Pursuant to this authority, President Roosevelt, by Executive Order 6166, dated June 10, 1933,10 transferred the authority to make, waive, and modify apportionments of appropriations from the heads of departments and independent establishments to the Director of the Bureau of the Budget. This authority gave the President greater controls over expenditures of appropriated funds and provided a means for effecting economies in the Government. THE PRESIDENT'S COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATIVE MANAGEMENT, 1936 The Committee on Administrative Management was created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on March 22, 1936, to which Louis Brownlow, chairman, Charles E. Merriam, and Luther H. Gulick were appointed. The Committee has often been referred to as the "Brownlow Committee." The Committee was to make a study of the organization of the administrative departments and agencies of the Federal Government, with the primary purpose of considering the problems of administrative management. On January 12, 1937, President Roosevelt sent a message to Congress transmitting the report of his Committee on Administrative Management." This report was supplemented by a series of nine studies of administrative management in the Federal Government. Titles of these studies were: (1) "Personnel Administration in the Federal Service." (2) "Financial Control and Accountability." (3) "The General Accounting Office." (4) "The Problem of the Independent Regulatory Commissions." 5) "Departmental Management.' (6) "Executive Management and the Federal Field Service." (7) "Government Corporations and Independent Supervisory Agencies." (8) "The Exercise of Rule-Making Power." (9) "The Preparation of Proposed Legislative Measures by Administrative Departments." In his message, the President presented the Committee's program proposing to bring the administrative management of the Federal Government up to date. It included the following five major recommendations: (1) Expand the White House staff so that the President may have a sufficient group of able assistants in his own office to keep him in closer and easier touch with the widespread affairs of administration, and to promote speedier clearance of the knowledge needed for Executive decision. (2) Strengthen and develop the managerial agencies of the Government, particularly those dealing with the budget and efficiency research, with personnel and with planning, as management-arms of the Chief Executive. (3) Extend the merit system upward, outward, and downward to cover practically all non-policy-determining posts; reorganize the civil service system as a part of management under a single, 10 Submitted to Congress, June 10, 1933, H. Doc. 69, 73d Cong. 11 S. Doc. 8, 75th Cong., "Reorganization of the Executive Departments;" 84 pp. responsible administrator, and create a citizen board to serve as the watchdog of the merit system, and increase the salaries of key posts throughout the service so that the Government may attract and hold in a career service men and women of ability and character. (4) Overhaul the 100 independent agencies, administrations, authorities, boards, and commissions, and place them by Executive order within one or the other of the following 12 major executive departments: State, Treasury, War, Justice, Post Office, Navy, Conservation, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Social Welfare, and Public Works: and place upon the Executive continuing responsibility for the maintenance of effective organization. (5) Establishing accountability of the Executive to the Congress by providing a genuine independent postaudit of all fiscal transactions by an auditor general, and restore to the Executive complete responsibility for accounts and current transactions. Defects in fiscal management In its report on fiscal management, the Committee stated that from the standpoint of overall control of the fiscal affairs of the Government, four major defects existed, namely (1) the inadequate staffing of the Bureau of the Budget; (2) 12 To correct these defects the Committee made two sets of recommendations, one relating to budget and administrative controls and the other to control of accounting and expenditures. Recommendations for budget and administrative control To aid the President in carrying out his responsibilities, the Committee recommended strengthening the Bureau of the Budget as follows: 1. The Director of the Bureau of the Budget should be relieved from routine duties and thus enabled to devote himself to problems of fiscal policy and planning. Provision should be made for an adequate permanent staff of the highest competence, implemented by special assistants on assignment from the operating agencies and by temporary consultants and specialists recruited from business and industry for special assignments. 2. The execution, as well as the preparation, of the budget should be supervised by the Bureau of the Budget and should be closely correlated with fiscal programs and plans. 12 S. Doc. 8, 75th Cong., p. 33. 3. The administrative research function of the Bureau of the Budget should be adequately developed to aid the President in his duties as head of the executive establishment. The Bureau should carry on constructive studies in public administration for the constant improvement of Government organization and procedure and should also stimulate continuous study of these problems by departments and bureaus. 4. The information function of the Bureau of the Budget should be developed and improved. The U.S. Information Service should be transferred to it, as should other appropriate activities in the coordination of the field services of the Government. 5. The Bureau of the Budget should serve in various ways as an agency of the President. Improvement should be made in its facilities for the clearance of Executive orders and the establishment of uniform codes of management in the Government. It should assist the departments in their regulations governing internal organization. It could render important service to the President and to the Congress in coordinating and clearing legislative recommendations which originate in the executive branch. Recommendations for control of accounting and expenditures The Committee, in its report, attacked the authority given the Comptroller General under the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 to prescribe accounting systems and to render advance rulings on proposed expenditures and the settlement of accounts, contending that these functions belong to the executive branch of the Government. To correct this situation the Committee's recommendations were as follows: (1) For the purpose of providing the Chief Executive with the essential vehicles for current financial management and administrative control, the