farms," and, "You milk all the cows." And, that is the way the Government does it.

The common-sense way to do it is to say, "You take charge of that farm and everything to do with it," and, "You, this son here, you take care of that farm and everything to do with it." That way you have responsibility, and you develop a feeling of conscientiousness as to what is involved.

The CHAIRMAN. Take this off the record.

(Discussion off the record.)

Senator LODGE. But, at the present time-now you can go back on the record.

Senator HICKENLOOPER. Off the record. (Discussion off the record.)

The CHAIRMAN. I wonder if we could have this on the record? Senator THYE. I think it is most important, because people who are going to examine the record from the standpoint of influencing their thinking should have this argument before them.

Senator HICKENLOOPER. I am perfectly willing for it to go on the record. I didn't mean to take it off, except that Senator Lodge had discussed a matter off the record, and I hesitated to go on the record with a disjointed discussion of something that did not appear in the record.

Senator THYE. I think Senator Hickenlooper is correct on that. He would have one statement and Senator Lodge's statement would not appear. But, I would also like to make this comment, Mr. Chairman, and also to Senator Lodge. You are entirely right.

I raise the question of commission or board. You establish an opportunity by and through that commission and board for a difference of opinion and passing the responsibility on to many people, and many people will not feel the direct individual and personal responsibility in the same way as a director who had one sole responsibility. If you want to broaden that, put the others in an advisory capacity to him, and they then would be men selected from the various types of such governmental experiences who could supplement that individual's thinking so that you would have one person responsible.

Otherwise, you would come here and you would find that so and so was complaining that the other gentlemen would not assume the responsibility and he did not have the support.

The short time that I have been here in the Senate and have had an opportunity through this committee and the Civil Service Committee to examine governmental functions, as huge as our Government is, I do not know how you arrive at answers to so many questions, and I doubt whether any of the rest of the members of Congress know. There is evidence that they do not.

So, I say there is an absolute need for a timely discussion on this very question of how are you going to reorganize the Government so that it will function in a businesslike manner and so that Congress will know and the President will know that there is somebody specifically responsible for the action of every department's expenditure of appropriations.

I think that you have just touched upon the very key to the entire governmental operation that will bring it into businesslike administration, rather than continuing hundreds of individual functions with every agency attempting to expand themselves by increasing personnel and appropriations.

I think you have the absolute key, and I hope you pursue it with all the vigor that you can put forth.

Senator MCCARTHY. That is a lot of vigor.

Senator LODGE. Not as much as it used to be.
Senator HICKENLOOPER. Mr. Chairman,

Senator MCCARTHY. Bourke-incidentally this is off the record. (Discussion off the record.)

The CHAIRMAN. On the record now.

Senator HICKENLOOPER. Senator Lodge, let me give you an illustration, not very apt but a groping illustration at least of what I am trying to get at.

The last 2 years I served on the Civil Service Committee. Last year we wrote a bill on summary adjustment of Federal pay scales in civil service. After considerable time we arrived at a formula attempting to reach this very expansion that has been going on. We considered peace was here—that is, the fighting was over-and it was high time that we took some drastic methods to curtail and reduce.

We thought that certain Government departments had to assume that responsibility. We arranged our schedules and got the recommended appropriations and amounts together, and just as we were about to adopt the program, in a conference report if you please, after it had gone through both Houses, we found that the Government department that was really responsible for giving us the figures, and they had completely forgotten over 100,000 Federal employees on the pay roll that had not been considered in our calculations at all.

Senator FERGUSON. Did you ever find out whether they actually forgot them?

Senator HICKENLOOPER. Well-I will just say they forgot it. But, here they suddenly showed up. I cannot give you the figure now, but it seems to me it was upward of almost 200,000. It was between 100,000 and 200,000 anyway-no small item.

Years ago, in the General Accounting Office, who is an agent of Congress as I understand it, not responsible to the executive branchthe Comptroller exercised a tremendous amount of supervision over expenditures and held the executive branches of government to a meticulous obedience to the law as it was written.

