Senator BYRD. What was the significance of the Hoover Act?" Mr. MERRIAM. This measure was endorsed long ago by President Nicholas Murray Butler, of Columbia University, who was under no suspicion of being committed to the New Deal, as far as I know, in any of the large number of details. This plan was very promptly and enthusiastically endorsed by Gov. Frank O. Lowden in a statement which he made, which appears in the press. It could be produced if it is desired, and this statement, and the general principle and plan proposed here, was most enthusiastically endorsed in my presence by Gen. Charles Dawes, and again I will say, by Mr. Will Hays, Nicholas Murray Butler, Frank O. Lowden.

Senator McNARY. What is the use in taking up the time reciting the individuals who may approve or disapprove this proposition. None of those fellows have the least influence on me or this committee. I think you may conserve your time.

Mr. MERRIAM. That may be, but there are some gentlemen who intimated that there was something in our intentions to upset the balance of power of the Government. I just wanted to show these gentlemen's endorsement.

The CHAIRMAN. Go ahead, Doctor.

Mr. MERRIAM. Whether it is heard in this committee again or not, it will be heard elsewhere. The civil-service provisions were based on the Democratic and Republican national platforms in the campaign of 1936. I will not take up your time to read what these gentleman said who assisted in the formation of this, one way or the other.

Senator MCNARY. Are we to have citations of what other people or what political platforms have endorsed? Are we going to listen to that or are we going to have an analysis or a description of this bill? The CHAIRMAN. I think the witness has a right to state the background, that the recommendations made were in accordance with the views of both political parties.

Mr. MERRIAM. If it is embarrassing to cite the platforms of the parties, I will withdraw that from the record.

Senator McNARY. Leave it in there, but I think, Doctor, you ought to make better use of your time and get down to the discussion of the bill.

Senator BARKLEY. I think he ought to put in the record the fact, to give him a little background here, in order to refute the idea that these gentlemen have conceived this thing out of the fertility of their brains that it is something new and strange and therefore ought not to be considered.

Senator BYRD. Mr. Chairman, could I insert in the record the exact provision of the Legislative Appropriation Act of 1933, to which reference has been made?

The CHAIRMAN. I will suggest this, Senator: You can put in the 1932 act, you can put in the one you started to read, and then we will put in the language of this bill, which is the exact language of the section the Senator is reading.

Senator BYRD. Not in 1932.

The CHAIRMAN. I say, put the one in that you want in, the 1932 act, and then put in the one you started to read.

Senator BYRD. The Chairman agrees that the act of 1932 did not give the same power that this present act does, does he not?

(The acts referred to are printed at the end of this day's testimony.)

Senator O'MAHONEY. Cannot we reserve the argument until later, Mr. Chairman?

The CHAIRMAN. Just for the Senator's information, I was on the subcommittee that drafted the 1932 act and presented it to the Senate, and I think I know what was in it. Let us print them in the record. Senator BYRD. I ask the witness to make a statement on the 1932 section with respect to the power of the President.

The CHAIRMAN. I submit to the committee that I do not want to have the witness' statement on a matter of that kind. It is purely between the members of the committee. At the conclusion of the statement the request of the Senator will be complied with and the three sections may be put into the record. Go ahead, Doctor.

Mr. MERRIAM. I will speak very briefly of our findings and then the recommendations. I could complete the statement in 10 or 12 minutes quite readily.

Senator O'MAHONEY. I suggest that the witness make his statement without interruption, without being subjected to any interrogations.

The CHAIRMAN. The chairman considers that as a motion. All in favor of the motion will say "aye." Contrary, "no." The motion is carried, and we will not permit any interruption until the witness finishes his statement.

Mr. MERRIAM. We found, no. 1, Mr. Chairman, the Presidential office, personnel, Presidential staff, inadequate. We found the President's office not as well equipped as the office of the Governor in some States, or the secretaries who are in charge of various departments. I am not referring now to a staff dealing with public relations and appointments, but to that part of his staff on which he could rely for more information and detail in regard to administrative questions. We found, in the second place, one-hundred-odd agencies of government had grown up, not counting a large number of corporations, and that the range of these agencies, authorities, and organizations was so wide as to make it extremely difficult for the President to deal effectively with them.

