444 DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE FLORIDA CANAL

 meant, while at the same time the Senate itself is considering a proposition
 offered by the majority leader of spending 200,000,000?
 Mr. VAnnma=. The Senator is entirely correct, and, of course, I agree with
 him. The statement he has made is clearly on the point. It is inconceivable
 to me that the consent of the Senate can be procured to an authorization of
 expenditures which at the very minimum will be $200,000,000, as I shall ulti-
 mately demonstrate, and which may be infinitely more, at a moment when it
 is so desperately dimcult even to pick up a casual few pnillion dollars to
 apply upon the existing national debt.
 Mr. President, I agree with the distinguished Senator from Arkansas [Mr.
 Bobinson], who offers the resolution, upon just one point, and that is that this
 question should be settled once and for all. Let us not "shadow-box", and let
 us not quibble about it. If the resolution shall be adopted, it will be an authori-
 zation to the President of the United States to pick his own advisers and upon
 the basis of their advice to proceed into another year of these operations. It
 would be perfectly absurd to enter upon another year of operations and then
 abandon the projects. The adopting of the resolution would settle the matter
 once and for all. The decision which the Senate now makes will be binding
 upon the Senate, so far as moral responsibility goes, in respect to subsequent
 appropriations which will be necessary from the general funds of the Govern-
 ment to complete these projects.
 Mr. COPLAND. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
 The PRZSIDENT pro tempore. Does the Senator from Michigan yield to the
 Senator from New York?
 Mr. VANwtAsmoG. I yield.
 Mr. COPxLAND. Mr. President, I am quite unwilling to go along with the Senator
 in the statement he has just made. I am in full harmony with his views regard-
 ing the projects themselves; but I made every effort in the Committee on Com-
 merce to make it clear that if these projects were adopted, as is proposed here
 today, they should not be considered binding upon the Congress or as authori-
 zations in the ordinary sense of the term.
 I know that the Senator from Michigan regards the pending proposal as
 affording the possibility of salving the conscience of some Senator and per-
 mitting him to vote for it, as it is merely a relief measure. I do not feel that
 way about it. The very fact that these are not authorized projects and that
 provision is not made for their continuance in the future by reason of authori-
 zations is to me conclusive that we ought not to adopt this amendment now,
 because to me it is unthinkable that we should spend another $10,000,000 to dig
 out Florida "snow", as they call the sand down there, and $9,000,000 more upon
 Quoddy Bay, because I cannot conceive it possible, in the absence of authoriza-
 tion now, that there should be a continuance of the projects in the future. So
 by adopting the amendment we simply make a great scar upon the face of the
 fair State of Florida, without any hope in the future of the completion of that
 work, and at the same time we pour $9,000,000 into Passamaquoddy Bay, and
 we will not complete the work in the future. Those are considerations which
 make it impossible for me to think of voting for this amendment, because, as
 I regard it, it would be a sad waste, an immediate waste, of $19,000,000 of
 the people's money. But I rose to say specifically that I do not agree with the
 Senator from Michigan that this is an authorization which means that in the
 future there will be further appropriations to complete these grotesque projects.
 Mr. VAqDDwmIa. Mr. President, I am obliged to the Senator from New York
 for his testimony; I never quarrel with anybody who is going to vote my way
 about why he is going to vote my way; but I insist that, so far as I am con-
 cerned, if I were to vote for this resolution and as a result of my vote another
 $10,000,000 were to be spent upon the canal this year, and another $5,000,000
 were to be spent upon Quoddy this year, I would feel 12 months from today,
 when the next appropriations are asked, that I was morally bound "to go
 along." It seems to me that there is no escape from that logic. The Senator
 from New York may disagree with the logic, but I am happy that we completely
 and without reservation agree that the resolution should be defeated. My point
 is, however, that this is our conclusive hour of decision; and we cannot avoid
 it. We cannot send it by proxy to the President and to some of his self-selected
 engineers. This is the time and hour when we decide whether we are willing
 to put our congressional responsibility behind these two undertakings; and that
 is the reason why I propose that Senators shall know a little something about
 what these undertakings are, in reality, before they commit themselves to any
such responsibility. The resolution itself, I freely concede, is a plausible, plus,