[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 212 (Tuesday, December 16, 2025)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1207-E1208]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          REMEMBERING DAVY CROCKETT's NOT YOURS TO GIVE SPEECH

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CRAIG A. GOLDMAN

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, December 16, 2025

  Mr. GOLDMAN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the enduring 
wisdom of Davy Crockett's ``Not Yours to Give'' speech. Thankfully, his 
famous speech was preserved by Edward S. Ellis in The Life of Colonel 
David Crockett.
  Davy Crockett was a true American hero. He was a frontiersman who 
served in this very House. Later, Crockett would courageously fight and 
die for Texas' independence.

[[Page E1208]]

  The true story is that Crockett stood against a widely popular 
government spending bill, and lost. But his words still resonate today.
  I include in the Record, his speech from April 2, 1828, when a bill 
came before the House to appropriate money for the widow of a 
distinguished naval officer, Crockett rose on the House Floor and said:
       ``Mr. Speaker--I have as much respect for the memory of the 
     deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the 
     living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but 
     we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy 
     for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice 
     to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument 
     to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money 
     as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. 
     We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of 
     our own money as we please in charity; but as members of 
     Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the 
     public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon 
     the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, 
     the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in 
     office to the day of his death, and I have never heard that 
     the government was in arrears to him.
       Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot, 
     without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as 
     the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority 
     to appropriate it as a charity. Mr. Speaker, I have said we 
     have the right to give as much money of our own as we please. 
     I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this 
     bill, but I will give one week's pay to the object, and if 
     every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to 
     more than the bill asks.''
  Now more than ever, Crockett's words are an important reminder to us 
all. Americans deserve a government that spends their money wisely.

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