Date: November 28, 1924
Location: Washington, DC
(Original document available here)
I don’t know that there are any special recommendations that I can make to the Senate regarding the ratification Of the Isle of Pines treaty. I think that has been pending since 1904. The State Department is in favor of its ratification. I hope it will be ratified.
Senator Borah came in to see me this morning about the time the Cabinet was going into session, so I didn’t talk much with him. I asked him to come in this afternoon. I wanted to talk with him about pending legislation, to see if he had any suggestions he wished to make to me about it. There was nothing special about the conference, just a matter of general discussion about things. I don’t recall that we came to any specific conclusions. I was talking with him about the contents of my message, in part.
May we ask when you will release the message to the press?
Well, I think it is going to come out this afternoon. I don’t know but what you already have it.
Yes we have.
I am going to send up this message to the Congress. I spoke to this Congress when it assembled last fall. I am not certain whether I would go up if I was planning to be here. I think it is the plan of the Senate to adjourn over for two days on account of the deaths of Senators that have occurred since the last session, and as I am planning to go away Wednesday I couldn’t very well go up. Very likely when the new Congress comes in next year I may feel that I would like to go up with my message. I haven’t decided about that.
I don’t know as I can give you anything in the way of details about a legislative program. Mr. Snell and Mr. Longworth, the Speaker of the House, were in this morning to tell me of some of the pending bills, and to see whether I had any desire about which ones should be taken up first. I haven’t any particular desire about that. They are going to confer with their associates up there to see what seems best to do. They told me that they thought they would have two or three of the appropriation bills ready for almost immediate presentation to the House.
I think I can get a decision on the sugar tariff now very soon. I have the additional information I wanted to get.
I can’t give any better opinion about the probable effect of the action of the Republican Conference of the Senate than that which any one else might have. Whether it will make it easier to get a legislative program adopted at the present session, or whether it will be harder, I don’t know.
My budget message is ready. I don’t know whether it has been released or whether it is customary to release that it be released before it goes up to the Senate. There is always a message that goes with the budget. Of course the budget is the mere statement of the proposed appropriations. I think it has always been customary in every budget I have seen to accompany it with what might be known as the budget message. Perhaps I ought to call/to the fact that some things might be of importance that I have left out of my regular message to the Congress because they are in the budget message. The budget message is intended to assemble substantially all of the financial program of the President. I do not mean by that that I haven’t indicated in my written message that I would like to have an appropriation for this thing or that thing or the other, or that I did not include in my written message recommendations for projects that would ultimately call for financial program of the President is set out in the budget message.
Citation: Calvin Coolidge: Remarks by the President to Newspaper Correspondents
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