The Auditor General will bring in his complaints, and the Treasury officer will answer those and will satisfy, if possible, the committee. In the event that is not done the committee is then at liberty to make a report to Congress and to recommend any changes that it may deem necessary.

Senator BYRD. "Recommend any changes"; what do you mean by that?

Mr. Buck. Well, any procedural changes or changes in the law to correct the loopholes that enable administrative officers to abuse their privileges as spending officials.

Senator BYRD. And finally, after going through all these different methods and conferences, one thing and another, you find one Cabinet officer has illegally spent $1,000,000, how would you go about recovering that?

Mr. BUCK. Then you bring the Cabinet officer before the Committee on Public Accounts.

Senator BYRD. How would you recover the million dollars that has been illegally spent?

Mr. BUCK. You would still have open the same procedure, the process that you now use.

Senator BYRD. Under your plan you haven't got the independent preaudit which you have now.

Mr. BUCK. You have one, indeed, Senator, which is more effective. Senator BYRD. I think you overlook, Mr. Buck, fundamentally speaking, that the question we are considering now is the control of the Congress as compared to the control of the Executive. You have taken away from the control of Congress, as represented by the Comptroller General, certain authorities and duties that he now has, and you are giving those duties to the Secretary of the Treasury, appointed by the Executive and removal at pleasure by the Executive. Mr. BUCK. In the first place, Senator, I disagree with you on one thing, that the Comptroller General is a representative of Congress and an agent of Congress. He is about as independent as anyone in the National Government.

Senator BYRD. The act of 1921 so states specifically, that he is an agent of Congress.

Mr. Buck. Then why does he not report his audits to Congress? Instead of that, he buries the vouchers and claims that he approves, in his files, and, so far as I know, nothing else happens.

Senator BYRD. That matter can no doubt be explained. But the fact remains that Congress has set the Comptroller General up as an officer independent of the Executive and responsible only to the Congress. If he has failed to perform his duties at any time, another Comptroller General should be appointed.

Mr. Buck. I think he has failed. Furthermore, I think, Senator, he could not succeed, because the system itself is wrong.

Senator BYRNES. Mr. Buck, you say that 90 percent of the money paid out is postaudited?

Mr. BUCK. Yes.

Senator BYRNES. If a million dollars is illegally paid out today by a Cabinet officer, how would you recover it?

Mr. BUCK. That exception by the Comptroller General would go back to the Treasury, to the disbursing officer.

Senator BYRNES. How would we get the money today? Ninety percent of the appropriations of the Congress being postaudited, how would you get the money back today?

Mr. Buck. I am saying that the exception would go back through the Treasury to the disbursing officer, Mr. Allen. Then Mr. Allen would say, "I have got an exception here from the Comptroller General", and he would send it out to the department concerned, asking the department for its explanation.

Senator BYRNES. What difference would there be, so far as getting the money back is concerned?

Mr. Buck. There would be practically no difference.

Senator BYRNES. That is, as to the 90 percent. As to 10 percent, there would be, because 10 percent is preaudited, as I get it?

Mr. Buck. Yes.

Senator BYRD. Mr. Chairman, I think the record should show that every warrant that is paid by the Government is countersigned by the Comptroller General, and to that extent there is a preaudit on everything that is spent.

Mr. Buck. If I may say, the warrant does not make the expenditure; it is the check of the disbursing officer.

Senator BYRNES. Suppose you state what the countersigning of the warrant means. Is it not simply a ministerial duty as now performed?

Mr. BUCK. Yes; simply incidental to the whole scheme.

Senator BYRNES. Does it involve any investigation, as it is now performed?

Mr. Buck. It may with contracts, yes; but generally speaking, it is a routine procedure.

Senator BYRD. It is not a routine procedure. If a suspicion exists that some department is making an illegal expenditure, in the sense that certain requirements of the law are not being obeyed, the Comptroller General can refuse to sign the warrant and can compel the department to obey the law.

