For my part I am strongly of the opinion that the grouping of these three types of Government activity-health, education, and social security in a single agency and in a single department is an arrangement materially advantageous to all three and to the people for whose benefit they have been established. I think it would be a serious mistake to separate them.

I want to add this: that if we separate them now, we would have certain grave difficulties in setting up separate departments for health and education at this time. Education only has about 800 employees and it is obviously not of the size where it could be made a separate department at this time. I am perfectly frank in admitting that the time might come when I would urge the establishment of a separate department of health or of education or social security. I do not think that time is as of today; and until that time I think we have got to recognize that there is a relationship between these different activities.

The close relationship of health to both education and social security is perhaps the most striking and the most readily illustrated of all. A major function of the Public Health Service is its conduct and stimulation and support of medical research directed toward discovering causes of, and improved methods of diagnosis and treatment for, diseases like cancer, heart diseases, mental diseases, arthritis, and rheumatism, all of which take such a heavy toll of life and cause such widespread suffering. Medical research is conducted for the most part in the educational institutions of our country, and the role of Government in conducting, stimulating, and supporting medical research involves continual relationships with institutions of higher education. Again, the whole field of Federal activity in the improvement of child health involves relationships with our schools where preventive health measures are often most effectively and economically applied. Both Houses of Congress have lately approved Federal aid for the medical care of recipients of public assistance, and the Public Health Service and the Social Security Administration are presently cooperating in planning the administration of this program. Again, the entire field of special aids to handicapped persons directed toward helping them to adjust themselves to their handicaps, tiding them over short or extended periods of unemployment, and enabling them to live fuller and more nearly normal lives, is a mixture of social security, welfare services, vocational training, and health.

To isolate our great programs of medical research and preventive medicine from the Federal agencies responsible for programs in the fields of social security, welfare, vocational rehabilitation, and education would, I am certain, greatly weaken the effectiveness of all these programs.

Last year your committee reported unfavorably on Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1949 by which the Federal Security Agency would have been made a Department of Welfare; and the Senate rejected the plan. This year's plan represents a sincere and considered attempt to meet the principal objections which your committee and various Senators in the Senate debate made to the earlier plan. I think plan No. 27 meets those objections insofar as it is possible to meet them and still accomplish the basic objective of giving departmental standing to these important programs relating to health, education, and security. While the new plan represents a compromise, I think it is a good compromise.

Reorganization Plan No. 27 adopts the philosophy of the FulbrightTaft bill of the Eightieth Congress (S. 140) which this committee reported favorably and unanimously to the Senate. This same bill is now before your committee, having been introduced by Senator McCarthy as S. 2060. Plan No. 27 and the Fulbright-Taft and McCarthy bills establish essentially the same kind of a department. All three would group in the new Department all of the programs now administered in the Federal Security Agency. All three would assure to the health, education, and social-security programs, as they would be administered in the new Department, equal status and a considerable measure of independence and autonomy by reason of their statutory status as organization entities in the new Department. Under all three the major units of the new Department-the health unit, the education unit, and the social-security unit would be headed by a Presidential appointee who would be responsible directly to the Secretary. Under plan No. 27, the heads of these three units have the same titles as they now have in the Federal Security Agency, that is, Surgeon General of the Public Health Service, Commissioner of Education, and Commissioner of Social Security, while under the Fulbright-Taft and the McCarthy bills they would be called Under Secretaries for Health, for Education, for Public Welfare, respectively.

I want to say as to that that, at the time the preparation of the plan was under consideration, this particular point was discussed with the Surgeon General, the Commissioner of Education, and the Commissioner of Social Security. They were asked about embodying into the plan a provision to make them Under Secretaries or Assistant Secretaries, because from the point of view of the drafters of the plan, what title they held was not particularly important. All three of these gentlemen unanimously preferred to maintain their same titles for the simple reason that they felt that if they became Under Secretaries or Assistant Secretaries they would become more political and they wanted to remain in the professional status as much as possible, even though it would have involved, perhaps, higher salaries. They preferred to maintain their professional position as much as possible. The present plan is, in general, similar to the bills in the specification of these officers' duties, that is, the Commissioners, and in the assurance that they will be responsible directly to the Secretary. That provision was put in to meet the very point that Senator Taft made that these people should be allowed to report directly to the Secretary. I submit in all earnestness that there are no essential differences between plan No. 27 and the Fulbright-Taft and McCarthy bills, and I believe that this plan deserves the support of all those who have given their support to those two bills.

