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the first deficiency appropriation, the second deficiency appropriation, and that is the way it goes on.

Senator FERGUSON. With all the deficiency bills and all the new budgeting and all the congressional requirements, the things sent up by the President himself may increase, and yet the public can't go back and measure that with what Congress might do today right in this particular session. Isn't that correct?

Mr. SMITH. That's right. Moreover, last year we had another situation develop which made the legislative budget rather difficult, and that was the tendency on the part of some committee chairmen not to welcome any arbitrary ceilings on appropriations for departments under their jurisdiction until they themselves had had a chance to scan the detailed budgets. This made them reluctant to approve of the legislative budget at so early a date as February 15. They preferred to wait and see from appropriations hearings where the reductions in the over-all budget would fall in detail.

Then, of course, we have made allusion already to the deplorable state of the Federal accounting and budget practices. The Senator from New Hampshire pointed out that Congress makes up its appropriations on the basis of departments and bureaus, while the President's budget is expressed in terms of functions. It is confusing and difficult for the Appropriations Committees to deal with a budget of this kind when the functions cut across five or six different bureaus. That was one reason why the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 proposed some sort of classified budget headings under which a standard, uniform procedure would be followed in both the executive department and in Congress so that each one would know what the other was talking about and figures could be comparable. Unless something like that is done, the accounting practices of the administration will continue to be loose, unwieldy, and confusing. Lack of precise data will make it impossible for Congress to construct a reliable legislative budget.

Then there is one other thing that proponents of the legislative budget have not taken into consideration. If on February 15 a legislative budget is reported which should show any detailed cuts, let us say, in any of the standard departments like the veterans' services, agriculture, or the armed services, that will immediately be notice and an invitation to all the pressure groups throughout the country to begin to focus their attention upon Members of Congress. The CHAIRMAN. You mean every pressure group will work to get its appropriation raised back up to where it was.

Mr. SMITH. Yes. It will be a tremendous logrolling effort in a common cause. With a $40,000,000,000 budget Congress is no longer dealing with the little simplicities of Federal organization; it is dealing with things that vitally affect every community in the country-a bridge over a river, a dam or irrigation project, a harbor, social security, national defense expenditures; so that you are no longer dealing with simple things but with the nerve centers, the material self-interests of individuals, groups, and communities, and they are certainly going to bear down on you when you give them notice you are going to cut them.

Senator FERGUSON. Mr. Smith, I wonder whether your experience indicates that the pressure groups act on our budget cuts but very

few if any pressure groups are out to aid the Congress in making cuts. What is your experience?

Mr. SMITH. I think you are asking for a rare form of altruism. Senator FERGUSON. Isn't it true that your pressure does come from those who are trying to prevent cuts and there is no pressure on Congress to make any cuts?

Mr. SMITH. That's right. The word usually goes out from, let us say, a bureau in Washington that as a result of this economy in the legislative budget it is too bad but we are going to have to cut out soil conservation in this area, or we are going to have to reduce irrigation in that area. Such notices are open invitations for every chamber of commerce, for every citizen and for every contractor to begin to put the heat upon Members of Congress here.

In summary I question the use of a device like a legislative budget which in its present form does not guide the appropriations committees. It doesn't correlate because each appropriations committee is still left to its own discretion. In its present form it contributes nothing to stable control over fiscal policies whatever. The objective of the legislative budget is excellent, but the instrument is not properly suited to the task. What they would say in industry is that the bugs haven't been ironed out of it. That is my experience with it over the last 6 months.

Senator FERGUSON. You think in theory we need this?

Mr. SMITH. I do. I think the idea is excellent.

Senator FERGUSON. We haven't yet the machinery to do it. In other words, we are doing such a partial job with the machinery that we have that we may prevent the Congress some time from actually doing it.

Mr. SMITH. You may discredit it, unfairly so, because the objective is good and sound. I think the objective can be achieved with study of the real problems involved.

The trouble is this whole concept is an academic approach to a very practical situation. It is easy in academic theory to sit down and say all Congress needs to do is go over the President's budget and make readjustments in the amounts and then come up with a final figure, but that is certainly an impractical thing to do in the light of forces. which are set in motion by changes in proposed Federal spending.

