298 DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE FLORIDA CANAL

 Mr. CL~.a. Mr. President, I desire to make a point of order against the
 amendment. I understood the Senator from Florida desired to address the
 Senate on it.
 Mr. VADNmBEno. Several other things are going to happen before the amend-
 ment is voted on.
 Mr. KING. I hope so.
 Mr. FLircCHz. Very well; let them happen. I shall be ready for them.
 Mr. CLAx.. I make the point of order.
 Mr. FLrrcRE. Let the Senator present his point of order. I cannot see any
 foundation at all for it, and the Committee on Appropriations held that the
 amendment was not subject to a point of order; but the Senator may present
 it if he desires.
 Mr. CLArn. Mr. President, this matter involves a complete departure from
 the practice heretofore uniformly followed by the Senate, so far as I know,
 and authorizes the Bureau of the Budget in the future to make authoriza-
 tions for appropriations for all matters not previously authorized by law.
 Before a matter of such importance, and one which will set such a precedent
 for the future, Is discussed, I think there ought to be a quorum present; and
 I suggest the absence of a quorum.
 The PasmromNo Omrcm. The absence of a quorum having been suggested, the
 clerk will call the roll.
 The legislative clerk called the roll, and the following Senators answered to
 their names:
 Adams, Austin, Bachman, Bailey, Barkley, Benson, Bilbo, Black, Bone, Borah,
 Brown, Bulkley, Bulow, Burke, Byrd, Byrnes, Capper, Caraway, Carey, Clark,
 Connally, Copeland, Costigan, Cousens, Davis, Donahey, Duffy, Fletcher,
 Frazier, George, Gerry, Gibson, Glass, Gore, Guffey, Hale, Harrison, Hatch,
 Hayden, Holt, Johnson, Keyes, King, La Follette, Lewis, Logan, Lonergan,
 Long, McAdoo, McGill, McKellar, McNary, Metealf, Minton, Moore, Murphy,
 Murray, Neely, Norbeck, Norris, O'Mahoney, Overton, Pittman, Pope, Radcliffe,
 Reynolds, Robinson, Russell, Schwellenbach, Sheppard, Shipstead, Smith,
 Stelwer, Thomas of Oklahoma, Thomas of Utah, Townsend, Trammell, Truman,
 Tydings, Vandenberg, Van Nuys, Wagner, Wheeler, and White.
 Mr. Lmwns I rise to announce the absence of the Senator from Alabama
 S[Mr. BankheadJ because of Illness.
 The Senator from Nevada [Mr. McCarran], the Senator from Massachusetts
 [Mr. Coolidge], the Senator from Connecticut [Mr. Maloney], the Senator from
 New Mexico [Mr. Chaves], and my colleague [Mr. Dieterich] are detained on
 omcial business.
 The Senator from Arizona [Mr. Ashurst] is engaged before the Judiciary
 Committee.
 The PnBamNe Orrroz Eighty-four Senators have.answered to their names.
 A quorum is present.
 Mr. CLua. Mr. President, I desire to address myself very briefly purely to
 the point of order.
 In what I shall say upon the point of order there will be no expression of
 opinion whatsoever as to the merits of the project proposed in the amendment
 of the Senator from Florida. Certainly, so far as my feeling toward the Sen-
 ator from Florida is concerned, it is simply one of affection; and as to the
 project itself, I do not profess to have any Information, other than such as has
 been derived from a few newspaper articles on the project which I have read.
 But, to my mind, the question involved in this point of order is the most Im-
 portant parliamentary proposition which has come before the Senate of the
 United States since I have been a Member of it, and one of the most important
 parliamentary problems presented to either branch of Congress during my
 lifetime.
 Briefly, the proposition embodied in the amendment of the Senator from
 Florida goes directly to the very fundamentals of the universal practice in this
 country, which has required authorizations by law before items of appropria-
 tion may be ofered on general appropriation bills
 I do not think the importance of the precedent we aa to set here today can pos-
 sibly be overestimated. Without going into the meits of whether or not the
 Government of the United States should construct the Florida Canal-which
 is a question of fact to be determined on its merits by the Congress of the
 United States-the question presented here today is whether the Director of
 the Budget, by his mere act, has a right to make items of appropriation author-
 ized on general appropriation bills, without any other previous authority of
law.