going to 
     [take].'' Startled but defiant, McKellar snatched the gavel 
     and tried to rap it on Cannon's head.
       ``In the nick of time,'' the Post reported, a staff member 
     ``grabbed Cannon'' and ``two senators seized the gavel from 
     McKellar.''
       Peace was restored . . . for the moment.
       A decade later, another chairman of the Appropriations 
     Committee--Senator Carl Hayden of Arizona--fought so bitterly 
     with old Clarence Cannon that the two houses of Congress had 
     to establish neutral ground.
       Like McKellar, Hayden was an old hand at appropriations. 
     With 50 years of congressional service behind him, his 
     skillful management of spending bills had earned him the 
     label, ``the third senator from every state.''
       But Hayden's notable length of service had not prepared him 
     for Clarence Cannon. In the House since 1923, Cannon knew his 
     way around bicameral disputes.
       This was a battle of the titans on Capitol Hill.
       ``Government agencies are frantically going broke,'' wrote 
     a reporter in June of 1962, just because two members of 
     Congress ``keep yelling at each other.''
       For months, Cannon and Hayden had delayed action on 
     legislation while they argued over seemingly petty issues.
       The press dubbed it the ``Battle of the Octogenarians,'' 
     but underlying this crisis was a dispute as old as Congress 
     itself.
       Was the Senate truly the ``upper house''?
       Fueling the argument was a long-simmering House resentment 
     of the Senate's general air of superiority, an attitude which 
     had resulted in some rather high-handed practices.
       For example, for nearly two centuries, all conference 
     committees had been chaired by senators, and such meetings 
     had always been held on the Senate side of the Capitol.
       In 1962, the House decided to challenge this old custom of 
     senatorial privilege. Leading the charge was Appropriations 
     Chairman Clarence Cannon.
       Defending the Senate's prerogatives--Carl Hayden.
       Cannon informed Hayden that he refused to make the trek to 
     the Senate side of the Hill for conference meetings. From now 
     on, he insisted, senators had to walk to the House side--at 
     least half of the time! Furthermore, he demanded that he be 
     allowed to chair half of the conferences.
       Hayden countered. In that case, he insisted, the Senate 
     would initiate half of all appropriations bills.
       The resulting stalemate lasted for months. Meeting after 
     meeting produced no agreement. The appropriations process 
     remained stalled well past the end of the fiscal year, while 
     government agencies scrambled for funds.
       Finally, Carl Hayden called for a truce. He suggested a 
     special meeting to be held on neutral ground and turned to 
     Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield for a solution.
       Needless to say, Mansfield was anxious to end the battle. 
     He searched for a proper meeting space. Finally, he opened 
     EF-100, a small room located off the crypt, in the exact 
     center of the Capitol.
       ``I even agreed to have it surveyed,'' Mansfield explained, 
     ``so that the conference table would not be so much as an 
     eighth of an inch more on one side than the other.''
       Presented with this option, Chairman Cannon agreed to meet 
     in conference, but stood firm in his demands to co-chair 
     meetings.
       To end the crisis, and probably urged on by Mansfield, Carl 
     Hayden relented. The Senate sacrificed a few of its cherished 
     privileges, and government operations returned to normal.
       Pundits dismissed the battle as a tempest in a teapot, but 
     more astute observers recognized that this high-profile 
     battle was another chapter in an on-going struggle over the 
     shared constitutional powers of the Senate and the House.
       Finally, this evening I would like to highlight an 
     important but mostly forgotten milestone in this committee's 
     history.
       Since 1867, about 300 senators have served on the 
     committee. Of those 300, a mere dozen have been women. The 
     first woman to serve was, of course, Margaret Chase Smith of 
     Maine, who joined the committee in 1953.
       As you all know, in 2012, Senator Barbara Mikulski--the 
     second woman to serve on the committee--became the first 
     woman to chair it.
       Those are both major milestones in Senate history.
       Here's one more.
       Way back in 1911, a woman served as chief clerk to the 
     Senate Appropriations Committee.
       Her name was Leona Wells. She joined the Senate's clerical 
     staff in 1901 and remained on the payroll for 25 years. I 
     believe her to be the first woman to hold a top committee 
     position in the Senate.
       Born in Illinois in 1877, Wells moved to Wyoming when she 
     turned 21, because this young suffragist could cast a vote in 
     Wyoming. There she met Senator Francis E. Warren, whose 
     patronage brought her to Washington.
       As chair of the Military Affairs Committee, Senator Warren 
     appointed Wells to the committee's clerical staff When he 
     became chairman of Appropriations in 1911, he brought Wells 
     with him, giving her the position of chief clerk--although it 
     appears that the Senate never officially gave her that title.
       At the time, Leona Wells was unusual--a well-paid 
     professional woman on Capitol Hill. In fact, she was so 
     unusual that she attracted media attention.
       Leona Wells ``is probably the most envied woman in 
     government service,'' reported the Boston Globe in an article 
     titled ``Uncle Sam's Highest Salaried Woman.''
       Not only did she earn a good salary, the Globe noted, but 
     she is ``the first woman employee of the Senate to be placed 
     in charge of the affairs of a big committee.''
       Wells scouted new territory for female staff, but one area 
     remained off limits--the Senate Chamber. When Chairman Warren 
     was on the floor doing committee business, Wells had to wait 
     outside.
       Male committee clerks freely entered the chamber, but the 
     Senate was not yet ready to admit a female staffer. Instead, 
     as the Globe reported, Wells waited ``just outside the swing 
     doors of the chamber . . . and kept the door an inch or two 
     ajar that she might hear everything that went on inside.''
       Leona Wells is largely forgotten now, but her service on 
     the Appropriations Committee opened a door so other women 
     could follow. Her story is also part of this committee's 
     history.
       This has been an all-too-brief summary of the history of 
     this important committee, but I hope it will serve as a 
     reminder.
       Just like Francis Warren or Carl Hayden or even Leona 
     Wells, all of you--chairs, vice chairs, members, and staff--
     are part of the history of the Committee on Appropriations.

                          ____________________