$200 million for water and sewer grants, and so on. The trend has gone so far that some Congressmen themselves accept the contention that a Congressional appropriation is merely an authorization to spend, not a mandate.

But the tide is turning. In hearings before his own subcommittee on the separation of powers, Senator Ervin of North Carolina complained rightly that through this discretionary use of funds "the President is able to modify, reshape or nullify completely the laws passed by Congress."

Legislation is in preparation to restore the balance by requiring a President to seek Congressional approval for cuts in appropriations that go beyond the dictates of efficiency. But Senator Mathias of Maryland, a liberal Republican, seems to us to be on an even better track. Why not give the President, through constitutional amendment, a line-item veto in appropriations bills-with Congressional power, of course, to override? Given a compelling case, the President would generally have his way-but he would have it only by grace of a truly equal branch of government.

[From The News and Observer, Raleigh, N.C., Mar. 19, 1971]

ERVIN CITES IMPOUNDED U.S. FUNDS

Washington (UPI)-Sen. Sam J. Ervin Jr., D-N.C., made public Thursday a list of funds totaling $11.1 billion in congressionally appropriated funds he said the administration has impounded by presidential orders.

The list of funds "reserved or otherwise unapportioned" as of Feb. 23, 1971, included two big items-$1.3 billion for the Defense Department and $6.3 billion for the Transportation Department.

The Transportation Department funds being withheld by the Nixon administration includes $5.8 billion in the highway trust fund, $411 million in current funds and $39 million in federal rairoad administration funds, Ervin said. Ervin, chairman of a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee, said these unspent funds will be the subject of a series of hearings starting March 23. The senator said impounding is often justified, as when it is done to avoid deficits, but in other cases it means allowing the executive branch to override Congress. "Under the present impoundment practice, the President has an item veto over acts of Congress," Ervin said. "There is not a word in the Constitution giving such a power.

"By impounding appropriated funds, the President is able to modify, reshape or nullify complete laws passed by the Congress-thus making policy through executive power," he said.

[From The News and Observer, Raleigh, N.C., Mar. 24, 1971]

ERVIN CHALLENGES NIXON ON FUNDS

Washington (AP)-The constitutionality of a president impounding appropriated funds was challenged at a Senate hearing Tuesday, and one witness urged Congress to force a showdown.

Sen. Sam J. Ervin Jr., D-N.C., chairman of a subcommittee on separation of powers, said available information indicates $11.1 billion in appropriations is being held by the administration.

Federal Highway Administrator F. C. Turner defended the practice, saying both Congress and the President have a role in the appropriation and expenditure of funds.

He said "Congress has ways to impose its will" if it feels bad faith, rather than a difference in judgment, is shown by the executive branch.

Former Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall said Congress should reform its own appropriations procedures and then set mandatory spending priorities to be followed by the President.

He testified he would like to see Congress seek "a confrontation with the President a showdown" by insisting the appropriations it feels are vital and urgent be spent on schedule.

Turner said the question of whether appropriations are mandatory or permissive has been an issue between the executive and legislative branches since the beginning of the Republic.

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think the question has been settled by anybody," he said, but he a suit brought by the Missouri Highway Commission last year withholding of federal highway funds might resolve the issue.

seph Alioto of San Francisco testifying for the National League the U.S. Conference of Mayors, said that just because presidening of funds has been going on for 100 years or more doesn't

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[From NEWSDAY, Long Island, N.Y., Mar. 22, 1971]

NADER KILL TAX 'SUBSIDY'

advocate Ralph Nader asked Congress yesterday to block Presispeedup of tax deductions for depreciation, calling it an unlawful sidy to favored businesses.

Nader sent to a Senate subcommittee a legal analysis of the liberalized depreciation rules, arguing that Nixon's order is a usurpation of legislative power and is not in fact a depreciation reform. Nader said in a letter to Sen. Sam J. Ervin Jr., (D-NC.), chairman of the subcommittee on separation of powers, that the Treasury is proposing to "spend billions of dollars annually in a tax expenditure program never authorized by the Congress. Once again powerful private interests have undertaken a raid on the U.S. Treasury.”