I am not casting any aspersions at the present Comptroller or the present set-up at all, but I do believe that there is tremendous laxity and a tremendous tendency to let things go along day by day today by way of expenditures that did not obtain sometime ago.

I think perhaps that legislatively we may have slipped into the policy of writing broad enabling acts and not specifying the limitation that the law should impose on these departments; we try to interpret them on the floor of the Senate and we go to the courts for interpretation. Under such broad enabling policies of legislation great leeway is given and the Comptroller cannot control it.

Senator MCCARTHY. May I interrupt?

Senator HICKENLOOPER. Just a moment, please. The Comptroller can find an excuse if he wants to to permit almost any activity in any department, and there is no limitation that he can depend on or that will protect him.

I am sorry, Senator. Go ahead.

Senator MCCARTHY. I want to interrupt at that particular point. I gather you were criticizing the Comptroller General.

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Senator HICKENLOOPER. No, I do not mean

Senator MCCARTHY (interposing). Now let me finish-for his inaction. I understand from going over the record that the Comptroller General has been repeatedly sending down reports such as the report which we received in the San Diego Aqueduct case showing the various branches of the Government had unlawfully expended money. But, the common practice for the past 10, 11, 12, 14 years was merely to pigeonhole them. They were given no consideration— certainly no hearings on it.

I believe Senator Aiken has established a new practice which I understand he intends to follow, and that is to carefully go into every report the Comptroller General sends to us. That, according to the Comptroller General's office, is tremendously encouraging to them and will encourage them to look into things more carefully than they did previously when the reports were pigeonholed and completely disregarded.

Senator HICKENLOOPER. At that point, because apparently I was not able to make myself clear, I am not specifically criticizing the Comptroller today—that is, his action. I am trying to say that the policies today are not the same as I recall them some years ago where the Comptroller said "yes" or "no," and had a great deal of authority in saying "yes" or "no."

Today he recommends and does it repeatedly. We have had the Comptroller before us a number of times, and I think he conscientiously calls attention to what he believes to be questionable practices time and again. And, I am sympathetic because he disagrees with the general philosophy of a lot of these things.

But, the point is we have passed laws that do not specify sufficiently to let him exercise his authority and say "yes" or "no." That is the difficulty we are up against, and it is the policy of legislation and the type of legislative verbage that we use.

Senator HOEY. I just want to make an observation. I agree thoroughly with what Senator Hickenlooper said about the policies, but I think, having examined the various reports and rulings of the Comptroller General, he will find he not only makes recommendations but that he held up thousands and thousands of claims of all kinds. I think he has been extremely diligent.

He has made reports to the Congress. He has challenged these things from time to time. And, I think examination of his records and of his reports will show he said "no," as you refer to, Senator. He said "no" to claims all along.

Senator HICKENLOOPER. But, Senator, he can clearly say "no" where he can be sustained. I do not say he avoided his duty.

Senator HOEY. I think the present Comptroller has been very diligent to control this matter.

The CHAIRMAN. The Chair will make a statement. Then, Senator Lodge will proceed.

The Comptroller General did make several complaints to Congress with regard to operation of the Maritime Commission. At one time the Comptroller General held up payment, I think, of nearly $200,000,000 in insurance claims because many of the ships had been insured for many times their legal value according to the values placed upon them by the Commission itself, and yet they were being insured for eight or ten times that.

Senator HICKENLOOPER. But, were those claims paid?

The CHAIRMAN. Finally, I think they were all paid. The Comptroller General made reports to the Congress. Congress did nothing about it. The Comptroller General could hold them up only so long, and I think they were paid. But, certainly Congress had an opportunity to do something about it if they had seen fit to do it.

However, I do not think many members of the Congress knew that the reports had even been made to the Congress.

Senator HICKENLOOPER. Well, Mr. Chairman, that is exactly the point I made.

The CHAIRMAN. It must have been discouraging to the Comptroller General to have no attention paid to them.

Senator HICKENLOOPER. That is exactly the point. We have been slipping into a policy of writing laws where the Comptroller General cannot say "no." He can complain and call attention to these things, but just as in that case it was offensive to him under his idea of the law and according to his interpretation, but Congress had written the law-apparently so loosely and it had been either so poorly supervised or something else that there was; in fact, actual authority by way of interpretation for the eventual payment of those claims that he objected to.