Mr. BUCK. Senator, if you will permit me to say so, the exceptions and the records of the Comptroller General are largely, if not entirely, based on the checks issued. Those exceptions are taken against the disbursing officer. There will be millions of dollars of exceptions outstanding which may be cleared up in the course of several weeks, several months, or even years. I understand that Mr. Allen, who is the Chief Disbursing Officer, has not had his accounts cleared since he came into office in 1934. There are several millions of dollars of exceptions outstanding against him, which he is gradually clearing up, and he may be able eventually to explain most of them. It has now been 3 years or more. He may have to come to Congress eventually for relief on the disallowances, in the event he cannot recover the moneys. But the moneys are gone, Senator, checks have been issued and the expenditure has been made. Senator BYRD. I fully understand that, Mr. Buck. That situation is exactly the same if the Comptroller General does not exercise his independent judgment as he should and permit illegal expenditures to be made; in the final analysis, if a million dollars is illegally spent, even under the present system, or under the new system, that is unrecoverable. I fully understand that, but that does not answer the

the

question. We are removing certainly an independent auditing system that now exists, an auditing system that is responsible only to the Congress and not to the Executive.

Mr. Buck. Responsible only to himself.

Senator BYRD. I am not talking about individuals, Mr. Buck; I am speaking of the law. The General Accounting Act, if you will read it, sets up the Comptroller General as an independent officer responsible only to the Congress. If he has not properly performed his duties the law is not responsible for it.

Mr. Buck. We are providing a system here that permits this joint congressional committee to bring up the administrative officers and reprove them for any misappropriation of funds. It also permits of greater expedition in the payment of bills. I think it is going to be much more salutary upon the administrative officers than is the present system, in which they dilly-dally along for 2 or 3 years and accounts are settled with great delay. No report is made to the Congress upon the findings of the Comptroller General; there is no chance for a committee of Congress to review his work.

Senator BYRD. All of his opinions rendered are a matter of record, are they not?

Mr. Buck. Oh, yes; some of his opinions are published; but, Senator, that is not the whole job of an auditing office.

Senator BYRD. Are you condemning this system because of the alleged incompetence of the man that is Comptroller General, or are you condemning it as a policy of government?

Mr. Buck. I am saying that fundamentally the system is incorrect. Congress, having made the appropriations to the Executive, should leave the Executive free to perform the service which those appropriations specify. In the end Congress should check up to see what the Executive did. This system which we propose is a system to permit Congress to check up in the end.

We believe that the present Comptroller General's office delays and interferes with the functions which rightly belong to the Executive and that it does not help Congress in the least to demand accountability on the part of the Executive for the funds expended. We believe, too, that the proposed system does provide a method by which accountability can be established, whereas the present system fails completely to do it.

Senator BYRD. In other words, your claim is that Congress, the agency that appropriates the money, should have no control over the expenditure of that money after it is once appropriated?

Mr. Buck. Yes; it should have complete control, but the control should come at the end in the form of a review.

Senator BYRD. You cannot control expenditures, Mr. Buck, if the control does not occur until after the expenditure has been made. You provide that Congress has no voice in it until after the money has been spent.

Mr. BUCK. Congress has all the voice. It makes the appropriations, it itemizes those appropriations as it sees fit, it puts its agents right out in the field to see what the administrative officer is doing in the spending of the money-to report not only on the vouchers that come to Washington, as is now the case, but to look at the accounts. The Comptroller General never looks at the books now.

Senator BYRD. This agent of Congress only reports after the money has been spent.

Senator BARKLEY. Talking about the recovery of money, is it not a fact that Congress appropriates certain money, it itemizes it, excepting where it makes lump-sum appropriations. The expenditure of that money is an executive matter and not a legislative matter. The Congress is through with it when the appropriation is made.

While some officers may, in the exercise of their judgment misinterpret the law, it may be an honest misinterpretation. It may turn out to be an illegal expenditure in the sense he may have misinterpreted the law. Most of it, I imagine, is honest, it is a misinterpretation of the law, but isn't any theory on which we are going to try to recover this money that has been spent by mistake a pure daydream? There never has been any recovery.

