Oscar Callaway - U.S. Representative, 1911-1917

U.S. Representative, 1911-1917

Callaway served on the Committee on Expenditures in the Treasury Department 1912-1913, the Committee on Expenditures in the Department of the Interior 1914-1915, and then the Naval Affairs Committee for the remainder of his incumbency. Callaway's tenure was marked by outspoken fiscal conservatism and sharp questioning of every federal expenditure. This included vigorous opposition to huge river and harbor appropriations bills such as making the Trinity and Brazos rivers navigable.

Callaway came to national attention in 1916 with his opposition to the naval appropriation bill. He believed that a civilian army could repel any invasion, that battleships had been made obsolete by submarines, and that the military expenditures called for by the Preparedness Movement unduly favored munition makers. Some of his strong words against other congressmen on the subject were expunged from the Congressional Record. In 1917 he charged that leading business interests were purchasing newspapers to advance the preparedness campaign, which led his colleague J. Hampton Moore to call for an investigation. His opposition to preparedness was a major factor in his loss of the renomination bid to James Clifton Wilson, and he retired to Comanche on March 3, 1917.