At a White House news conference Jan. 11 the depreciation changes were announced as a stimulant to private investment. The order, formally promulgated last week, would let businessmen write off their outlays for new equipment or machinery 20 per cent faster than in the past, in tax deductions for depreciation.

[From Newsweek, Apr. 19, 1971]

THE ECONOMY: NIXON'S NEST EGG

Through all the painful months that the U.S. economy has been struggling to regain momentum, economic critics have been increasing the pressure for some meaningful fiscal pump priming by the Nixon Administration to supplement the monetary stimulation supplied by the Federal Reserve Board. Of late, the campaign has attracted some of the more powerful Democratic policymakers on Capitol Hill such as House Speaker Carl Albert, Senate Appropriations Committee chairman Allen Ellender and Senate Banking Committee chairman John Sparkman. Some Republicans also have been grumbling that the Administration should do more to spur recovery-and last week, critics of the White House were flourishing a figure they could sink their teeth into. That figure was $12.8 billion, the sum now reposing in the President's reserve of funds appropriated by Congress, but so far unspent.

Such Presidential nest eggs are as old as Thomas Jefferson. But what disturbed President Nixon's critics last week was both the size of the reserve and the uses to which he could put it. They argued that the President was not only punishing his enemies by freezing their favorite public-works projects but also creating a gigantic political "s'ush fund" of backlogged projects that he could release in time for the 1972 elections.

It wasn't really that simple; in fact, Mr. Nixon's advisers argued that the $12.8 billion was largely an illusion. Much of it was mandated for future projects, and the spendable portion-mainly in the highway-construction fund -also needed months of planning before it could be pumped into the economy. Even more important, said the President's defenders, he was still walking a tightrope between the need for recovery and the threat of inflation. "The economy is not like a ball game, where you get a decision, out or safe, ball or strike, every few seconds," said one Administration official. "We can wait a little. We're not going to boot this economy in the behind now and ruin all of our efforts."

That put the game back into Congressional hands, and at the weekend there were some signs of action on Capitol Hill. At the urging of North Carolina's Sen. Sam Ervin, Democrats had introduced a resolution in both houses calling for the creation of a joint Congressional committee to investigate the practice of Executive impounding of appropriated funds. And the bill seemed to have

a good chance of passage. "When the President is allowed to impound funds to effectuate policy in direct contravention of Congressional will," snapped crusty old Sam Ervin, "we no longer have a 'government under law,' and the separation of powers doctrine is nothing more than a sham."

[From The Oak Ridger, Oak Ridge, Tenn., Mar. 22, 1971]

ADMINISTRATION FUND FREEZE: THREAT TO POWER SEPARATION?

Three days of hearings will open in Washington on Tuesday in which Oak Ridge will have quite a stake. And they are not before the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, as most hearings of special local interest are. Rather, they will be before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Separation of Powers of which Sen. Sam J. Ervin, Jr., Democrat of North Carolina, is chairman. The hearings will deal specifically with the Nixon administration's refusal to spend $8 billion which the Congress, in recent sessions, has appropriated. And included in the $8 billion are many millions that might have been spent here in Oak Ridge on the local nuclear establishment:

Like $3 million during fiscal year 1970 for the continuation of the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which instead was put into a much-reduced state of activity with the experimental reactor itself shutdown;

Like $16.5 million to begin the Cascade Improvement Program, at Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant which would markedly increase the capacity of this local plant to produce much-needed enriched uranium;

Like $600,000 to begin design of the new AEC technical information center and new building for the American Museum of Atomic Energy on the site designated at South Tulane and South Illinois Avenues;

Like who knows how many millions for what else for which Congress might have provided funds except for the clear indication that the Office of Budget and Management was not going to authorize spending.