I might say with reference to one question or subject matter that Mr. Taft dealt with, namely, that power and supervision the new Secretary would have over these different units, the fact of the matter is that his bill gave the new Secretary supervision and direction over the Under Secretaries in just the same way that we are providing here, that the new Secretary would have supervision and direction over the Surgeon General, the Commissioner of Education, and the Commissioner of Social Security, and we put in a specific provision that those Commissioners would report directly to the Secretary.

Several objections of varying relevancy and importance were made to last year's Reorganization Plan No. 1. One of these, the "sepa

ratist" objection, I have already discussed. I would like to discuss the most important of the other objections in the light of their applicability or inapplicability to plan No. 27 and in the light of their intrinsic merits.

These objections have been stated in about as many different ways as it is possible to state them, and as often happens the same objection has been presented in multiple form as though it were many objections. Perhaps the best classification of these objections that I have seen is the classification included in your committee's report on Reorganization Plan No. 1 of last year.

One objection to last year's plan went to the provision in section 2 (b) of that plan which would have transferred to the new Secretary, and consolidated in him, all functions, duties, and powers now vested by statute in the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service and the Commissioner of Education, or in the Public Health Service and the Office of Education. Those who objected to these provisions did so on the ground that they would lead to, or at least permit, the subordination of health or education, or both, to welfare; that they would destroy such independence or autonomy as the Public Health Service and the Office of Education presently enjoy; that they would lead to a disregard of professional interests and of professional judgment in the administration of health and education programs, subordinating them to lay interests and lay control or to welfare interests or welfare control; that they would greatly enhance the Secretary's authority to warp the Government's health and education programs to his own ulterior motives and interests, and this particularly with reference to his succession to authority now conferred by law on the Office of Education and the Public Health Service to make studies and investigations in health and education matters and to report on them to the President, the Congress, and the people; and last, that these provisions of Reorganization Plan No. 1 represented the extreme departure from the basic principle incorporated in the Fulbright-Taft and McCarthy bills, of equal status and a measure of independence within the new Department for the health and education programs and for the professional people responsible for administering them.

I submit that plan No. 27 is not open to this type of objection, however stated, for the simple reason that the provisions in the earlier plan for centralization of all authority in the new Secretary have been left out of plan No. 27. Instead plan No. 27 specifically preserves the statutory status of the Public Health Service and the Office of Education and gives to their heads statutory functions and powers corresponding exactly to those now exercised by them. These provisions render it impossible for the new Secretary to transfer any of the functions now vested by law in these units, or their heads, to the welfare unit, or otherwise to subordinate them to welfare.

Other provisions of plan No. 27—those for Presidential appointment of the heads of the health, education, and social security units, the provisions assuring that these heads are professionally qualified in their respective fields, the provisions that these heads will be directly responsible to the Secretary, as distinguished from being responsible to an Under Secretary or Assistant Secretary, and the equality and similarity of all these provisions as respects each of the three major organizational entities in the new Department-all combine to assure insofar as it is possible to do so that they will enjoy in the new

Department a degree of permanence, of equality, and of autonomy at least equal to, and in some respects greater than, they enjoy under existing law.

Another type of objection which was made repeatedly to Reorganization Plan No. 1 and is also being made to plan No. 27 is based on the alleged nonconformity of the plan with recommendations of the Hoover Commission pertaining to the reorganization of various Government activities in the fields of health, education, welfare, and security. These objections range all the way from the failure to transfer the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the new Department to the failure to establish a United Medical Administration.

It is, of course, obvious to anyone that neither Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1949 nor plan No. 27 purports to carry out all the numerous recommendations of the Hoover Commission which relate to health, education, and social security functions of the Government. However, the most important of these recommendations is effectuated by this plan; that is, the elevation of the programs now conducted within the Federal Security Agency to departmental status.

