from the Accountable Officer to the directing officer and by holding tthe latter personally liable.

With respect to expenditure, the responsibility of the Accountable Officer would be threefold. It would be his business to see that every payment charged to an appropriation was supported by (a) congressional authority, (b) Budget Bureau authority (where such authority was required), and (c) departmental authority. In order to fix this responsibility, the officer should be authorized and required, through departmental auditors, to settle the accounts of his subordinates. This is on the theory, first advanced in the history of the American accounting system by the old Board of Treasury, that "It belongs to him to take the proper measures with his deputies, who as accountants are unknown to the public. He therefore is only to judge what receipts and discharges are to be given to them, such receipts and discharges operating only against himself, and not against the public, to whom in all accounts he must account." This reform could easily be accomplished by turning the administrative examination now required by law in each department into an administrative audit and settlement-such as that made by the Commissioner of the General Land Office from 1812 to 1894, or by the Postmaster General from 1775 to 1836.

Finally, I would say that the principle upon which Accountable Officers are designated should be very carefully considered. The political heads of the departments would hardly be the proper persons to serve in this capacity: the temporary character of their tenure of office and their lack of acquaintance with the details of administration would unfit them for a satisfactory performance of the duty of rendering appropriation accounts. On the other hand, the clerks who might be placed in technical charge of the accounts would be too low in the hierarchy to bear the responsibility which the signing of an appropriation account would entail. The solution, I believe, is to work toward the designation as Accountable Officer of the highest-ranking civil servant in the department-the man who, subject to the control of his political chief, is the real working head of the department. There will be a great many difficulties in finding such men. Perhaps, in order that their appointment may proceed on some fixed principle, the designation of Accountable Officer should be made a function of the Budget Bureau.

This concludes what I have to say about retrospective control. You will see that I have tried to apply to the relationship between Congress and the Executive the principles which in ordinary life are applied to principal and agent, trustor and trustee. The problem is difficult only because of the size and complexity of the units involved. On the one hand we have Congress, a very numerous body, divided into two Houses and cut across by party lines; on the other we have the Executive, a department of the Government branched out in the most elaborate and sometimes confusing way. Between them lies a gulf. I am suggesting that it be bridged by an arch of which the haunches will be the Public Accounts Committee and the Bureau of the Budget, and the keystone the Auditor General.

Dr. GALLOWAY. While we are waiting on Congressman Multer, who has been delayed for a few moments, the staff asks permission to insert in the record of these hearings several pertinent statements that have been submitted in writing by Members of Congress and others, as well as some germane memoranda prepared by the staff of your committee.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you have the statements of a number who have not appeared to testify before the committee?

Dr. GALLOWAY. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. And the staff has examined them, I assume?
Dr. GALLOWAY. We have.

The CHAIRMAN. They may be published in the record. And you have some memoranda that have been prepared by the staff?

Dr. GALLOWAY. The staff has prepared some pertinent memoranda dealing with one or two of the topics scheduled for study by the committee. We ask permission to insert these memoranda at the appropriate points in the record of the hearings.

The CHAIRMAN. They may be inserted.

We are very glad to have you appear this morning, Congressman Multer. Will you please identify yourself for the record?

STATEMENT OF HON. ABRAHAM J. MULTER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK

Mr. MULTER. My name is Abraham J. Multer of the Fourteenth District, New York. I appreciate the opportunity to come here and to express my views on the matters that are now being considered by your committee. I think they are of vital importance to the country. The proper and efficient management of Government necessarily must revolve around the Congress. If we can act efficiently, we can act effectively. And I am sure that anything that this committee may recommend to improve the expeditious handling of congressional matters will be appreciated by all who are interested in these matters.

I have introduced several bills on the subject in the House, and I will address my remarks in the main to two of those bills.

Before I do, may I very briefly comment upon several other items that you are considering?

