Curley: ‘It’s not ours to give’ — a lesson from Davy Crockett for today’s politicians

There was a fire that broke out in Georgetown, Washington, DC, and a couple of — this is crazy — but a couple of members of the House saw the fire, and they raced over there and helped put it out as best they possibly could. They watched as some of the people were coming out with nothing more than the clothes on their backs.

These three or four congressmen were quite disturbed by it, so the next day, they went back into the House, and they proposed a bill; $20,000 was the bill.

And what they were going to do is they were going to help the people who had lost so much in the homes that had burned there, in Georgetown.

Seemed like a good thing at first, right?

But then, one of the congressmen was out looking for votes, and he ran into a farmer, and the farmer was near his plow, and the farmer walked away from the plow and came over and said, “I know who you are, and I’m not going to vote for you. I voted for you before, but I’m not going to vote for you now.”

And the congressman sort of looked at him, “Well, if I had your vote before, what did I do to lose it? What happened? What have I done to somehow not be able to have you vote for me again?”

Well, the farmer went on to explain, “Listen, I don’t leave my house very much. I don’t leave this field very much because I have to tend to this. But I do read the papers coming out of Washington, and I was quite hurt by the fact that you don’t seem to really understand the U.S. Constitution. I saw where the houses had burned in Georgetown, and I saw that you recommended and passed and voted for and passed $20,000 to be given to those people. You had no right to do that. No right at all. The Constitution doesn’t give you the power. Maybe if you want to give the money to yourself, you can, but you can’t do that. You have an incredibly powerful instrument there, which is to take from one and give to another, and you have violated the Constitution. I’m not questioning your heart. I’m questioning your brain.”

And then that same congressman, about a year later, was sitting in the House. They were about to vote on another bill, a very similar bill. In this particular case, they felt sorry for the widow of a guy who had served in the Navy with many honors. Well, he had served, and then he continued to serve as well in government, and they paid him for it.

Well, somebody got up and gave a great big speech about how sad it was that the widow was left behind. And just before the vote happened — it looked like it was definitely going to pass — this man rose up, the same guy that met the guy in the field and said, “Mr. Speaker, as much as I respect the memory of the deceased and as much sympathy for the suffering of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this house, but we must not permit our respect for the dead and the sympathy for part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice, to balance the living.”

Then he went on to say, “We don’t owe this guy anything. He worked, and we paid him. We don’t owe him anything.”

He basically said, “Mr. Speaker, I have said that we have the right to give as much money as we want of our own. I’m 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 does the same, it will amount to the bill being asked.”

That man’s name was David Crockett.

What would Davy Crockett say today?

Crockett basically said it’s not ours to give. Imagine that if they had that same sort of perspective today, rather than taking from one group and giving to another group, we wouldn’t have the gigantic debt that we have. The fact that, would you say about 40% of the money that is being transferred from one person to another, and then the debt is paid on that, which is about 66% to 70% of the total amount of bills that need to be paid, money that needs to be taken from one and given to another.

I wish I had Davy Crockett’s speech when I was a city council member, and they said, “Hey, we have a job for you over the weekend, if you’d like it.”

They handed me a great big binder. In the binder were all sorts of nonprofits that were looking for different grants. I was flipping through it, and all of a sudden I was like, “Well, that seems like a good group of people.” And, “Oh, there’s mittens for kittens that seems worthy. How about this one?”

So how am I gonna decide which one we’re gonna give the money to? And then all of a sudden it hit me — maybe it was old Davy Crocky.

I was sitting there, and I thought, “OK, I know what I’m gonna do,” so I went back in on that Tuesday meeting at the Sammamish City Council, and they said, “What is your recommendation?”

I said, “I have a recommendation. I recommend that we do absolutely nothing. I know we gave $150,000 last year, but this is not our money to give. These are all great charities, and if we all want to give to the individual charities, that’s fine, but for us to collect the money from everybody there in Sammamish, and then decide — we decide — somehow, with our generosity, that we should give all this money to these charities when this is not our money to give.”

Somebody made a motion. They said, “I have a motion that we give not $150,000, but we’re a very generous community, we give $200,000.”

And then somebody seconded it. And then they added another motion that, “No, let’s give even more money.”

I think they gave $230,000 that year, even though my motion was no money, none. It’s not ours to give.

We took the money to fill in potholes and get dead deer off the roads, and take care of the general stuff. But why are we giving to charities? It made no sense.

I looked it up to see how much money they gave this year — $680,000.

Let’s take the money and give it to someone else. Make ourselves feel better.

It’s not ours to give; it’s not our money, but politicians love taking from one group, or a great big group, and giving to a smaller group so that they can keep their job. I’m telling you something. It just keeps going.

So they’re back at 1827, when they were just giving out money to make everybody feel better. And they do it over there in Sammamish, and they do it all over the place. You look at all these people who are elected and given the power to take money from you, and then, in their heart, decide, “Well, this seems like a really good cause.”

That’s not what’s in the U.S. Constitution.

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