Representative COCHRAN. Then are you not in conflict with your statement yesterday in which you said that there is delay caused by a preaudit at the present time?

Mr. GULICK. By an independent preaudit; yes; delay is caused, and that is why we say that the control job is the part of the management job and must be in the general structure of the administration. In order that it may exercise some brakes on the free spending of money, without attention solely to the requirements set down by law, we think that must be separately set up within the Government, and it must be set up in the Finance Department.

Now, if there is a conflict over delay, and so forth, then the thing can be taken up by the head of the department that is being held up to the President, if necessary, and the President can take it up with the Treasury. The Secretary of the department, who is also responsible to the President, says: "Now, look here; they are holding up the installation of machinery over this petty interpretation of law. Now, what about it?" There will be some responsibility on the part of the control officer. At the present time the control officer is totally irresponsible.

Representative COCHRAN. At the same time, here is a conflict. You seek, at the outset, to take the burden off of the President by giving him additional assistance, by grouping over 100 agencies, and still you are putting another burden on him by making the President decide the question as to whether money is to be spent properly or not. How do you reconcile that? You are putting another burden on the President.

Mr. GULICK. The burden of delay and the effort to get along with outside interference in a legitimate decision of fiscal questions within the departments throws a greater headache on the President than the plan that we propose. I think that is a fact.

Representative COCHRAN. What do you provide for the term of office of the Auditor General?

Mr. GULICK. Fifteen years.

Representative COCHRAN. To be appointed by the President?
Mr. GULICK. To be appointed by the President as now.

Mr. COCHRAN. Can he be removed for any cause?

Mr. GULICK. No; except he can be impeached by the Congress. Representative COCHRAN. That is all?

Mr. GULICK. Yes.

Representative COCHRAN. In other words, the Auditor General will not be a representative of the Congress; he will be a representative of the executive branch of the Government. The Comptroller General is now a representative of the Congress and not the executive branch. The provisions of this bill provide that the Auditor General shall be a representative of the executive branch of the Government, or more of a representative of the executive branch than of the Congress. We should clear this up, because, when the matter is before the House and Senate, there will be opposition to a change. Mr. GULICK. I am sorry if I have not made this clear. We divide fiscal control into two features. One is known as control and the other is known as audit. Audit must be independent and completely outside of the administration. We place that in the hands of the Auditor General,

Representative COCHRAN. That is simply to see that the money has been spent right?

Mr. GULICK. That is correct.

Representative COCHRAN. Why, then, should you want a man as Auditor General to hold a job for 15 years?

Mr. GULICK. In order that he may be thoroughly independent of the Executive.

Representative TABER. But you give him more power.

Representative COCHRAN. He is only going to report facts based upon the figures that are submitted to him, just as a certified public accountant would examine your books?

Mr. GULICK. Precisely.

Representative COCHRAN. Why should an Auditor General have the status you recommend?

Mr. GULICK. Because the statement on the accuracy of the report is of the essence of popular control of the finances of the Government, and because the examination of the legality, as a check upon possible errors by executive officers, cannot be made by anyone except someone from the outside, just as a c. p. a. is brought in by a concern to audit the records of its fiscal officers rather than audit them by their own officers.

Representative COCHRAN. I would like to clear up in my own mind title V, "General and miscellaneous provisions." Under that title you provide that

The term "agency" includes the President or any executive department, independent establishment, commission, legislative court, board, bureau, service, administration, authority, federally owned and controlled corporation, agency, division

And so forth.

Do you mean by that that the President could, if he so desired, abolish any executive department? Would he have the power to create a department if he abolished one?

Mr. GULICK. Yes. This must be read in connection with the other provisions, provisions of the Constitution, and so forth. Obviously those can be brought within any such program.

Representative COCHRAN. The term "agency" covers everything? Mr. GULICK. That is right. The definition there is practically the same as it was in the Economy Act.

Representative COCHRAN. We did not give the President power to abolish a department in the Economy Act. I was on the Economy Committee.

