Bill for the Benefit of the Indigent Insane

The bill was advocated by activist Dorothea Dix.

The Bill for the Benefit of the Indigent Insane (also called the Land-Grant Bill For Indigent Insane Persons, formally "An act making a grant of public lands to the several States for the benefit of indigent insane persons") was proposed legislation of the 33rd United States Congress that would have established psychiatric hospitals providing mental health treatment to impoverished individuals using federal land grants to state governments. The bill offered smaller land grants to support physically disabled Americans.

This legislation was vetoed by President Franklin Pierce.

The bill was the signature initiative of activist Dorothea Dix, who initially proposed allocating five million acres (20,000 km²). Between that request on June 23, 1848, and April 1854, Congress doubled the land grant. The main provision of the bill was to set aside 12,225,000 acres (49,473 km²) of federal land: 10,000,000 acres (40,469 km²) would be given for the benefit of the approximately 30,000 Americans suffering from mental disorders. ^[1] The remaining land would be sold for the benefit of the "blind, deaf, and dumb" with proceeds distributed to state governments to build and maintain asylums. ^[2]

Veto

The bill was vetoed on May 3, 1854 by President Franklin Pierce, the first of his nine vetoes. ^[3] Echoing arguments made by then-Senator Jefferson Davis in February 1851, Pierce argued that an interpretation of the Taxing and Spending Clause allowing federal welfare spending would infringe on the states' police powers. ^[4] Pierce conceded that in March 1819 and April 1826, Congress had made similar land grants to the Connecticut and Kentucky state governments, respectively, for asylums to educate physically disabled individuals. However, Pierce argued that this bill would be widening federal welfare spending to an unjustifiably national scope. ^[5]

In response, Senator John M. Clayton argued that presidential vetoes should be limited to rejecting unconstitutional legislation and that Congress' "power of the purse" was sufficiently broad to support this spending. Clayton noted that Pierce had voted for the Deposit Act of 1836 while in Congress, allowing the US Department of the Treasury to distribute its surplus funds to state governments. Congress' authority to spend on goals beyond its enumerated powers was further supported by Thomas Jefferson's past advocacy for federal spending on infrastructure. ^[6]

Senator Solomon Foot similarly argued that prior federal spending on disaster response showed that Congress had broad spending authority as long as states remained capable of further police power legislation. ^[1] However, on July 6, 1854, only 21 of the necessary 32 senators voted to override Pierce's veto, dooming the legislation. ^[3]

Legacy

Republicans subsequently passed the Morrill Land-Grant Acts of 1862 and 1890 to provide state governments with land that could be sold to fund the creation of colleges and universities. ^[4] However, Pierce's veto established a general precedent against federal welfare spending, which lasted over 90 years until challenged by 1930s New Deal programs. During the intervening period, impoverished individuals suffering from mental health conditions were largely forced to rely on state poorhouses and private charity. ^[4] Libertarian economist Lawrence Reed has praised Pierce's veto as necessary to prevent pork barrel spending. ^[7]

In the Supreme Court's 1937 decision in Steward Machine Co. v. Davis , Justice James Clark McReynolds' dissent primarily relied on Pierce's veto message to argue against upholding the 1935 Social Security Act for imposing federal payroll taxes to fund unemployment insurance. ^[8]

In 1946, National Mental Health Act established a federal role in mental health treatment with the National Institute of Mental Health, operating within the US Department of Health and Human Services. ^[9]

References

1. Foot, Solomon (21 February 1854). "Senate Debates On The Land-Grant Bill For Indigent Insane Persons". Congressional Globe . Retrieved 12 February 2025.
2. Tiffany, Francis. (1890). The Life of Dorothea Lynde Dix. Boston: The Riverside Press. pp. 180.
3. Senate Library; Harness, Gregory (February 1992). Presidential Vetoes, 1789-1988 (PDF). Washington, D.C.: The U.S. Government Printing Office. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 23, 2020.
4. Manning, S. W. (March 1962). "The Tragedy of the Ten-Million-Acre Bill". Social Service Review. 36 (1). The University of Chicago Press: 44–50. doi:10.1086/641182. JSTOR   30016764. S2CID   145428238.
5. Pierce, Franklin (3 May 1854). "Veto Message". The American Presidency Project . Retrieved 12 February 2025.
6. Clayton, John M. (1854). The Indignant Insane. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Globe.
7. Reed, Lawrence W. "Why Franklin Pierce Vetoed a Bill to Earmark 10 Million Acres of Federal Land for 'Indigent Insane Persons'". Foundation for Economic Education . Retrieved 2025-02-12.
8. Fishkin, Joseph; Forbath, William E. (2022). The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp. 304–305. ISBN   9780674980624.
9. Herman, Ellen (1995). "The National Mental Health Act of 1946". The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 246–250.