We found, in the third place, in the field of personnel a large number of temporary employees had been added through the expansion of the functions of the Government in the period of the depression, and we found, as we believe, that the organization of the civil-service system leaves much to be desired. We believe that another step could be taken in setting up a higher level of civil service in this country.

We found, in the fourth place, that the accounting system of the United States had been developed on an inadequate basis and that the Comptroller General had taken over functions which, from our point of view, are not legislative but, in a considerable part, executive. These are functions that for a century and a quarter were administered through regular departments but which are now diverted in other channels and in other directions.

Is it in order to read a summary of this now?

The CHAIRMAN. Go ahead.

Mr. MERRIAM. In the President's message it is stated:

"No enterprise can operate effectively if set up as is the Government today. There are over 100 separate boards, commissions, corporations, authorities, agencies, and activities through which the work of

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the Government is being carried on. Neither the President nor the Congress can exercise efficient supervision and direction over such a chaos of establishments, nor can overlapping, duplication, and contradictory policies be avoided.

"The committee has not spared me; they say, what has been common knowledge for 20 years, that the President cannot adequately handle his responsibilities; that he is overworked; that it is humanly impossible, under the system which we have, for him fully to carry out his constitutional duties as Chief Executive, because he is overwhelmed with minor details and needless contacts arising directly from the bad organization and equipment of the Government. I can testify to this. With my predecessors who have said the same thing over and over again, I plead guilty.

"The plain fact is that the present organization and equipment of the executive branch of the Government defeats the constitutional intent that there be a single responsible Chief Executive to coordinate and manage the departments and activities in accordance with the laws enacted by the Congress. Under these conditions the Government cannot be thoroughly effective in working, under popular control, for the common good."

That is the language of President Roosevelt, which is a summary of the findings in the whole situation, based upon his own experience. We propose then, no. 1, to strengthen the hands of the President by building up his personal staff. I will not dwell on that.

We propose, in the second place, point no. 2, to reorganize what might be called the White House management or the management in the White House. We propose to draw in under the President three managerial agencies, finance, personnel, and planning, through the Budget officer, through the personnel administrator, the Civil Service Commission, and through the organization of a planning agency.

We propose, in the third place, to abolish the Federal patronage system and reorganize the Civil Service on a career basis.

We propose, in point no. 4, to reorganize the 100-odd scattered agencies of the Government, the exact number depending on how you reckon them (some are mixed types), to reorganize those 100 agencies under 12 heads, to put them all under 12 main tents and to give to the Executive the power he had had under the Overman Act and under the 1932 and 1933 acts, a continuing power of readjustment and reallocation of agencies, functions, and personnel.

We propose, under point no. 5, to establish a modified system of accounting and accountability to Congress through the reorganization of the office of the Comptroller General and Auditor General, and through the setting up of a joint committee of the House and Senate to whom the Auditor General, as the agent of Congress, would report.

If it is indicated that this gives larger power to the Executive I call attention to the fact, no. 1, that it is proposed to eliminate a most important point, the patronage system, commonly regarded as one of the sources of executive power; we propose, no. 2, to develop a system of executive accountability through a joint committee which would give Congress a better view of actual expenditures than it has been able to get. Far from reducing the powers of an independent audit on behalf of Congress, we propose to increase those powers and to render their use more effective; and, in the third place, we pointed the way-al

though we did not undertake to set down the detail-we pointed the way toward new types of decentralization of administration through the development of regional agencies, and also pointed the way toward more effective congressional supervision through joint committees on personnel and planning.

This was designed, then, gentlemen, in summary, to give to the Executive of the United States the tools of modern management, to put an end to the spoils system in the Federal Government; to relieve the heads of departments, secretaries and Cabinet members from a mass of detail which now falls upon them, and to give them an opportunity for the consideration of their larger duties in a manner better adapted to the original purposes of the Cabinet system.

We propose, finally, and this was our main purpose, to give to the American democracy the best tools of management that could be set up for the execution of the will of the people as expressed in elections and in the acts of Congress.

