ADVISORY BODIES CREATED BY THE PRESIDENT

AND BY CONGRESS

1955 THROUGH APRIL 15, 1972

The Government, to govern, must constantly make decisions. To govern wisely, its decisions must be based upon a wide spectrum of informed and expert opinions and upon a firm and accurate factual foundation. One method of satisfying these requirements, and one which, it would appear, has been employed with increasing frequency, is to make use of advisory bodies.

Such bodies may be designated as commissions, committees, councils, groups, panels, task forces, or boards. They may be appointed solely by the President, by heads of Executive agencies, or they may be created by act of Congress. They may be composed of private citizens,

of Government officials, or of a combination of both.

Their existence

They may be

may be of limited duration, or they may be permanent. endowed with the most general authority to "advise," or they may be created to study and to make recommendations on a very specific problem. They may or may not justify their existence and their expense by producing results which might become the basis of future public policy.

Although advisory bodies form an important and complex network of Sub-Government machinery, there is unfortunately no authoritative cumulative listing of those which have existed or which do exist.

However, a great deal of interest in the subject has been manifested by the Congress in both the 91st and 92nd Congresses. Hearings were held by the Special Studies Subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Operations in 1970, and a report entitled "The Role and Effectiveness of Federal Advisory Committees" was issued December 11, 1970 (House Report No. 91-1731). In addition, the Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations of the Senate Committee on Government Operations held hearings on industry advisory committees (printed in three parts).

In 1971 hearings were held by the Legal and Monetary Affairs Subcommittee of the House Government Operations Committee and by the Senate Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations on legislation to regulate advisory bodies. Hearings were also held by the Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the implementation of recommendations made by Presidential and national advisory commissions.

All of these have been printed.

On April 25, 1972, the House Government Operations Committee reported out a bill to regulate advisory bodies: H.R. 4383, the Federal Advisory Committee Standards Act (House Report 92-1017). The bill was approved by the House on May 9, 1972.

And on June 5, 1972, the President issued Executive Order 11671 "to set forth general standards for formation, use, conduct, management and accessibility to the public" of committees appointed to

...

advise or assist the Federal Governmer.t.

The following is an attempt to list those advisory groups which have been created by the Presiden: or by Congress since the second Hoover Commission recommendations of 1955. Part I is a chronological

listing, by year. Part II is in alphabetical order by "key word"

in the advisory group title and, in some cases, by popular name (1.e., Kerner Commission). We have also noted major amendments to the statutory authorization for individual advisory committees in Part II where we were aware of them.

As this listing is revised from time to time, we try to add new commissions which have come to our attention and delete those which do not fit our general criteria. In this revision, we have eliminated a number of groups which were included in our 1970 report because we have judged them to be more operative than advisory. Although many laws confer on the President or the head of a department or agency general authority to create advisory committees to carry out the purposes of a particular act, no attempt has been made here to include all of these in our listing.

Every effort has been made to provide a comprehensive inventory of those advisory bodies which fall within the stated criteria. However, the paucity or obscurity of records in many instances precludes any claim that this list is necessarily complete.

92-578 O 73 - 88 (2B)

President's Commission on Veterans' Pensions. Executive Order 10588. January 14.

President's Committee on Government Employment Policy. Executive Order 10590. January 18.

Committee of Under Secretaries on the Rural Development Program.
Established by the President.

June.

Interdepartmental Savings Bond Committee. Executive Order 10626. August 4.

Commission for Extension of the United States Capitol. Public Law 84-242. August 5.

Commission on Government Security. Public Law 84-304. August 9.

New York City National Shrines Advisory Board.
August 11.

Public Law 84-341.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial Commission.
August 11.

Public Law 84-372.

Advisory Committee on Federal Public Works. Established by the
President. October 5.

President's Committee on Employment of the Physically Handicapped. Executive Order 10640. October 10.

1956 (84th Congress, 2d Session)

Air Coordinating Committee. Executive Order 10655. January 28 (reestablishment).

President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities. Executive Order 10656. February 6.

Federal Council on the Aging.

Presidential Memorandum.

April 2.