Now, I have one suggestion this morning, aside from the fact that we may study the problem further and come up with a workable instrument, which is possible. My suggestion is to eliminate section 138 (b) of the Reorganization Act. With this change a good portion of the wrangling that takes place in the newspapers and on the floor of the Senate, could be eliminated.

That section, in brief, provides that when the joint committee comes in with a proposed budget of revenues, expenditures, and payment on the debt, the entire Senate and the entire House must approve it by adoption of a concurrent resolution.

What happens is this: Members of the Joint Committee on the Legislative Budget come in and report this budget and ask Congress as a whole to approve of decisions on vital appropriations matters which they have had no hand in making. Members of Congress are reluctant to approve of money cuts unless they know the detail. So, very justly, they stand on the floor of the House and Senate and say, "What cuts do you intend to make? Where are these reductions going

to come?" That happened in the first session of the Eightieth Congress. When members of the joint committee did not point out and explain exactly where budget reductions would be made, hours of bitter and fruitless partisan debate ensued. By striking out section 138 (b) this difficulty would be avoided. The joint committee would merely report a legislative budget as a guide to the appropriations committees. This would have no less binding force than the legislative budget resolution has now. Everyone admitted last year that it had no binding effect.

Senator FERGUSON. In other words, if a man did vote, we will say blindly, as it almost indicates, he would feel perfectly at liberty when it came up again to vote directly opposite because he would say, "Now I feel that this is going to cut out A or B but I must vote for A and B in committee, and therefore my previous vote is not binding." That ought to be understood, that when a man does vote-and many of us have some of this because many of us are on that committee, some 102 in both Houses-the feeling is now that we are somewhat inconsistent later on in committee when we vote upon a particular budget.

Mr. SMITH. It was almost universally agreed last year that because the legislative budget report was not properly designed, it was a mere gesture without binding effect. In its present form the legislative budget idea gives rise to fruitless debate.

The CHAIRMAN. Are you familiar with Senate Joint Resolution 182 which was introduced by Senator Bridges and Senator Butler, which sets up a joint committee to prepare the legislative budget and to investigate Federal expenditures?

Mr. SMITH. Yes; I am familiar with that resolution. I thought I had a copy of that at hand.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you wish to comment on that?

Mr. SMITH. There are two questionable provisions in that resolution. One is that it has a section providing that that joint committee of 12 should exercise continuous investigation and control powers over expenditures in the executive departments. On the surface this appears to be an infringement upon the prime jurisdiction of the committee I am now appearing before.

If retained, it might result in three committees looking into the expenditures of the executive departments with all the attendant confusion which would follow from too many investigations of the executive departments.

First of all, the Appropriations Committees of both Houses have the power in the Reorganization Act to investigate expenditures in the executive departments. Secondly, by jurisdiction, this committee has the same power. With Senate Joint Resolution 182, a third committee may be set up with the saxm power. This could produce a conflicting state of affairs between committees due to overlapping functions, which I think would be undesirable.

Proponents of that resolution do point out that they did not mean they would do the same kind of work that you would do: look into the detailed expenditures of each department. They mean to examine only the statistical totals of all the executive departments and only for the purpose of the legislative budget. This comes back to the attempt to deal with a legislative budget in statistical rather than in substantive terms. So I don't think that section is helpful at all. I

think it is one of the things that should be carefully considered in the light of our experience.

Senator BRICKER. I am advised by the chairman of the Rules Committee that this committee desires to be heard before they report this resolution out, if they are inclined to report it out.

course, I don't know about that, but it does appear to me to be a very definite infringement on the specific authority of the Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments.

Mr. SMITH. I think the intention of the framers of the resolution was fair. They have no desire, in my mind, to infringe upon the jurisdiction of this committee. They felt that they would be dealing with a realm of figures that this committee would not be particularly concerned about. But it would probably end up in about the same thing, they would be investigating expenditures in the executive department on many occasions.