Historically, it has been thought to be one of our national checks and balances that, although it is up to a President to administer the administrative offices, Congress holds considerable power over their operation by virtue of control of the purse strings. And usually this has meant that Congress could deny funds for projects of which it did not approve.

Since the assumption of the presidency by President Nixon, the reverse has been generally true. Congress has been providing money for projects and the Administration has been refusing to spend it, therefore frustrating the majority Congressional will that these projects move forward. The fact of a Democratic Congress and a Republic president is, of course, at the roots of it all— with the Administration justifying its refusal to spend on the ground of attempting to cool the inflationary trend and the Democratic majority of Congress accusing the Administration of adding to joblessness and a general depressed economy by holding such tight reigns on government spending.

Sen. John J. Sparkman, Democrat of Alabama, has joined with Sen. Ervin in calling for the hearings. He issued a blast at the Administration on March 3, calling its refusal to spend the $8 billion "a serious breach of faith" with Congress. He pointed out that municipal officials have said that withholding of funds for housing, public works and other urban programs is placing an added burden on already beleaguered cities.

U.S. Rep. Joe Evins, our local congressman and chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Subcommittee on Public Works, which includes authority over the AEC appropriation, followed up last week with a similar accusation against the Administration. He suggested outright violation of the spirit of the Constitution by the President.

And so the scene is set for hearings that will examine a really basic question. "What concerns me," said Sen. Ervin in scheduling the hearings, "is the use of the impounding practice to avoid or nullify Congressional intent." The exercise of the power of the purse "constitutes the core legislative process-underpinning all other legislative decisions and regulating the balance of influence between the legislative and executive branches of government," writes Richard F. Fenno, Jr., in "The Power of the Purse." Congress wields this power under a constitutional provision which states: "No money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in consequence of appropriation by law."

Although generally in the past it has been a case of an administration wanting to spend and a Congress not willing to appropriate the money, the current reverse situation is not entirely without precedent.

In 1949 Congress approved a 58-group Air Force rather than the 48-group force sought by President Truman. He simply refused to spend the extra money appropriated. Two years later he ignored a rider to an appropriations bill providing for a loan to Spain. (President Truman, a Democrat, had a Republican Congress his last two years in office.) During the Kennedy and Johnson years, Congress provided funds for exotic new weapons systems opposed by Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara and in some cases he refused to deploy them.

Constitutionally, the President does not have an item veto on appropriations. That is, he must sign or veto a whole appropriations bill-he can't pick and choose. Those who now oppose President Nixon's refusal to spend the $8 billion in projects now being withheld say that he has, by refusing to spend, simply made an item veto for himself. But supporters of the President, and there are some of them in Congress too, simply return to the argument that a Congressional appropriation does not carry with it a mandate that the money be spent.

Writing in the Stanford Law Review, Sen. Frank Church, Democrat of Idaho, calls the executive impounding of funds a threat to the separation of powers. "Once it is widely recognized that a project may be entombed by the executive branch," he wrote, "the American people will sense the futility of appealing to their elected representatives."

Perhaps the hearings this week, in calling attention to the situation, can lead to some sort of understanding or compromise.

It would be unfortunate indeed if it turned into a situation where a congressman would threaten to block some appropriation vital to the national welfare until he got assurances that previously-appropriated but withheld funds for some dam or postoffice in his home district were released. The nation can ill afford this kind of power play political bargaining.

[From The Boston Globe, Apr. 13, 1971]

WHY SHOULD NIXON LET $20B GO UNSPENT?

(By Thomas Oliphant)

Perhaps, taking the long view, it's a good thing that President Nixon's revenue sharing proposals aren't going anywhere in Congress this year, and possibly not ever.

For the real issue Congress and the President, hopefully together, should be facing is not whether to put $16 billion into a cannon and shoot them at the various state houses and city halls around the country. The real issue, to which revenue sharing is only a tiny response, is the sordid mess the legislative and executive branches of the Federal government have made of the annual process of taking money out of the economy in the form of taxes and spending it in the form of programs and direct payments to citizens.

