Senator MUNDT. It is very seldom they are holding hearings. Sometimes they are in an emergency; but, when you have only 6 or 8 weeks off, practically all the committee members want to get home. Mr. SIFTON. You might do a swing shift.

Senator MUNDT. I am against socialism in this country if we can prevent it, in any way, shape, or form unless it is necessary. I think we can get it worked out to have sessions of Congress broadcast and televised, at least part of the way, without having a Governmentowned radio set-up.

Mr. SIFTON. This "part" business is what we are opposed to. We want no man to say this is going to be broadcast and this is not going to be broadcast. We want the entire menu. We want all of it.

Senator MUNDT. There are times, for example, when the sessions of Congress are pretty dreary and pretty drab. We have Calendar Wednesday in the House and the private bills, and this, that and the other. I think we could make out an agreement whenever important legislation is being considered. Obviously you would have to report both sides and the remarks of every Senator, but there are days in the House when, no matter what kind of broadcasting you have, people won't listen to it because it is too drab and too dreary.

Mr. SIFTON. That might highlight the suggestion other people are making about handling private bills, and so on. But in the past there have been occasions when a private bill has been a matter of excruciating interest to the public.

Senator MUNDT. The bill might be but not the debate.

Mr. SIFTON. Who knows?

Senator MUNDT. The bill is not read, but only the number. The people back home, hearing only the number, do not know what it is all about.

Senator DwORSHAK. On that point, is it not possible, with the TV operations beginning usually later in the afternoon or early evening, that some agreement or contract might be negotiated with the existing privately owned facilities to use those for this purpose?

Mr. SIFTON. If you get the entire menu. All of it.

Senator DwORSHAK. It is not impossible to develop something along

that line.

Mr. SIFTON. It might be done, but from our point of view it should be a very tight and unbreakable contract so that there is no monkey business with what transpires on the two floors.

Senator DwORSHAK. If the time were contracted for and made avail able, then it would be up to the Government.

Mr. SIFTON. But you have to make an open-end contract. You do not know when you are going to adjourn, and they have to contract to carry it as long as that, because sometimes the climactic part of the proceedings is at 6:27 when there is a vote, and they cannot go off the air at 6 o'clock and cover it all.

The CHAIRMAN. You have your contract for continued services, or when they are required, while Congress is in session. There would be some economic loss on that; would there not?

Mr. SIFTON. I think you might inquire as to what the costs would be for direct operation as compared with a contract there. Or, whether any chain would be interested in making such a conditional and contingent and open-end contract to take care of whatever the period of time is.

There is another thing we would urge, and that would be having possibly a later meeting hour and going on into the evening, and rearranging the working day. We would leave that to the development. In 1945 I pointed out that they could adjust their working day to using political campaigns; candidates do an awful lot of night work at meetings. You could adjust it to have meetings running on to 11 o'clock at night, and then the people who work during the day would have available to them these proceedings in the evening. That was done in New Zealand.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Sifton.

Mr. SIFTON. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. The Chair wishes to make two announcements. First, I am advised that former Senator Gerald Nye would like to be associated with former Member of Congress John J. O'Connor, who testified this morning relative to including in the congressional pension system former Members of Congress who were not included in the present act.

Senator MUNDT. That is right, Mr. Chairman. He telephoned me this morning and asked me if he could be permitted to do that.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. That will be permitted; and, if he cares to. he will be permitted to submit any statement for the record.

Senator MUNDT. He said he would have been here, but he suffered the misfortune of breaking his leg.

The CHAIRMAN. We are glad to have his name recorded regarding this proposal.

The Chair is very happy to announce that we have present as our guests and visitors this morning eight members of the Japanese Diet who are observing this proceeding. We extend a most hearty welcome to you and hope that you spent a profitable hour here.

We are very proud of our democracy and the traditions of liberty in this country. We like other peoples of the world to know about it and to have these opportunities to be present and to observe and appraise our systera. It is not perfect, but we are very proud of it, and we recommend a study of it to you and to the other peoples. The whole committee extends you a hearty welcome.

The committee stands in recess until tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock.

(Whereupon, at 12:15 p. m., the committee adjourned until 10 a. m. the following day, Thursday, June 21, 1951.)

ORGANIZATION AND OPERATION OF CONGRESS

THURSDAY, JUNE 21, 1951

UNITED STATES SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON EXPENDITURES IN THE EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS,

Washington, D. C. The committee met, pursuant to adjournment, at 10: 10 a. m., in room 357, Senate Office Building, Senator John L. McClellan (chairman) presiding.

Present: Senators McClellan (chairman), Monroney, and Dworshak.

Also present: Walter L. Reynolds, chief clerk, and George B. Galloway, consultant.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. Congressman Rogers, will you come forward, please? Do you have a prepared statement?

STATEMENT OF HON. DWIGHT L. ROGERS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA

I

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I do not have a prepared statement. will speak extemporaneously and off the cuff, like my good friend, the Senator from Oklahoma, does. I appreciate very much, Mr. Chairman, the opportunity of coming to testify and speak favorably with reference to a proposal which I made in the House of Representatives in House Resolution 119. This provides that the rules of the House will be amended.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you have a copy of the resolution?

Mr. ROGERS. Yes, sir. I am going to leave that.

The CHAIRMAN. You may insert it in the record.

Mr. ROGERS. Yes, sir. I will insert it in the record before I am through. This House resolution proposes that all appropriations, before they pass, must have a yea-and-nay vote on them.

