Undermining Representative Government

By Herbert Hoover, October 17, 1938

The old-fashioned pork barrel has become a whole pork-packing establishment—all under the leadership of the Executive.  And many members of the not-quite-yes group have been kept in line by beguilement with pieces of their own pork.  All this is a flagrant moral debauchery of their sacred function of safeguarding the money squeezed by taxes from the toil of the people.  The Congress is supposed to be the people’s watchdog over efficiency and honesty in the bureaucracy… It is not an imaginary idea that the yes-yes men also liked the notion of having some share in selecting 300,000 political appointees from their districts.  These yes men have a full responsibility for this debauchery of political morals to the lowest ebb in our history.