Mr. MERRIAM. If we had been asked by Congress how to set up agencies under the supervision of congressional authority, I suppose that would be quite a different kind of report, Congressman. Representative GIFFORD. I feel, from your remarks, that it would be, that if you had the assignment from us, having in mind our feeling and desirability of holding to our own prerogatives, that there might have been a rather different report presented to us. It rather disturbs me. Mr. MERRIAM. I do not mean to disturb you, Congressman; I mean to encourage you in a way. I said there could be a study of organization of agencies assisting Congress. That was not our assignment. Senator BARKLEY. Your report would not have been different as far as the executive set-up is concerned, but you might have gone a little further as to the congressional set-up if we authorized you to do it? Mr. MERRIAM. Yes; we would have gone further on the three committees, giving you illustrations and examples of how they might work out. We might have gone further. I haven't thought that through. We might have gone further on legislative reference, bill drafting, and various other things. I do not want to go into that but I have my own ideas about that. As Senator Barkley said, that would not have made our report any different from what it was on the executive side, but it would have, of course, carried you far over into the congressional side. Now, I think, Congressman, I was properly apologetic for having explained why we did not want to get into the position of going beyond what we were supposed to do. Representative GIFFORD. I should not have used the word "apologetic" perhaps, but your own remarks seems to show that if you had the assignment from the Congress that perhaps you would have been more careful that we did not lose our powers. Mr. MERRIAM. Now, as far as the principle goes, we would not have been more careful in preserving the principle, but as far as the presentation of the instruments, the mechanisms are concerned we probably would have gone further. For example, in my own State, to make a concrete case, we spent quite a while in Illinois going over with the general assembly the proposition of trying to build up for them legislative reference bureaus, bill-drafting bureaus, things of that sort, in earlier years. You have that here now. Now, I will only summarize, on the practical side, the two points, perhaps, that have been made here. I think attention has not been directed to the recommendation we made for decentralization of Federal administration in order to prevent too great concentration of power and congestion in the Capital City. We did not go into that in detail on this occasion, but it was our idea that the Bureau of the Budget should make a continuing study of the ways and means by which Federal administration could be prevented from piling up too heavily in the city of Washington; that local centers, wherever it seemed to be appropriate, should, both in the interest of economy and in the interest of efficiency, be built up. There are now about 108 different types of Federal field agencies. There are towns where there are as many as 50 or 60 of those concentrated. They are not brought together as closely as they might be, and, in general, it was our judgment that there was not as much conscious push as there should be toward keeping out of Washington too great concentrations in administration. Representative GIFFORD. Mr. Merriam, I have one other suggestion and I hope it will be helpful to you. You say these three agencies are to be set up to find out what is going on in the executive branch; is that right? Mr. MERRIAM. Yes. Representative GIFFORD. The feeling of the committee seems to be that the purpose of setting up these agencies is to find out what went on, not what is going on. Mr. MERRIAM. I mean what is going on with the view of promoting the appropriate congressional policy. Representative GIFFORD. Exactly. These three committees you suggest are to define simply what went on after the thing happened, to investigate only what has been done. This has constantly been expressed thus far. Mr. MERRIAM. Yes; I know what you mean, Congressman, very well, indeed, but that goes to the question of administration. Congress is a lawmaking body, the greatest policy-determining body in the world, and it is well known that on all questions of general policy it is certainly supreme. Representative GIFFORD. Within the limits of the Constitution. Mr. MERRIAM. Yes. It is not a question of watching what happened after it happened, but of getting facts as the basis of deciding what Congress wishes to do, representing the American public. The second point I wanted to make here, which has not been so much noticed, is that it was the judgment of the committee that the merit system and career system, if fully developed, tends to liberalize the administration; that is, if you have well-trained, competent officials, they are, on the whole, more likely to deal with the people of the United States in a democratic manner than if you have a haphazard system in which you do not have the