I wrote a note to purchasing and countersigned the Ollie's invoice for some $103,000. I called my secretary and told her to take Ollie and his bill down to Disbursing and have him paid off.
"Backlash"
Winston Marks
It was found to operate contrary to its intent, and to have become the facile means of getting rid of faithful Disbursing officers, instead of retaining them."
"Thomas Hart Benton"
Theodore Roosevelt
Had Benton's advice been followed, the moneys called for by the appropriation acts might have been drawn from the banks, and the Disbursing officers might have been prevented from depositing in them the sums which they drew from the treasury to provide for their ordinary expenses; thus the government would have been spared the disgrace of being obliged to stop the actual daily payments to the public servants; and the nation would not have seen such a spectacle as its rulers presented when they had not a dollar with which to pay even a day laborer, while at the same time a law was standing on the statute-book providing for the distribution of forty millions of nominal surplus.
"Thomas Hart Benton"
Theodore Roosevelt