recognition of Filipino independence. The bill was enacted over President Herbert Hoover's veto. However, the law was rejected by the Philippines legislature, and the Tydings–McDuffie Act (authored by Millard Tydings, a Maryland Democrat), was instead passed by Congress and accepted by the Philippines legislature. Freedom of the press Cutting raised the debate on the national level about the government's censorship powers. Via tariff bills dating back to the nineteenth century, the U.S. government, through the Customs Service, had the power to confiscate "obscene" materials arriving to the country. A tariff bill introduced in 1929 sought to expand this power by modifying Section 305 to prohibit printed materials suggesting treason or threatening the life of the president. Senator Cutting, inspired by the complaints of a constituent, opposed the change and attacked Section 305 in its entirety as "irrational, unsound, and un-American." Through several impassioned speeches, Cutting suggested eliminating Section 305. Ultimately, he was forced to compromise and introduced an amendment removing the references to treason. The amendment passed by only two votes and Cutting received widespread public praise from publishers, librarians, booksellers, authors and civil liberties organizations. As the tariff bill moved toward final confirmation, various senators, notably Reed Smoot of Utah, attempted to restore Section 305 to its original state, while others proposed further draconian measures. Ultimately, portions of Smoot's amendments were combined with those of other senators to create a compromise. Cutting's efforts to create a national debate about censorship were successful, but are now forgotten because the 1929 tariff bill became known as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. Roosevelt's New Deal and the Chicago plan Crossing party lines and supporting Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election, Cutting played a key role in the political struggles over the reform of banking which Roosevelt undertook while dealing with the Great Depression, and which resulted in the Banking Reform Acts of 1933 and 1935. As a supporter of the Chicago plan proposed by economist Irving Fisher and others at the University of Chicago, Cutting was among a handful of influential senators who might have been able to remove from the private banks their ability to manipulate the money supply by enforcing a 100 percent reserve requirement for all credit creation, as stipulated in the Chicago plan. His death in an airliner crash cut short what may have been his most enduring legacy to the nation. Death and legacy On May