AMENDMENTS TO THE RULES OF THE HOUSE SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, 1932 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON RULES, The committee at 11.30 o'clock, a. m., proceeded to the consideration of House Resolution 93. STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN J. COCHRAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MISSOURI Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. Chairman, I will be very brief. By direction of the Committee on Expenditures I introduced House Resolution 93, which is an amendment to Rude 11, paragraph 710, found on page 305 of the Manual. The Congress has instructed the Committee on Expenditures to do certain things, among them being to investigate extravagance and waste in public expenditures, illegal expenditures, and so forth. We have now the power to call before the committee any official of the Government, but our power ends there. If an investigation were started, we have no power to subpoena a witness; if any outside witness appears it is voluntary on their part. The committee feels, if it is properly to carry out the mandate of Congress in the future, that you should give us the additional power that would enable us to subpoena witnesses. I will just cite this one instance. In the last Congress a Member of the House came before the committee and submitted what I thought was evidence that would warrant the committee in investigating post-office leases. The committee could not proceed, because it did not have the power to call any outside witnesses, which was necessary. Thereupon that Member went to the Senate and presented the facts to the Senate, and the Senate ordered the investigation, which is still going on, and I think, as a result of that investigation, a lot of good has come to the Government. The question at issue is whether you are going to give one of your committees the power to do that which you instructed them to do. That is all there is to the resolution. Mr. MICHENER. Would not that same thing apply to all committees? Mr. COCHRAN. I do not know what applies to the other committees, but you have specifically instructed this committee to make these investigations. Now the committee is careful. Personally, I am opposed to investigations unless you have some specific facts that would warrant them. On my motion the committee has adopted a resolution that no investigation will even be considered unless evidence is submitted by an individual in affidavit form, and the petition must be filed with the committee seting out in detail the charges. I do not think there is any member of our committee who wants to go ahead and make any investigation unless they are warranted in doing so. Mr. MARTIN. Why could not you come up and get this authority for some specific case that you wanted to hear? Would not that be sufficient, for you to come and get it when you need it? Mr. COCHRAN. Well, that might delay any investigation. Mr. COCHRAN. A subcommittee of five drew the resolution. I was not a member of the subcommittee. The other members were here this morning, but had engagements and had to leave, with the exception of Mr. Colton. The CHAIRMAN. We will be glad to hear from you, Mr. Colton. STATEMENT OF HON. DON B. COLTON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF UTAH Mr. COLTON. May I suggest, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, that this committee does have a peculiar duty and it is just a little bit different from other legislative committees. If you will recall, there were a large number of expenditures committees, one in the Interior Department, another in the Treasury Department. and so on, and about two or three years ago we combined all of those, particularly at the suggestion and request of Mr. Madden, who was then chairman of the Committee on Appropriations. I think his plan was, and it was the thought at the time in creating this committee, that it should be a committee that could function and could go into the question of expenditures of the Government in any department, in a little different way than had been done heretofore. Particularly the Appropriations Committee felt that it did not have the time to make all of these investigations. Now, we find ourselves in this situation, that we are hedged about in such a way that we can not proceed in our investigations, and you had just as well abolish that particular function of the committee entirely unless you give us some authority to bring witnesses before the committee. In response to the inquiry of the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Martin), let me say it is different from other committees. I myself am a member of other committees, but this committee is unable to go on unless it has some authority to subpoena witnesses before it. Mr. MICHENER. Would that contemplate paying the subpoenaed witness a witness fee? Mr. COLTON. While I do not think the committee has ever discussed that question, I do not believe that would be involved. It is more a matter of bringing books and records and other things before the committee, because now it just finds itself absolutely with its hands tied. Mr. MICHENER. Have you ever found an instance where a person from a department refused to come? Mr. COLTON. Not the Departments, no; but we find ourselves frequently Mr. MICHENER. Let us take this situation. Supposing you wanted the postmaster or auditor from the New York post office or the Dallas post office, would you want to be able to subpoena that man to come here without paying him a fee, or at least paying him his expenses in the matter? Mr. COLTON. I think in a case of that kind we would not want to do it without coming back to this committee; but we do find ourselves frequently in the position where we need other witnesses not in the Government service, and we are unable to ask them to come. Mr. MICHENER. Of course where a committee is sitting as an investigating committee and has been given authority to subpoena witnesses, to produce papers, and so forth, there is always an appropriation somewhere in connection with it whereby the witnesses may be compensated. Of course if he is a Government employee, that is one thing; but it seems to me it would be a hardship, for instance, in investigating a post-office lease, to require an individual to come 'here from San Francisco. Mr. COLTON. I think, in such a case, we should pay that witness. Mr. PURNELL. Do not you believe it would be better, instead of having the committee vested with authority to go into all of these activities, if you would come back to this committee and get specific authority to deal with a stated case? Mr. COLTON. It would, unless you were going really to abolish one of the main functions of this committee. This committee was created for doing that very thing the gentleman suggests. Mr. PURNELL. The gentleman can readily see with all the possibilities involved in this rule not what his committee, but what some committee, that might perhaps not be so discreet, can do. Mr. SABATH. But this committee is a merger of about twelve different committees? Mr. COLTON. Exactly. Mr. SABATH. In former years, we had the Committee on Expenditures in the Interior Department, in the Department of State, War Department, Navy Department, and I think there were 12 different committees, and they were all merged into one with the hope that it would from time to time penetrate or investigate some matters that should be investigated. Mr. COLTON. Already in our experience, we have encountered two or three propositions where our investigation was a mere farce, because we could not do the thing that this resolution would have authorized us to do. And I say that we either ought to give them authority, or else we ought to abolish the committee,—or at least take away that function. (The committee thereupon went into executive session.) X |