same sense of responsibility. What I have in mind here you can see by looking at some of the local agencies. The post office, for example, is a popular service in the cities and in the country. The mail carrier in the cities and rural-delivery men in the country are generally well thought of. Most of them have been there for a long period of time and they have developed the knowledge of their duties, the knowledge of how to meet the public, and they render a kind of service that does not irritate as much as some other types of service. Senator BARKLEY. Do you think that is always true in the departments in Washington? Mr. MERRIAM. I would not think it was always true, Senator Barkley. I have had my own toes stepped on on several occasions; but I think, on the whole, yes. Now, I can just sum up briefly. You are extending me an unusual courtesy in allowing me to carry on this monologue as long as I have without much interruption. I can sum up again what Mr. Brownlow said in the beginning, as to what we found. We found the most powerful executive in the world at the head of the biggest corporation in the world without personal assistance of the type that other corporations of anything like that magnitude would have at once. We found over 100 agencies of government, 130, depending on how you count them, reporting directly to the Chief Executive. We found that not only were there many of these agencies but in many instances, even where they were not policy determining, or quasi-judicial, that there were many-headed boards and commissions. We found that the budget system as contemplated in 1921 had never been fully developed as a continuing agency for a study of governmental machinery, reporting to the President and to the Congress. We found that the accounting system, from our point of view, was cross-grained and twisted and had grown up in a manner not originally contemplated. We found large possibilities of improvement in the expansion of the merit system and in the reorganization of civil-service administration. We found large numbers of relatively unrelated spending agencies scattered throughout the different departments and various authoritative agencies not brought together. The plan that we propose, in principle, is what I would like to speak on very briefly, because this is a system that works in a more or less unified way, if it works at all. We, of course, are quite ready to discuss all the details that go with the minutiae inevitable in this kind of a plan, but, in general, the most important thing is the guiding principle of it, whether you want to do the general kind of thing that is proposed. That is what we propose can be summed up. Summing it up over again and perhaps repeating it a little bit first, it is to provide the President of the United States with the necessary assistants, three, four, or five, whatever the number may be; second, it is to set up in the White House itself, using the President's language, the three agencies of management and tying them in together, the budget, personnel, and planning, as an overhead White House staff; in the third place, to simplify the one-hundred-åndthirty-odd agencies and put them in 12 main departments, and classify them, bring under those 12 tents, or on those 12 hooks all of the 130 agencies of the Federal Executive. We propose also the substitution of single-headed boards for manyheaded boards, except in cases where the boards are policy determining, or where they are quasijudicial. And we propose, finally, to set up a mechanism for the accountability of the Executive to the Congress, the Executive being the agent and the Congress being the principal. We are quite prepared to discuss the detail of these plans with you at any time. We have drawn up, not for your purposes, but for our own purposes, the draft of a bill. We drew that bill up in this way: We first set up certain principles and we checked them against the text of the report, to see how it would sound when we wrote it up. Having had the experience that a thing may sound well in a report but will not work out in a bill, we had a bill drafted, and we checked the bill and the text against the principles to see whether they would fit together. Senator TOWNSEND. Is that the bill that we have before us now? Mr. MERRIAM. That is the bill you have before you. It was only intended for our own information and for our own guidance in setting up this plan. Mr. Brownlow, Mr. Gulick, and I have had more or less experience in bill drafting and we know how many times it. happens that what looks like a good idea, when you come to draft it just does not spell anything in legal language. Senator TOWNSEND. You are referring to the second bill? Mr. MERRIAM. The second bill or the first one. modified. It was just a little Senator BARKLEY. Let me ask you a question, Doctor. The thing that sticks in the minds of a great many economists-I mean by that legislative economists-is the fact that the creation of two new departments sounds like an increase in the governmental expenses rather than a decrease. Have you figured out to any minute degree the relationship