Senator BRICKER. What is your opinion on the creation of more joint committees anyway? Of course, we do have to have some joint committees. Senator Hickenlooper, who is here, is Chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, a pretty necessary appointment. But it seems to me joint committees should be held to a minimum or, putting it the other way, if we go too far in creating joint committees we get away from the bicameral make-up of the Congress. Mr. SMITH. Very materially.

Senator BRICKER. And there is a question there whether we want to get away from that any further than we have.

Senator FERGUSON. I think one expression used by Dr. Galloway this morning, when he compared it to almost appellate jurisdiction in some cases, and particularly appropriation and budget and maybe it is true in tax measures, is very apt. Let us say it is almost appellate jurisdiction. So if you combine the appellate jurisdiction and the other jurisdiction you really abolish the appellate jurisdiction, do you not?

Mr. SMITH. That's right.

Senator FERGUSON. I thought he had a good expression when he used that word "appellate." We usually feel in the court that you must separate the lower court, the trial court, always from the appellate so they are free to act in this kind of a case. In the lower House you say they have jurisdiction, and they do, and then they say they favor any appropriation and they have assumed that jurisdiction. It may be well to keep these branches absolutely separate rather than try to do it jointly.

Mr. SMITH. But I proposed in the original hearings something that was not completely a joint committee but was known as an "associated committee." Committees with comparable jurisdiction would associate themselves, not as a joint committee but associating themselves to hear witnesses once, to get the data once and then each of the committees would separate and come to their own conclusions independently. I thought that was a fair suggestion for cutting down the duplication of work which goes on between the House and the Senate at great cost in time and expense to Government and private witnesses called before congressional committees.

Senator FERGUSON. I think there is merit to that idea, and we in the Surplus Property Subcommittees have attempted to do that.

Mr. SMITH. Yes. The chairman of this Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments has certainly taken the initiative in bringing about associated hearings. It is one of the most fruitful developments under the Reorganization Act. The House and Senate subcommittees on Interior Department appropriations have also associated together in conducting one series of hearings. If it were possible to get an associated group of hearings on appropriations generally then the whole budget-making process could proceed as one unified operation, while each House would still reserve to itself the complete independence of action that it needs. That may possibly be a development for the future.

I should like to pass to the second problem that I have here in my statement, that of seniority. I will go over that rather quickly. The question of seniority will certainly be raised again before your committee because it is one of the perennial criticisms against the operations of Congress. I agree with Senator La Follette, who made the statement yesterday that seniority is greatly exaggerated. Entirely too much emphasis is placed on the undesirability of ranking committee members and selecting chairmen by seniority.

Seniority is but one, although an important, factor in the ranking of Congressmen for committee service. It is thus far the only tested. device providing an impartial arbiter of conflicting claims to rank.

It is much overrated in the relation it bears to committee operations. This is particularly true in the light of changes made in the committee system by the Reorganization Act. You know they say of the War Department that the generals always fight the last war in their preparations for the future. I think to some degree our academicians, who are criticizing the selection of chairmen by seniority, are really against what took place before the Reorganization Act was passed rather than what the situation now looks like.

In my judgment the passage of the Reorganization Act took away much of the force contained in criticisms of the seniority rule. By reducing the number of committees the Reorganization Act not only reduced the number of chairmen but also made the subcommittees of each committee more important. The men chosen to head these important subcommittees are selected largely on the basis of talent and other considerations than mere years of service in Congress.

Under the Reorganization Act, moreover, the power of the chairman is shared by the committee as a whole. He cannot appoint the staff without committee approval and all persons and salaries must be regularly reported. He cannot work by proxies. He must convene the committee at regular intervals. He cannot report a measure unless a majority of the committee were actually present and voting for it. Any Member of Congress may appear and press for consideration of his bill. The chairman must report promptly any measure approved by the committee. He must conduct all hearings in public. A record must be kept of all committee action including votes on any question on which a record vote is demanded. All of these are limitations upon the former arbitrary power of committee chairmen.

The present majority has adopted a practice under which Senators in charge of specific bills are given the opportunity to assume floor leadership when these measures are called up. This, in itself, opens

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