Mr. Buck. Well, being a Member of Congress you should be better qualified to say so than I am.

Senator BARKLEY. I would like for anybody to point out a case where the Government has ever recovered any money from an administrative officer who made a mistake in the expenditure of that money.

Mr. Buck. They usually seek the relief which they need from Congress.

Senator BARKLEY. They do, and they get it.

Senator BYRD. At that point, Mr. Chairman, I would like to insert in the record quite a number of expenditures that have been prevented by the Comptroller General, and large sums of money saved to the Congress and the people of this country that, if they had been spent, would not have been recovered.

Senator BARKLEY. In that connection, it might be said that the Comptroller General has prevented the carrying out sometimes of the very object of the Congress in appropriating the money. If he is the agent of Congress he ought not to thwart the desires of Congress. Senator HARRISON. Mr. Buck, where there is an exception and they cannot agree about this audit, does it not come to this committee? Mr. BUCK. It ultimately comes to this committee.

Senator HARRISON. Then it is up to the Congress to do what it wants with it?

Mr. BUCK. That is right, and Congress can check the misuse of funds by the way it makes the appropriation in the beginning.

Senator HARRISON. If there is some money that has been expended to some individual, what is keeping the Attorney General's office from authorizing the district attorney to proceed in the collection of it?

Mr. Buck. Nothing. That procedure is open still, under this new scheme.

Representative COCHRAN. I would like to clear up one matter. You stated with emphasis on several occasions we never had a perfect auditing system. You say it is wrong. Is that due to the failure of the officials to set up what you think is a proper auditing system, or do you think that is due to the failure of Congress to pass proper laws?

Mr. BUCK. Well, I should say in the first place, that there was some misunderstanding about the proper basis of the system in the beginning, and that the legislation should be corrected.

Representative COCHRAN. In other words, under existing law you feel a proper system could be set up?

Mr. Buck. I do not think it could, under existing law.
Representative COCHRAN. It could not?

Mr. BUCK. It could not. You would have to change the law. Representative COCHRAN. You could not change the existing system to meet your objections?

Mr. BUCK. No; I think those objections are too fundamental. You now have an agent set up who can interfere with the Executive. Representative COCHRAN. Setting aside interference or control, as it has been called, could the accounting system be so arranged that we would have a proper kind of a system, if we eliminate that control and interference?

Mr. BUCK. Not unless you can put the accounting system under the Executive who needs it in order to operate the business of the Government.

Representative COCHRAN. You do not think an independent agency can possibly have a proper system of audit and accounting unless it is under the executive branch of the Government?

Mr. BUCK. The two functions are incompatible. The controlling and accounting officer cannot make an effective post-audit, because he is making it against his own transactions.

Representative COCHRAN. In order to get information, I am trying to eliminate this control entirely, not let us take it out entirely. Mr. BUCK. We do that, we put it in the executive.

Representative COCHRAN. In order to get information say we will let the control go to the executive branch and say the Congress has no power, under the Constitution, to control the appropriation once it is made. Say we take that away from the Comptroller General. Do you then say that the Comptroller General is not in a position to change his present set up so that we will have a perfect auditing system?

Mr. BUCK. Sure, if he will delegate those functions.

Representative COCHRAN. Remember now only for the sake of argument, the Congress takes that control away from him.

Mr. BUCK. You are taking away the settlement of claims from him?

Representative COCHRAN. No, we are not taking away the settlement of claims, we are just taking the control away from him. Do not get claims confused with control.

Mr. BUCK. That is the settlement of claims.

Representative COCHRAN. We are talking now about the Comptroller saying the Cabinet officers cannot spend this money. Mr. BUCK. All right.

Representative COCHRAN. We will say the law will not permit him to do so, that has been taken away.

Mr. BUCK. Yes. Then he becomes this Auditor General that we are talking about.

Representative COCHRAN. We'll say he is the Auditor General now. Mr. Buck. Yes, but he is a Comptroller General now.