In one respect this year's plan deviates from a recommendation of the Hoover Commission with which last year's plan fully conformed. Plan No. 27 sets up a "holding company" form of organization for the new Department with statutory functions, duties, and powers vested in subordinate units and officials, as distinguished from the "integrated type" of organization recommended by the Hoover Commission. This deviation was necessary to conform the plan to the philosophy of the Fulbright-Taft and McCarthy bills, and was for the very purpose of meeting the views of the Senate on this point.

Admittedly, also, this plan does not include provisions which 'would effect all the various transfers to and from the Federal Security Agency which were recommended in various reports of the Hoover Commission. It does not, for example, transfer the Bureau of Indian Affairs from the Department of the Interior to the new Department, nor does it divide the administration of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, and similar laws, between the Department of Agriculture and an independent medical agency. Such reorganizations, if they are to be made, obviously are appropriate for disposition in separate reorganization plans, just as the transfers from the Federal Security Agency to the Department of Labor of the Bureau of Employment Security and the Bureau of Employees' Compensation have already been the subject of separate reorganization plans which, incidentally, have met with congressional approval notwithstanding their separate nature.

The most serious criticism on this score which was leveled at Reorganization Plan No. 1 (and which is now being made against plan 27) was that the Public Health Service and other Federal health activities now administered in the Federal Security Agency would be left in the new Department. That, it was said, conflicted with a major Hoover Commission recommendation for establishment of a United Medical Administration for the major health activities of the Federal Government, including most of the hospitals of the military departments, the hospitals and medical-care functions of the Veterans' Administration, and all the functions of the Public Health Service. I would like to analyze and discuss this criticism. briefly.

In the first place, this criticism amounts to saying that the President or the Congress should first establish a United Medical Administration along the lines of that proposed by the Hoover Commission, transferring the Public Health Service to the new agency, and then proceed to carry out the other major Hoover recommendation of elevating the remaining activities of the Federal Security Agency to departmental status. The objection thus resolves itself into an objection to the order in which the President has decided to submit reorganization plans embodying the Hoover Commission's recommendation. On its face, this seems to me a position difficult to maintain. I contended last year and I contend now that the order of proceeding is not significant, that the elevation of the Federal Security Agency to departmental status is a logical step to take first, and that this order in no way precludes or prejudges the issue as to the establishment of a United Medical Administration such as was recommended by the Hoover Commission.

Establishment of a United Medical Administration involves other Government agencies, notably the Veterans' Administration and the Department of Defense. It also involves other interested groups, notably the veterans' organizations and organizations concerned with national defense and military personnel. It is a highly controversial proposal. Furthermore, the full effectuation of the Hoover Commission recommendations in this respect would require legislation, thus indicating the desirability of effecting this proposal through normal legislative proceedings rather than pursuant to reorganization plan. Establishment of such an agency, whether through the normal statutory process or through reorganization plan, will entail protracted hearings and perhaps years of delay, judging from the rate of progress made in both Houses on the bills which have been introduced to establish such an agency.

In view of all these considerations, I think the President was entirely justified in seeking to accomplish the Hoover Commission recommendations pertaining to departmental status for the education and social security functions of the Federal Security Agency in advance of the recommendations pertaining to the United Medical Administration.

I am on record as being in opposition to the transfer of the Public Health Service, and particularly of its medical research and preventive medicine functions, to a huge organization primarily concerned with the operation of Government hospitals. I am opposed to such a transfer chiefly for two reasons: First, I believe medical research and preventive-medicine programs which now constitute by far the most important functions of the Public Health Service would inevitably be submerged in a United Medical Administration and subordinated to the far larger and more pressing but less important functions of hospital operations.

The disapproval of a reorganization plan solely because it does not contain each and every recommendation of the Hoover Commission would make it virtually impossible to approve any of the plans so far submitted. Approval of any plan would nave to be delayed until one grand master plan for the entire government was developed. This is obviously unrealistic. Assuming that the recommendations must be taken up separately, the order in which they are taken up is not a vital matter.