not take the committee's time to comment on them. Their importance, from the point of view of the structure and functions of the committee are obvious.

I think we might also profit by a slightly expanded professional staff, given the burden of the work that we have. I do not mean by that that we should have a large staff. I think the concept of the Reorganization Act is sound. We do not want to attempt to duplicate either in size or in diversity the staff in the State Department. A small staff, well selected and trained, I think, is adequate for our purposes.

I should like to make one additional suggestion. I do not think it falls within the confines of the Reorganization Act particularly, but I think it is imperative that members of our committee and other members of the Senate as well, who are called upon to help formulate American foreign policy, be able to travel to various parts of the earth. They should visit the more important areas so they may have an opportunity of knowing what they are legislating about, so that they may have a first-hand knowledge of the problems and conditions there. Now, that does not mean that I am approving the idea of congressional junkets. I do not consider such trips, if they are well planned and organized, as junkets. I think they can be very valuable to members of the Senate and the House who ought not be called upon to legislate in the dark, so to speak. Our own committee members, and indeed our staff members, ought to have such opportunities at fairly frequent intervals so they can handle their jobs more satisfactorily. Mr. Chairman, I think that is all I have to say at this time. Once again I thank you very much for this opportunity to be heard. The CHAIRMAN. The committee is grateful to you, sir, for your testimony.

Senator Underwood, do you have any questions?

Senator UNDERWOOD. No questions.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Dworshak?

Senator DWORSHAK. No questions.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you very kindly, Dr. Wilcox.

Now, that concludes the hearing of the witnesses that were scheduled for today.

The committee will reconvene in the morning at 10 o'clock. We will have a number of witnesses tomorrow, and I do not know as we will be able to go beyond noon tomorrow, because the Senate will be in session.

(Whereupon, at 4:30 p. m., the committee adjourned, to reconvene on Thursday, June 7, 1951, at 10 a. m.)

ORGANIZATION AND OPERATION OF CONGRESS

THURSDAY, JUNE 7, 1951

UNITED STATES SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON EXPENDITURES IN THE EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS,

Washington, D. C.

The committee met, pursuant to adjournment, at 10 a. m., Senator John L. McClellan (chairman) presiding.

Present: Senators McClellan (chairman), Monroney, Underwood, McCarthy, Mundt, Schoeppel, and Dworshak.

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

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order.

I think that we will have more members in attendance shortly. Some of them have been delayed a while.

We will resume the hearing on the Congresssional Reorganization Act.

The first witness this morning will be Mr. Perley, House legislative counsel.

Mr. Perley, will you come forward, sir?

STATEMENT OF ALLAN H. PERLEY, LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

The CHAIRMAN. Do you have a prepared statement, Mr. Perley? Mr. PERLEY. Senator, I do have a rather short prepared statement. Would you permit me to read that into the record?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes, indeed. I thought if you had an extra copy for us it would be helpful.

Mr. PERLEY. I do not have copies enough to go around. I am sorry that I did not have time to get it mimeographed.

The CHAIRMAN. That is perfectly all right. Now, you just proceed, Mr. Perley, and read your statement, and make such comments as you may care to.

Mr. PERLEY. Thank you, sir.

My name is Allan H. Perley. I am head of the Office of the Legislative Counsel of the House, and have been since Mr. Middleton Beaman retired in January 1949. He was head of the office for approximately 30 years, and I have been a member of the legal staff since 1925.

As you know, our office performs the function of assisting committees and Members of the House in the drafting of bills and resolutions, and amendments thereto, when such assistance is requested. In 1945 Mr. Beaman, in testifying before the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, made a comprehensive statement re

garding the office and the nature of the work we do for the committees and members, and I believe it is unnecessary to take the time of this committee by covering that ground again.

Up to the time of the enactment of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 we were in the anomalous position of operating under an organic law which authorized us, literally, to work only for committees, but, at the same time we received a constantly increasing number of requests for assistance from individual Members of the House. We did the best we could to give Members the assistance they wanted, but in view of the law under which we functioned Mr. Beaman did not feel warranted in asking for funds to build up a legal staff adequate to give full-scale drafting assistance to Members.

During the early 1940's the situation became rather critical because an increasing number of Members of the House evidenced dissatisfaction due to our inability to give them the assistance they desired. The problem related primarily to the long period which often elapsed between the time the Member requested help and the time we were able to make delivery of the bill, resolution, or amendment which he wanted us to write for him. When the committee work was particularly heavy, we were able to do only a very limited amount of work for Members.

This situation was clarified by the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946. That act authorized increased appropriations for the office, and the legislative history made it entirely clear that the purpose was to make it possible for the office to enlarge its personnel in order to give greater assistance to individual Members in the drafting of bills, resolutions, and amendments thereto. The conclusion was inescapable that Congress had, in effect, broadened the function of the office to include the rendering of substantially full-scale assistance to Members.

It was obvious that the legal staff of six which we had in 1946 was not adequate to do the committee work and also handle substantially increased work for Members. Mr. Beaman felt, however, and I fully agreed with him, that since new men in the work must be trained under the supervision of the more experienced attorneys it would be advisable to make the necessary increase in the staff gradually over a period of several years.

Pursuant to that decision, the legal staff was increased from 6 to 8 in 1947, to 9 in 1948, and to 10 in 1949. We now have in the office 10 lawyers and 4 clerks, which means that the personnel has doubled since 1941, when we had 5 lawyers and 2 clerks.