The CHAIRMAN. Would that apply to all amendments that are offered, or just those contested?

Mr. ROGERS. For a minor amendment it might not, but I think possibly there ought to be a change. This bill provides this, and I think a Senate resolution that was introduced last week by my colleague, Senator George Smathers, corresponds to this House resolution.

This provides that no bill or joint resolution of a public character making an appropriation shall be finally passed, and no amendment of the Senate to, or report of a committee of conference on, such a bill or resolution shall be agreed to, unless the vote of the House is determined by the yeas and nays.

Of course, as I say, that applies particularly to the House and not the Senate, but I presume if the House were to adopt that procedure, the Senate would follow. Possibly it will be that the Senate will have to take action first and the House follow, because I have not been able to get anywhere yet in the House with it."

The CHAIRMAN. What is the particular advantage in that proposal, Congressman?

Mr. ROGERS. I think there are a number of good reasons why it should be done. In the first place, the appropriation of the people's money is, of course, one of the most important votes that we cast. I think that the taxpayer back home who pays the bills should know how his Representative in Congress votes. I think that is one of the

reasons.

The CHAIRMAN. As is true in all bills where you have so many different items, a Member may favor nine-tenths of them, or favor all but one, but he cannot afford to vote against the entire bill. It seems to me, if there is any real virtue in that proposal, it would have to apply to amendments as well as to the final passage of the bill itself, because you can have the same position you take now and say, "Well, of course I did not favor that item, but I had to vote for the entire bill or against it."

Mr. ROGERS. I think that is possibly true. I think the people ought to know how we vote in spending their money.

The CHAIRMAN. If you carry that through to its logical conclusion, sir, and are required to vote on all the items in the bill, you will have many, many roll calls in the House, which are time-consuming. Mr. ROGERS. That is true; but, if we could save a billion dollars or so, it would be worth it.

The CHAIRMAN. Oh, yes.

Mr. ROGERS. Let me give you some statistics here, and this applies to the Senate too.

In the first session of the Eighty-first Congress we voted some $29,000,000,000, and no taxpayer or any other man interested can come and get the records and see how you voted or see how I voted, or see how the Senator from Oklahoma voted. There is no record to show how anyone voted on that $29,000,000,000.

The CHAIRMAN. I think that is true in the Senate. I do not recall a vote on the final passage of any appropriation bill with a roll call. There were probably some roll calls on particular amendments, but on the regular appropriation bills I don't recall any roll-call vote since I have been in the Senate. There may have been one when we had a roll-call vote on the final passage of a regular appropriation bill, but I do not recall it.

Mr. ROGERS. You did have in the Senate last year a record vote on Public Low 352, which authorized the advance planning of public works. You voted "no" on that. On the Army civil functions bill of 1950, involving $664,178,190, you voted "no" on that. On the foreignaid bill of 1950, involving $5,659,000, the Senate had a record vote, but the House did not.

The sum total of the appropriations we made in the first session of the Eighty-first Congress, I think, was $51,000,000,000. We had no vote whatsoever on $29,000,000,000, and we had votes either in one House or the other House on some $16,000,000,000.

The CHAIRMAN. If I am not mistaken, we may have had a roll-call vote on the civil functions. Of course, there were some few who, I think, opposed the bill in its entirety, and who opposed substantially all appropriations in the bill.

Mr. ROGERS. Another reason why I think roll-call votes should be required is this. That is, it would give the Members a little more interest in it, and they would become a little appropriation-conscious. For instance, I think it was just a few days ago on June 19-that we passed the legislative appropriation bill, and there were only about 40 Members on the floor of the House when that was done. Now, any number of times I have seen where we have appropriated billions of dollars, without a majority of the Members of the House being present. I am sure that same comment applies to the Senate also.

This bill would do away with that, and I think another reason why we should have roll-call votes is that it would make us a little more appropriation-conscious, as I just said now. We would think a little more seriously when we know that our people back home could put their finger on just how we voted to spend their money.

I would like to call attention to the fact that there are 40 States of this Union that require a yea-and-nay vote on appropriation bills. I cannot justly see why we in Congress should be excused from giving a yea-and-nay vote to let our people know how we stand on supply bills.

There is one instance where the Constitution requires a yea-and-nay vote, and that is when a bill is vetoed by the President. We cannot either sustain or override that veto, save and except we take a record vote, and the people can always tell how we stand on that.

I think this procedure would tend to bring about a little economy because it would make us think just a little more when we begin to vote billions of dollars. We might be able to cut off a billion dollars. That would help a little bit. We are all economy-minded now, all of us, or we try to be, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to place in the record at this point, Mr. Chairman, House Resolution 119, and I would also like to present for the record a comment made on this bill by the News Bulletin which is dated January 31, 1950. That comment refers to a similar bill I introduced in the Eighty-first Congress. I would also like to put in a list of the States that require a yea-and-nay vote, or record vote, for the passage of appropriation bills.

The CHAIRMAN. All right. They may be inserted.

(H. Res. 119, the News Bulletin dated Tuesday, January 31, 1950, and the list of States that require a yea-and-nay vote, are as follows:)

[H. Res. 119, 82d Cong., 1st sess.]
RESOLUTION

Resolved, That rule XXI of the Rules of the House of Representatives is hereby amended by adding at the end thereof the following new paragraph:

"5. No bill or joint resolution of a public character making an appropriation shall be finally passed, and no amendment of the Senate to, or report of a committee of conference on, such a bill or resolution shall be agreed to, unless the vote of the House is determined by yeas and nays."