between any possible increase and any possible decrease because of the creating of these loosely formed, disjointed departments, one hundred and thirty odd into 12 departments, according to their relationship to the work in the departments, have you figured it out to determine whether it would necessarily increase the expenses or whether it might work economies? Mr. MERRIAM. Well, unless you went into great detail that would be only a guess. a guess. Our recommendation there, you remember, Senator, was that we give the Executive the continuing power of allocating the agencies and functions. Senator BARKLEY. I understand, but the ordinary mind, as soon as you think about increasing departments from 10 to 12, the ordinary mind conceives the idea that that would mean a lot more expenses. Mr. MERRIAM. Not if he thinks of it the other way around, of cutting them down from 130 to 12. Senator BARKLEY. That is what I am getting at. It does not mean necessarily the increase of governmental agencies, it might mean a decrease of agencies if they are all grouped together, consolidated and coordinated. So while 12 departments sounds like it is more expensive than 10, as a matter of fact it might be less expensive, might it not? Mr. MERRIAM. It undoubtedly would be. Twelve, of course, is more than 10, but, on the other hand, 12 is a good deal less than 130. Senator BARKLEY. Most people do not think about the 130, they just think of the 10 Cabinet officers, and that is the end of it. Mr. MERRIAM. What we would like to think about it, is how the President performs the task, having to deal with 130 scattered agencies, how he is going to exercise the necessary supervision. Senator BYRD. You do not mean the 130 are abolished, do you? They are simply grouped into 12 departments, but the same bureaus continue just as they are now? Mr. MERRIAM. The same functions. We do not pass on what functions should be carried out. It would be the same as your Virginia bills, Senator Byrd. You do not abolish bureaus; you bring them together under a single management. Senator BYRD. You are speaking of the possibility of a substitution of 12 for 130. Mr. MERRIAM. Yes. Senator BYRD. Which particular ones would you expect would be abolished? Have you gone into it? Mr. MERRIAM. No; we have not gone into it. Senator BYRD. It is perfectly conceivable that the same expense and probably a greater expense will occur by grouping the 130 into 12 departments, because the bureau will be there just as it is now. Senator BARKLEY. There are certain administrative expenses that might be eliminated in, say, 20 of these different independent agencies, all of which have certain overhead expenses, if they are brought within one department, one system, and the overhead expense would probably function for all of them. In that way there might be a reduction. Mr. MERRIAM. Well, you have got 130 already. Instead of 130, you would have 12. Senator BYRNES. You have got 130 divisions. You would merge them into 12 departments, but you would continue the 130 subdi visions. Mr. MERRIAM. For instance, you might not have the local counsel for various departments. Senator BYRNES. But you would still continue the 130 subdivisions. Senator BYRNES. Í assume, if you have got so many independent agencies, you would transfer the personnel of some of the divisions into the regular departments. It would depend entirely on which bureaus were merged and what was then done to reduce the expenses of the department. Mr. MERRIAM. Conceivably you might transfer them or keep them exactly where they are, but we assume, if there is a spirit and will in Congress and in the Executive to do this, that they will do it in a way in which they can make very large economies and efficiencies. Senator BYRD. It likewise gives the President the power to create new bureaus and agencies, does it not? I see that Mr. Wallace says it is supposed to create a consumers' department devoted exclusively to representing the consumer in government. The consumer representative agency is a part of the reorganized Federal Government. Mr. BROWNLOW. May I answer that? Mr. MERRIAM. Let me answer that. As a matter of fact, there are three of them there now, one in Agriculture, one in Labor, and another one in Commerce. We propose to bring the three of them into the Department of Public Welfare, so, instead of having the three, you will have one. Senator BYRD. The President has the power to create new bureaus and agencies, does he not, as well as to merge them? Mr. MERRIAM. Yes. Senator MCNARY. Mr. Merriam, I listened to you and others as to this report that has been compiled, as to the 130 agencies. Have you a categorical list of the subdivisions of the agencies? Mr. MERRIAM. You want us to give you the list? Senator MCNARY. I would like very much to have it. Then you take your 130 agencies and group those all in 12 divisions or departments? The CHAIRMAN. That is just what they did not do, because they said they were not asked to do it. Senator MCNARY. I am asking him to do it. I think if you serve the Government in the capacity in which you are serving it and you |