authority to prescribe and supervise accounting systems, forms, and procedures in the Federal establishments should be transferred to and vested in the Secretary of the Treasury. This recommendation is not new. In 1932 President Hoover recommended to the Congress that the power to prescribe accounting systems be transferred to the executive branch, * * *. In 1934 a special committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Federal expenditures, headed by Mr. Matthew S. Sloan, recommended that all accounting activities be removed from the Comptroller General and placed in a General Accounting Office directly responsible to the President. This committee stated in its report: "Since the Comptroller General is not under Executive control, as he reports to Congress and is responsible only to that body, the Executive is deprived of one of the most essential means of establishing effective supervision over expenditures, namely, a satisfactory accounting system directly under Executive control. Moreover, the Comptroller General is now in the anomalous position of auditing his own accounting. "The Committee is convinced that accounting should be segregated from auditing, and that accounting should be centralized in an agency under the control of the President. Such a system would provide the administration with machinery necessary to establish control over expenditures and also afford Congress an independent agency for checking the fiscal operations of the administration." (2) For the purpose of fixing responsibility for the fiscal management of the Government establishment on the Chief Executive in conformity with the constitutional principle that the President "shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed," claims and demands by the Government of the United States or against it and accounts in which the Government of the United States is concerned, either as debtor or as creditor, should be settled and adjusted in the Treasury Department. (3) To avoid conflict and dispute between the Secretary of the Treasury and the departments as to the jurisdiction of the Secretary to settle public accounts, which conflicts and disputes have so marred the relationship between the Comptroller General and the departments in the past, and to make it impossible for the Secretary of the Treasury to usurp any of the powers vested in the heads of departments by the Congress, the Attorney General should be authorized to render opinions on such questions of jurisdiction (but not on the merits of the case) upon the request of the head of the department or upon the request of the Secretary of the Treasury, and the opinion of the Attorney General on such questions of jurisdiction should be final and binding. (4) In order to conform to the limitations in the functions remaining within the jurisdiction of the Comptroller General, the titles of the Comptroller General and the Assistant Comptroller General should be changed to Auditor General and Assistant Auditor General, respectively, and the name of the General Accounting Office should be changed to the General Auditing Office. (5) The Auditor General should be authorized and required to assign representatives of his office to such stations in the District of Columbia and the field as will enable them currently to audit the accounts of the accountable officers, and they should be required to certify forthwith such exceptions as may be taken to the transactions involved (a) to the officer whose account is involved; (b) to the Auditor General; and (c) to the Secretary of the Treasury. The auditing work would thus proceed in a decentralized manner independent of, but practically simultaneous with, disbursement. Duplication of effort and delays due to centralization in Washington could be reduced to a minimum. It would not be necessary for the Treasury Department to duplicate the field audit of the General Auditing Office. Exceptions would be promptly reported to the Treasury. Prompt, efficient service could be afforded in the scrutiny of questioned vouchers and in the review of accounts of dis- (6) In the event of the failure of the Secretary of the Legislative action on Committee recommendations The Joint Committee on Government Organization, which consisted of members of the House and Senate Select Committees on Government Organization, held extensive hearings on the recommendations of the President's Committee on Administrative Management in February, March, and April 1937. Following these hearings Senator Joseph T. Robinson of Arkansas, introduced S. 2700 on June 23, 1937, entitled "The Reorganization Act of 1937," which provided for reorganizing agencies of the Government, extending the classified civil service, establishing a General Auditing Office and a Department of Welfare, which proposed to carry out the recommendations of the President's Committee. Title III of S. 2700 would have abolished the General Accounting Office and transferred its functions of exercising current financial control over executive departments to the Bureau of the Budget and would have created a General Auditing Office to audit the financial transactions of the Government. The General Auditing Office would have been headed by an Auditor General responsible only to Congress. Hearings were held on S. 2700 in August 1937 by the Senate Select Committee on Government Organization, after which a revised bill (S. 2970) was introduced by Senator James F. Byrnes of South Carolina, chairman of the select committee. S. 2970, also entitled "The Reorganization Act of 1937," was reported favorably (S. Rept. 1236, 75th Cong.), debated on the Senate floor, but was indefinitely postponed. Title III of the revised bill, relating to reorganization of budget and accounting, was identical to title III of S. 2700. In the 3d session of the 75th Congress, Senator Byrnes introduced S. 3331, "The Reorganization Act of 1938", with provisions similar to S. 2970. The Senate Select Committee on Government Organization reported S. 3331 favorably on February 15, and it was approved by the Senate, after debate, on March 28, 1938. Following passage by the Senate, S. 3331 was referred to the House (Cochran) Select Committee on Government Organization, which reported it on March 30, 1938 (H. Rept. 2033), with a recommendation to strike out all after the enacting clause and insert new language, embodying provisions of four House bills (H.R. 8202, H.R. 7730, H.R. 8276, and H.R. 8277). The substitute bill contained general authority for reorganizing Federal agencies, retained (title III) the General Accounting Office, with an executive Comptroller General at its head responsible to the President, and provided for an Auditor General in the General Accounting Office whose decisions could be overruled by the Comptroller General. When the substitute measure came up for |