Some resignations occurred along the way, and the result is that a considerable proportion of the men now in the office have been on the legal staff for a relatively short time-for periods ranging from 112 to 5 years. We have been fortunate in the caliber of the men who have entered and remained in the work, and I feel that the general level of competence throughout the staff is high.

Although the work has continued to increase during the last few Congresses, I believe that since the legal staff reached the number of 10 in 1949 we have been able to do a good job of turning out the work within a reasonable time after requests come in. Since we have no control over the volume of the work at any particular time, there

have been periods when we were hard pressed. However, on the whole, I feel that a legal staff of 10 is adequate at the present time and probably will be in the foreseeable future.

As to our ability to operate in the future without increasing the size of the legal staff, a good deal depends, of course, on our ability to retain in the work most of the experienced attorneys. I hope that it is going to be possible to do this by giving the attorneys adequate promotions from time to time as their experience and value to the office increases, and I expect to continue to request for the office appropriations which will make such promotions possible.

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my prepared statement.

I shall be glad to try to answer any questions. I felt that, insofar as the Reorganization Act related to our office, this would give you a history of what has happened since then.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, insofar as the 1946 act is concerned, it has worked advantageously for your office; has it?

Mr. PERLEY. Yes, Mr. Chairman; I feel that it has. It was a great help to us to have a clear indication as to what we were supposed to do about work for individual members.

The CHAIRMAN. In other words, prior to that you would get requests from individual Members, and you were not quite sure that it was within your duty to respond to them?

Mr. PERLEY. Well, we never had any doubt that if we could render the assistance, without impairing our ability to help the committees, we should render that assistance. We saw no reasonable grounds on which we could refuse to do so, and we naturally wanted to be helpful and accommodating. Furthermore, the work for Members constituted excellent training for the newer men in the office. But, as I have indicated in my statement, the big problem was that we just did not have enough men in the office to do the work for the Members.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you think, now that your staff has doubled over 1941, that the personnel in the office is adequate, at least for the time being?

Mr. PERLEY. I think so. I think that the increase in personnel roughly corresponds to the increase in the work; that is, the work has just about doubled, or perhaps a little more than doubled, since that time, according to our statistics.

The CHAIRMAN. You spoke of turnovers; that you had some turnovers in the office. Has that been attributable to the lack of adequate compensation of the highly trained personnel you must have in order to do an efficient job?

Mr. PERLEY. I do not believe that there have been more than one or two cases where that has been the sole reason. It has sometimes been difficult to judge the extent to which that was a factor. One of our men of long experience, John O'Brien, left in 1942 to enter private law practice. I think one of the factors in his case, in addition to the fact that he wanted to make more money, was that he had to work too hard. He told me last year that he was having to do the work of about three men back in those days and that he could not stand it.

Gerald Morgan, who resigned in 1945 to enter private law practice, also, I know, found the burden of the work pretty heavy. That was at a time when our staff was geared to handle committee work with no extra men to handle the work for Members. I know that many times, when Morgan was fully occupied with working on a tax bill for

the Ways and Means Committee, he was at the same time hard pressed by Members of the House to help them with bills and amendments, and he could ill afford to take the time to do that.

The CHAIRMAN. How do you handle that now? Do you assign certain members of your staff to the committees, to render service to a particular committee, or do you make the assignments from time to time as bills are being considered and hearings held?

Mr. PERLEY. The assignments are made in the light of the particular circumstances existing at the time we are asked to do the job, giving consideration to who happens to be relatively free at the time, and who happens, by past experience, to be best qualified to work on that particular job, and whatever other considerations seem to be relevant and conducive to the most efficient performance of the work.

The CHAIRMAN. What is the present salary of the professional staff-I don't mean individually but within a range-what is the highest and what is the lowest you pay?

Mr. PERLEY. In the case of the head of the office, the salary was fixed by law in November 1949 at $12,000 for both the Senate legislative counsel and the House legislative counsel. In our office, at this time, the salaries of the assistant counsel and of the junior members, whom we call law assistants-and there are now 2 of those out of 10-the salaries range from a low of basic $3,350, which is gross $5,357, up to $6,900 basic, or a gross of $10,347.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you mean that you have some laywers drawing a base of only $3,300?

Mr. PERLEY. I beg your pardon. I will have to correct that. I was looking at the present salaries of the assistant counsel. We have two young lawyers, whom we call law assistants, at a basic salary of $2,870. The CHAIRMAN. You mean young attorneys who have just finished school?

Mr. PERLEY. Yes; rather recently. Their salaries are basic, $2,870, which is a gross of $4,661. One of those men has been in the office a year and a half, and the other one 2 years. The practice in our office, with very few exceptions, has always been to appoint men at low salaries, and after a trial period of a year or two we then determine whether they have done well enough in the work to retain them. If they have, then we try to promote them fairly rapidly; and, if they have not, then suggest to them that they might do better somewhere else. We feel that that method of operating results in the long run in a staff which, from top to bottom, is efficient and competent.

The CHAIRMAN. Then, so far as the act is concerned, so far as your office is involved, it needs no revision; it is operating satisfactorily, and the only thing that you have any immediate concern about is that you be permitted, or that it be provided, that you can pay adequate salaries to retain the standard of help that is necessary to do a good job.

Mr. PERLEY. Yes, sir, Senator. That, to me, is the basic and essential point, so far as our office is concerned. I feel that it is important to have experienced men in the work. The business of Congress is complex and of broad scope, and it takes time for a man to get to the point where he can function efficiently. After we have trained a man for several years, it is a very definite loss to the office if he leaves. I think it is advisable to pay the men well in order to try to keep them.