by Jake Berensen

Created on: June 22, 2007   Last Updated: March 19, 2008

Maybe a little but only as much as he fails to use his personal wealth towards his goal. There is a story told by former Congressman Davy Crocket, yes the one that supposedly "killed him a bar when he was only three" that part of his story is questionable but it is a historical fact that he was a Congressman later on in his life. Anyway this was in the early days of American government using tax payer money to help the poor and needy. Here is the entire story pasted from another site, it is old enough that I doubt it has a copyright on it and it proves my point.

"One day in the House of Representatives, a bill was brought up to appropriate money for the benefit of the widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in its support. The Speaker was just about to put the question to a vote when Colonel David Crockett arose:

"Mr. Speaker, I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, 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 to so 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 bills asks."

He took his seat. Nobody replied. The bill was put upon its passage and, instead of passing unanimously, as was generally supposed and as, no doubt, it would but for that speech, it received but few votes and was

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