Political continuity since 1812 - "Every one is for taxing every body except himself and his Constituents."

From the excellent Perilous Fight by Stephen Budiansky, an account of the naval aspects of the War of 1812. Page 275.

No one wanted to be in Washington in the summer, but especially not that summer of 1813. In June President Madison was struck ill with dysentery and for five weeks lay bedridden at his home, Montpelier, at times not expected to live; then for months afterward he recuperated slowly, trying to manage affairs of government by correspondence as he put off his return to Washington as long as he might. Secretary of State Monroe was in Virginia; Secretary of War John Armstrong was in upstate New York trying and failing to reconcile his warring generals Wilkinson and Hampton; and so William Jones was effectively left to run the whole government in Washington and push a desperately needed and desperately unpopular tax bill through Congress.

Even leading Republican newspapers were now at last acknowledging that there was no choice but to impose a new internal tax to pay for the war. The Treasury had just barely managed to raise a $16 million loan to cover the 1813 budget, but it had been touch and go; only by offering a discount of 12 percent was the loan finally subscribed, and two-thirds of the entire amount was taken by three wealthy merchants, John Jacob Astor among them. The punishing discount rate was a further reminder that there was little future market for United States government paper without some assurance that there would be at least some government revenues to eventually pay back investors.

But financial reality was one thing, politics another. The Twelfth Congress had refused to even consider a tax measure all through the winter, then just before adjourning in March 1813 it had dumped the problem on its successor, passing a resolution summoning the new Thirteenth Congress to meet six months early, at a special session in late May, to take up the matter.

And so week after week the prematurely summoned congressmen met in their stifling chambers, getting nowhere. “Every one is for taxing every body,” said John W. Eppes, Jefferson’s son-in-law and the chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means, “except himself and his Constituents.” At the beginning of the special session it was “hotter, in this house, than purgatory,” remarked one congressman, and by July it was more like hell: “the doors were closed and we were boiled and roasted three hours longer; almost to suffocation.”