Mr. GULICK. I think departments were omitted.

Representative COCHRAN. Yes; they were omitted; he could not abolish a department.

There is one other matter here, and I think this should go into the record, and that is the paragraph of the law under which you are operating. [Reading:]

The President of the United States is hereby authorized to allocate, out of funds appropriated by the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935, not to exceed $100,000 for the expenses of a committee designated by him to make a study of the emergency and like agencies of the executive branch of the Government for the purpose of making recommendations to secure the most efficient organization and management in that branch of the public service. Such committee shall ascertain whether the activities of any such agency conflict or overlap with the activities of any other agency, and whether in the interest of

simplification, efficiency, and economy any of such agencies should be coordinated with other agencies, or abolished, or the personnel thereof reduced, and make recommendations with respect thereto. Copies of the report or reports of such studies and recommendations, together with the essential facts in connection therewith, shall be transmitted to the President and to the Congress.

In other words, you just started your work; you haven't gone into it; you just started your work.

Mr. GULICK. I thought Mr. Brownlow had covered that accurately in his initial statement to the committee. We have in course of completion now the various factual memoranda and reports which have been prepared on the basis of which we have devoted ourselves to this major job of dealing with the more efficient general management and coordination of the divisions of the executive department.

The question of overlapping and duplication, to which reference is made in that statement we dealt with to a contribution, through an allotment of our funds, as Mr. Brownlow explained to you at the opening session, through the Brookings study, which is reporting from time to time through Senator Byrd's committee.

Representative COCHRAN. Are you going to stand on the Brookings Institution report?

Mr. GULICK. Not necessarily. These reports which are being made are reports of experts and express their individual views.

Representative COCHRAN. This law specifically provides that you shall do this and not the Brookings Institution.

Mr. GULICK. Well, it provides that we shall make recommendations with regard to the general organization management, and that we have done, sir, in the report which has been submitted to the Congress, as required by law. When we shall have submitted to you the remainder of the documents that we have prepared we will have complied fully with the purposes of the law.

Representative COCHRAN. Together with the Brookings Institution

report?

Mr. GULICK. We are going into that, so far as we find it necessary, in connection with this broader question of general organization.

Representative COCHRAN. You are going out into the field; you are going to look into the situation yourself to determine for yourself whether or not the consolidated bureaus, such as you mentioned a few minutes ago, the national parks, the forestry, and so forth? Mr. GULICK. We are not going into those details. We do not regard that that is within the terms of the statement, nor within the necessary features of the job, and we feel that that would seriously overlap the work which was undertaken by the Senate committee and House committee. We are endeavoring to work out with those two committees some general arrangement so there will be no overlapping.

Representative COCHRAN. Will we receive from you some report that will indicate the agencies which you think should be abolished and which should be grouped?

Mr. GULICK. We have already indicated the agencies, the general grouping that should be worked out for the agencies.

Representative COCHRAN. What agency have you indicated should be abolished?

Mr. GULICK. Oh, there are several. The National Emergency Council.

Representative COCHRAN. I mean where they are spending some

money.

Mr. GULICK. We were not requested to deal with, nor does that statement raise before us, the question of the broad policies of the work that is to be carried on by the Government. We are responsible for the preparation of plans, to carry on such policies, such work as may be determined upon by the Congress and the President. So that we are engaged as efficiency engineers would be engaged to deal with the structure, not with the jobs that are to be done.

Representative COCHRAN. For instance, I have repeatedly heard that the Coast and Geodetic Survey, the waterworks of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, is being handled by the Hydrographic Service of the Navy, and the land work of the Coast and Geodetic Survey is being handled by the Geological Survey. If that be true, and your investigations would show it to be true, why not recommend to this committee that we abolish the Coast and Geodetic Survey? I do not pass judgment now; I merely suggest.

Mr. GULICK. That is a question of overlapping and duplication which falls within the field of the committee which the Senate set up and the House set up to deal with those problems.