A code of fair play for investigating committees is, of course, of major importance to the country. I think everyone who has ever participated in the work of an investigating committee knows that every safeguard should be resorted to effectively to protect persons in and out of public office from innuendoes and unfair attacks. Anything that could be done to prevent anything being said at public hearings that is not sustained or cannot be substantiated by supporting evidence, or which intends to impugn the motives or the character or the operation of the office of any public official, will be something to be sought after and, if accomplished, will increase the status and stature of every investigating committee. Too many of them, unfortunately, through failure to take sufficient care, have permitted innocent persons to be maligned with headlines in the press and not given an opportunity to answer charges that should never have been made publicly.

Passing to the next subject that you are considering-to wit, the delegation of private legislation-I think a complete study of that subject will indicate there are several fields now covered by private legislation which could very well be eliminated by some over-all enactment of law. I have in mind particularly veteran bills that are presented as private bills from time to time to give them relief which they must get because the Veterans' Administration has arbitrarily and sometimes capriciously denied them the relief they are entitled to under existing law. We have written into reports our legislative intent only to find that in many instances the reviewing boards ignore that and make determinations which are directly contrary to the intent and the language of the law. I think if set up by legislation a review board, or, if not a review board, if we should permit these veterans to go to into court and present their claim there, it would relieve the Congress of the necessity of conducting hearings to test out whether the Veterans' Administration has done the right thing or not in those cases.

I think the same thing could be done with many claims bills. We have gone a long way in enacting the Tort Claims Act, but there are still many claims that must be presented by private bill because

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the Tort Claims Act is not broad enough. I think it might be well to consider amending the Tort Claims Act so as to permit claims to be pursued by litigation in the Court of Claims where the injuries were sustained outside of the United States or the Territories of the United States. I have in mind a particular instance now where during our occupation of Saipan a young lady who was participating in a USO troop was injured. She cannot sue in the United States courts because the Tort Claims Act restricts those claims; that is, the jurisdiction to injuries sustained in the Territories or in the continental United States.

Passing from that subject to the question of the item veto, I think that that is a salutary advance in government. In those States that have adopted the item veto, it has worked out very well, and I think Congress might well follow that example.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you think it necessary to amend the Constitution for that?

Mr. MULTER. It may be.

The CHAIRMAN. I think there is a big question as to whether the Congress could permit an item veto by the President. In other words, the President either has the power to do it now or he does not have the power under the Constitution. And, if he does not have it, it is the Constitution that has to be changed. That is the way it strikes me. Senator MONRONEY. Would you allow an item veto on anything other than appropriation bills?

Mr. MULTER. I would be inclined to give him the power to do it with any bill.

Senator MONRONEY. On general legislation?

Mr. MULTER. On general legislation, too, because I do not think that we ought to be in the position of putting a provision into a bill which cannot stand on its own and on which we would not be willing to go on record as supporting or being opposed to, quite apart from its being gobbled up as part of some other over-all legislation.

The CHAIRMAN. If you gave that power to the President, he personally could rewrite some bill that Congress sent to him.

Mr. MULTER. You would not give him the power to rewrite, but you would require us to go on record on some matters in the House where we can now avoid going on record.

The CHAIRMAN. Where there is disagreement between the majority of the Congress and the President of the United States, it would make it necessary for the Congress by two-thirds vote of both Houses to enact items that the President disagrees with or provisions of law with which he disagrees or which he disapproves? How about that?

Mr. MULTER. As I see it, sir; there should be no substantial difference between his right, if it is right in principle, as to the item veto. There should be no difference between the principle as applied to spending money and to general legislation. Now if we should agree on the principle and say that he can take one item out of the budget and say, "I am vetoing this because it is too much or too little or improper, then why should not he be able to say that as to general legislation, too? And let it come right back to us and then we can take a position for or against it again.

The CHAIRMAN. That question was raised here a few days ago by some witnesses. And I think it was disagreed to by one particular

witness. That particular witness, as I recall, would not extend that item veto power to legislative bills, but would only have it for appropriation bills.

Mr. MULTER. I am one of those fellows who take a long-view perspective and am willing to make progress step by step, although I do want to get all of the advance and progress possible. If we can get it for the appropriation bills first, I would be happy with that as a beginning.

The CHAIRMAN. I may be mistaken, but I am pretty convinced that at would take an amendment to the Constitution.

