VETOED BY PRESIDENT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18711, 17 May 1924, Page 9

VETOED BY PRESIDENT.

SOLDIERS!' BONUS' KILL.

COST DEEMED EXCESSIVE.

SENSATION IN CONGRESS.

By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. (Received 9.55 p.m.) A. and N.Z.—Reuter. WASHINGTON, May 15 The President, Mr. Calvin Coolidge, has vetoed the Soldiers' Bonus Bill. In his accompanying message to Congress he estimates that the payment of the bonuses proposed would commit the nation to an average annual expenditure of '22,800,000 for the next 20 years. After that the Government would be obliged to sell £500,000,000 worth of bonds. This might jeopardise the value of Federal securities.

The outstanding advocates of the bill have announced that an attempt will be mado to repass it over the Presidential v»>to. On its original passage it received more than the necessary two-thirds vote in both Houses.

The tide of ' enthusiasm for the bill ran 60 high after Mr. Coolidge's veto wa* received, that insistent demands for an immediate vote were made in the House of Representatives.

In vetoing the measure Mr. Coolidge has followed the example of the late President Harding. Congress is likely to reconsider the bill with a view to repassing it., because many of the memDers of each House openly espouse its provisions and are apprehensive as to the opinion of their constituencies at the ensuing election.

Political observers, regard the fate of the bill as a supreme test of Mr. Coolidge's leadership of his party. The President's election campaign . managers are confident of his success, however, owing to his recent scries of overwhelmvictories in the primary elections in important sections of the country.

If the United States Senate approves it, and President Coolidge refuses his vetoboth events are now uncertain — Americans drafted for the Great War, even those who never left this side for France, will be the spoiled children of fortune, remarked an English writer recently. The Soldiers' Bonus Bill passed by the House of Representatives by a vote of 355 to 54 provides "world-war veterans}" with paid-up twenty endowment insurance policies. Payment is at the rate of 4s a day for home service, and 5s per day for oversea") duty, the first sixty days' service not to be counted, and the insurance may be converted into cash at the end of twenty years, when it is estimated that 82 per cent, of th« veterans will still be alive. This bonus bill involves an ultimate expenditure exceeding £400,000,000, the estimated cost for the first year being £27,000,000, and the cost decreasing every succeeding year to the nineteenth. President Harding had already vetoed a similar proposal as "an unjustifiable raid on the public Treasury and a money tip for war service" which many of the men themselves are disinclined to accept.