The primary villain in this piece is not the size of the Federal government's annual operations. There is nothing inherently or necessarily evil about a national system that handles more than $200 billion a year. The real villain is a combination of preposterous Congressional procedures with increasingly dictatorial behavior by the White House.

The result of this madness is that $20 billion, at least, in funds appropriated by the Congress for the current fiscal year will not be spent because the President has ordered them impounded.

Think of it-$20 billion. That's nearly 10 percent of all the money the Federal government will take in this year. What's more, the money doesn't represent missile systems, anti-personnel bombs or helicopters, areas of endeavor whose needs are carefully provided for.

Instead, the $20 billion represents funds, appropriated for housing, mass transit, urban renewal, water pipes, sewer systems, job-training, roads, and even a national aquarium for Washington.

Lately, this question of unspent appropriations has been eagerly snapped up by mayors, governors and, especially Democratic Congressmen, who have been

getting considerable mileage with their allegedly serious expressions of concern and shock.

Actually, the problem to a great extent has been caused by Congress itself, whose handling of the annual appropriations game is ludicrously deficient.

Nowhere is any attention paid to the final spending total that is the sum of the individual appropriations bills. Instead, each department is treated with a special blend of legislative bribery, compromise, logrolling and obstructionism. Congress also has an interesting habit of rarely getting its appropriating work done on time. Typically, a money bill never gets to the President's desk until after the fiscal year has already begun, a form of tardiness that makes the efficient spending of all the appropriated money nearly impossible.

But let's not forget the President, and by that we mean all Presidents since FDR. When the chief executive signs an appropriations act it becomes a law, so the civics books say, and one of the President's jobs is supposed to be to take care that the laws are carried out.

Thus, the failure to spend money can be viewed as a violation of the Constitution, a point Sen. Sam Ervin (D-N.C.) has been making in a recent series of hearings on the topic.

Some of the impounding President Nixon has ordered is probably legally justifiable. For example, he's frozen something like $1 billion in military construction funds, and he correctly asserts that this is all right under his inherent powers as commander in chief.

Elsewhere, though, he's on pretty shaky ground. Just taking one area, mass transportation, where more than $200 million has ben impounded, isn't it interesting to note that this is almost precisely the figure by which Congress's appropriation exceeded the President's original request?

As Sen. Ervin has noted, this kind of behavior comes perilously close to constituting an "item veto," or the nullifying of a portion of a Congressional act, which is a definite no-no under the Constitution.

So how does Mr. Nixon defend himself? Here's what Caspar Weinberger, the deputy director of the office of Management and Budget, had to say in response to charges the Administration was refusing to spend $10 million already appropriated for a national aquarium in Washington.

"The Administration decided not to fund the project and is giving Congress another chance to consider the matter," Weinberger said. How's that for an Administration dedicated to law and order?

[From The Washington Post, Jan. 8, 1970]

THREATENED VETO OF HEW BILL IS KEYED TO HILL CONTROL

(By Spencer Rich)

The dispute over President Nixon's threatened veto of the $19.8 billion appropriations bill for the Departments of Labor and Health, Education and Welfare has become a political fight to the finish.

The stakes may well be control of the U.S. Senate and House in the 1970 congressional elections.

Democrats in Congress have been shopping around for a political issue damaging to the President since criticism of his conduct of the Vietnam war has diminished.

Unless they can find an issue, Democrats fear they may lose their majorities in the Senate and House.

ACCEPT CHALLENGE

According to one report, when the Senate Democrats caucused the morning after the President first warned he would veto the bill, many expressed delight that the President had handed them their first good political issue for the 1970 elections.

They moved immediately to take up the challenge by delaying final action on the big money measure until Congress returns Jan. 19. Then they plan to try to override the veto if the President goes through with his threat.

The argument the Democrats will make to the country is that the President, by vetoing the measure because it contains $1.3 billion in health and education funds he did not request, has shown that he has his priorities wrong and does not sympathize with the urgent health and education needs of the American people