Mr. MULTER. Assuming that it does require an amendment to the Constitution-and frankly I have not studied it sufficiently to be able to say yes or no-I would not hesitate to recommend an amendment to the Constitution. It may take a little longer than passing the legislation here and making it effective at once, but I think we should make the forward step. If it requires that, let us propose it. And there, too, I say that if we can get agreement on applying it only to the budget, let us do it that way as the first step, and take the next step after we have seen how it works out with the appropriations.

Passing from that to the subject of joint hearings by parallel Senate and House committees, I think we could save a tremendous amount of time, a lot of money, and a lot of wear and tear on the heads of various departments, if we had joint hearings. I would make it mandatory to hold public hearings jointly so that wherever there are public hearings, they would be held jointly by the twin committees of both Houses with the right on the part of either House or either committee to require additional public hearings, conditioned only upon their giving notice to the other.

The CHAIRMAN. You have in mind, I assume, those bills that we feel confident both Houses are going to take action on?

Mr. MULTER. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Like the appropriations bills, tax bills, Defense Production Act, rent control, and things that it appears that the Congress is going to undertake action on at a particular session? I have been an advocate of joint hearings all along. I do think that considerable time can be saved by such an arrangement.

Mr. MULTER. I think it is unfair to ask the heads of our various departments to come in and testify before one committee on this side and then go over on the other side and testify again to the same effect. Then we lose the advantage, too, that if you happened to have a witness before you of whom you ask certain questions and get certain answers from, somebody on the other side is not quite as alert and does not ask the question. Unless he has taken the time to read your full hearings, he misses the benefit of that information. I think much good can come from it.

I have in mind, however, that executive sessions should be separate. There should be no joint executive sessions, because then you are merging your identities and there is no point in having two Houses any longer.

Passing from that to the topic of strengthening party responsibility and accountability, I have always been in favor of the two-party system and I have always said that a man subscribes to the principles of the party of which he is a member, and if he is running for public

office, he should stand on the principles of that party. If he disagrees with the principles of that party, he ought to try to change those principles while he is a member of the party. But if we believe in majority rule, it should apply to the parties and when we get here we should, at least as to the party platforms, stand up and be counted as supporting those principles.

The CHAIRMAN. What would you do with a fellow who disagrees in part with both platforms of the major parties? Where would he land?

Mr. MULTER. He would become a member of a splinter party, I suppose.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you want to develop a lot of splinter parties? Mr. MULTER. Definitely not.

The CHAIRMAN. As a practical thing, there are a good many people who will not always agree with all party platform planks of either of the major parties. I just wondered whether there would be some people without a party, unless you are going to develop splinter parties. Mr. MULTER. No; that is bad. As you probably know, in New York where I come from, we have four political parties, two major parties, then two minor parties, both of which are offshoots of the Democratic Party. When the American Labor Party was first organized, it was in order to attract the so-called laboring men to a party of their own. I said it was a mistake then and I still think it is a mistake to try to classify people by parties because of their standard of living or the nature of the work they are engaged in.

Then, when the Communists came in and took over the American Labor Party, those who represented labor wanted to be sure that they were dissociated from anything that had a Communist coloring or tendency, and they formed the Liberal Party. The result is that you have two splinter parties in New York, and in many an election they may easily hold the balance of power which is definitely wrong. I say that we ought to try to have some such situation as prevails in many States in the country where a man can be elected to office only if he gets a majority of the votes cast. That would eliminate this so-called balance of power by a minority party.

However, coming back to the point at hand, which is party responsibility and accountability, I can see many instances where a man may take a position in his party which is contrary to the party principle. The matter of civil rights is one of the outstanding ones. And I can appreciate what prompts men to take a position adverse to my own on the question of civil rights. I do not think they should be read out of the party because of that. But I do think, as long as they adhere to the party principle when the party at convention assembled decides that this is our platform, that they are in duty bound not to vote against that party platform. I believe in majority rule.

If eventually we get to the point where that is eliminated from the political scene, we may be closer to getting party responsibility where a man will be bound by the position of his party on major legislation. After the party has caucused and decided that this is the position we take on a piece of legislation, the vote should then be cast in Congress as a party vote, with the dissenter being excused or permitted to make an explanation of a contrary position, yet being bound by the party vote on it.