Now, Mr. Chairman, if I might add one word here, we have a series of reports on various phases of our main report. All of these have been handed to the members of this committee from time to time, and they may even now, by this time, be in bound form.

Senator MCNARY. When will they be available, Doctor?

Mr. MERRIAM. These reports in loose form, have been available for several weeks. The bound volume will be available this week. The individual ones have been set up.

Senator MCNARY. Did you conclude your statement, Doctor?
Mr. MERRIAM. Yes, Senator.

Senator MCNARY. I was interested, not critically at all, in the statement that you were going to relieve the Cabinet officers from their connection with their administrative or executive forces. By what method do you reach that happy situation?

Mr. MERRIAM. Well, that is described in a good deal of detail. In answering your question I will say that in one of these reports, the one by McMahon on Administrative Management, by bringing the Cabinet heads of the larger departments face to face with the issue of Cabinet management. This is something that is already done in considerable measure in Agriculture and in the Treasury.

Senator MCNARY. You mean by expanding the Cabinet structure you would bring about a more elaborate lot of machinery to administer their different functions of government?

Mr. MERRIAM. Well, only in the sense, Senator, that you would relieve them of detail and allow them through their own managerial agencies to administer the functions of government.

Senator MCNARY. Frankly, I do not quite understand you. I do not know how that is going to be done. I am not saying this in a critical sense. The purposes sound very rational. You mean you are not going to have their contact so frequently with the White House; that the Cabinet is going to be able to handle its business more efficiently, you will have more employees, and give the individual Cabinet member more time to look after the larger aspect of the business than he has now?

Mr. MERRIAM. It will give him more time to consider the larger aspects of his work and to have more contacts with the Chief Executive and with the leaders who are in charge of shaping legislation.

Senator MCNARY. Then you are going to enlarge the personnel in each one of these departments?

Mr. MERRIAM. Well, it will not take very much of an enlargement of the personnel.

Senator MCNARY. Doctor, just how are you going to relieve the Cabinet officer of the duties that you say now prevent him from coming into intimate contact with the executive department?

Mr. MERRIAM. Well, his difficulty now-and this arises in the relatively small departments-is that he thinks he can handle all the detail personally. If the department is large it becomes perfectly clear, as in the case of Agriculture, that no one man, even being as able as Secretary Wallace, being a technical expert in the field, no man can handle all of the detail. He has people under him, he has the undersecretary the assistant secretaries, then he has a roving group of persons.

Senator MCNARY. Roving?

Mr. MERRIAM. I mean they are not assigned to a routine administrative duty. They do not have to be tied to a desk. But if there is something the Secretary wants to take up, that he has got to have a report on, he can have that done. In the meantime, the more routine work is handled by other people.

Senator BARKLEY. Doctor, if we may assume that these 100 loosely jointed bureaus, commissions, and boards around here are to be allocated either among the present Cabinet or Department, or to increase the number by one or two, whatever it might be, of course, that would involve more work on each Cabinet member to supervise the administration of the additional bureaus and department that might be put under him?

Mr. MERRIAM. Yes.

Senator BARKLEY. And it would make it necessary for him to have more managerial leeway in order that he might hold the reins on all these different subdivisions and bureaus, but at the same time have the opportunity and the personnel to give the right sort of supervision to all of them, and that this would require that he have a little more time for that than he may have now, isn't that true?

Mr. MERRIAM. That is a very good statement, Senator, better than I could make it.

Senator BYRD. Does not the present law give him the power and all the assistants that he needs by making application to the budget directly and have it approved by Congress?

Mr. MERRIAM. Some of them have done that, Senator. You know that better than I.

Senator BYRD. Do you think that is one of the merits of your proposal, to give additional assistance to the Cabinet officers?

Mr. MERRIAM. Give them a little more assistance on the managerial side; yes.

Senator MCNARY. I understood, from the conversation a minute ago, that you wanted to create more bureaus and divisions in these departments in order to give the Cabinet officer more time to conceive the larger things that might come under his jurisdiction.

Mr. MERRIAM. It would tend to transfer the thing more to his managerial agency and free his time on the detail.

The CHAIRMAN. You do not want to create more divisions and bureaus, do you? That is not the purpose of the bill?