Now, he objects time and again. I have seen objection after objection that he has interposed, but he does not have authority to really say "no" and make it stick.

Senator THYE. Mr. Chairman and Senator Hickenlooper, you are touching on that one question right there. You are now in the third quarter of this fiscal year, and you have departments that are laying off men right now on a forced vacation without pay because the departments have depleted the appropriations that Congress made for them, long before the fiscal year is ended. You have appropriations that should have taken care of certain departments within the fiscal year that have been depleted, and Congress then makes a deficiency appropriation to bail them out.

They will have to have more funds or you are going to have to cripple certain function of Government for the rest of the fiscal year. And, it is absolutely wrong.

You are trying to correct it in this manner so that you will have supervision over department functions so that if they do not have good management and good operation, somebody can snap them up and say, "You are in violation of the law. You can be prosecuted." You have a function within the appropriation allowed for the fiscal year, and that responsibility must be placed in some individual or in some agency or you are just going to have what we are witnessing today-that is, men and women laid off, a forced vacation without pay, because they have already expended the money.

Senator HICKENLOOPER. What you mean is this-that we have to begin to cut the suit to fit the cloth.

Senator THYE. Exactly, sir, but somebody has got to be responsible. You cannot cut the cloth and if it does not fit throw the cloth away. Congress too often has had to come to the rescue and correct such errors of judgment with further funds.

Senator MCCARTHY. May I suggest, Mr. Chairman, that the witness testify?

Senator FERGUSON. I move it. We want to hear from the witness. Senator LODGE. I think this is a very interesting discussion. I would not have missed it for anything.

Senator FERGUSON. I would like the record to show that I think our difficulty is our having a post audit by the Comptroller General. The money is paid out to these employees in the early part of the year, and they have been in the habit of paying it out, and then the audit merely is, had they the legal right to hire that employee to do that • particular job? And, they came in for a first, second, third, even up to the fifth deficiency as they went along, and Congress has always seen fit to say, "well, we cannot stop this function now. We have to put the money in." And, we have been encouraging this kind of procedure.

I think this bill is aimed to get some system whereby we can control it.

Senator LODGE. Yes. I am not trying to tell you here today what the system ought to be. What I am trying to do is set up some device that will get us the best system.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator, perhaps I can state here that the staff of this committee has almost completed a chart of the structure of the executive branch of the Government broken down into divisions and the number of personnel in each division; that we do expect to require each agency of Government to report periodically-I do not know what period we decided on-to us on expenditures, and at least semiannually on the number of employees in each division of each department. We feel we have to have that information to start from

Senator HICKENLOOPER. I would suggest, Mr. Chairman, that on the number of employees you will get a far more reliable and accurate picture if you require each department to report once each month. They have the machinery to do that and have been doing it, and will keep you up month by month.

You may get a false picture if it is every 6 months. There may be a slump at the end of the reporting period that will not give you an average picture.

The CHAIRMAN. We intend to be able to make a complete report for the committee every 6 months. Senator Hickenlooper is undoubtedly right that we will have to have more frequent reports from the departments.

Senator MCCARTHY. I was just going to suggest that the Chair himself very carefully read those monthly reports. That is number one. And, number two, I think we should let the witness testify. Senator LODGE. The witness has been enjoying it.

The CHAIRMAN. I think it would be courtesy to let the witness proceed at this time, [Laughter.] I am sure he has enjoyed the discussion.

Senator LODGE. It has been a very interesting and intelligent discussion. I would like to respond to some points made.

First, I would like to say to Senator Hoey that I served with the Comptroller General here in Congress. I share the high opinion of him that everybody I think has, regardless of party.

I was glad to hear the Senator from Minnesota underline the importance of this task. Let me say once again that I am not undertaking to say here today what the system of control ought to be. I am trying to get a body set up that will make a determination of that system.

Now, Senator Hickenlooper raised some very interesting questions regarding the human element in the Government, and he put his finger particularly on one thing. That is the acts of Congress. And,