Representative COCHRAN. It also falls within your field, does it

not?

Mr. GULICK. We do not feel that it does.

Representative GIFFORD. Try to keep in mind that broad framework which you have there, which I see has 12 hooks, with other hooks hung underneath so you will have 13 principal hooks. What I mean is, how can you present a structure to us, a framework, when you do not know what you want to put in it? How would you know how to build a house when you do not know how many rooms you desire and what you would put into the rooms? You are asking us to pass on a framework when you do not know what is going into the house. Do you recommend a plan for legislation before the scheme is ready? Why was this report seemingly hurried along and you ask us to build this framework when we do not know what we are going to do with it?

Mr. GULICK. Well, now, you have asked two questions there, first as to the question of the timing of the report, as you phrase it, "Why was it hurried along", and, second, why is it reasonable to draw a general scheme without the detailed plans that you would put on each one of the hooks.

On the first question that you raise, with regard to the hooks, I will say this, that it is perfectly clear to anyone who examines the structure of this Government that we have scores of agencies that are at loose ends, over which no man can possibly exercise general supervision. We are trying to bring some order out of that chaos. We would sit down then to see what would be a satisfactory general scheme of reorganization for these over a hundred separate agencies. On January 1, as I remember it, there were 134 separate agencies or activities reporting to the President in some fashion. About 76 of them were of first-rate importance. We said to ourselves, "What are the new types of activities which have been developed in the United States since about 1913, when the last of the existing departments was set up?"

In going over that we found that there were two major lines of activity which have come into the Government. One was in the general field of human betterment, social affairs, and the other was in the field of major public works. Up until this time, except incidental things that were taken up at various times, like the Panama Canal, we had no broad demand for a continuous stream of public works.

Representative GIFFORD. I would not want to continue that line. of argument. I just want to ask you if you think it would be better to have one more hook and make it a very large one?

Mr. GULICK. There is danger in administration in doing that.

Representative GIFFORD. You have a broad scheme hung up for us to look at, and after all this detailed study we bring up a definite instance, and you cannot answer us, and you will not, until you go into the field, as you say. We do not know whether that. room be a dining room, we do not know whether it will be an eating establishment, we do not know whether it ought to go into the parlor, you cannot tell us which hook to hang it on.

Mr. GULICK. Because the question of the precise hook depends upon the precise division of the work. In some cases you have to study the work to work it out satisfactorily.

Representative GIFFORD. Are those hooks so diversified that you cannot tell whether they belong in the dining room, the parlor, or the cellar?

Mr. GULICK. That is what we have endeavored to do, in stating there what the 12 hooks will deal with, we have named the dining room, the kitchen, and the bedrooms.

Representative GIFFORD. The point that Mr. Cochran is making I am sure is very appropriate. According to what he read, if you can take a sample and say which hook that belongs on, if that is the meaning of all this work of 2 or 3 years, we might as well not build this framework, if we do not know what goes in it. I cannot pass on a sample of what would be in that room. It looks to me like I do not want to build the structure if you are not prepared to say what you can use it for.

Mr. GULICK. Congressman, have you examined the statement of what the 12 hooks will be? We have tried to state there the general nature of the dining room, the kitchen and the bedrooms to which you referred.

Representative GIFFORD. Mr. Cochran is suggesting that the structure ought to be more completed before we are expected to act. You haven't completed the details of the structure enough. An architect is very careful about his details if he wants to attract a customer.

Senator HARRISON. Mr. Gulick, let me make this observation in connection with this. I happened to be a member of the committee in 1921 and 1922 appointed by the House and Senate. We got a beautiful map with these rooms from President Harding as to this reorganization plan. It was one of his major propositions in his campaign. We worked for 2 years. He stated specifically about these various things that you want to do, and the Cabinet officers fought each other every time they came before the committee. Consequently we did nothing for 2 years. In my opinion, you have got to give this power to the Executive if anything is to be accomplished.