ning we had, I believe, 37 requests from the Members asking for more copies.

A similar purpose of anticipating a flood of inquiries, with respect to the status of important bills, applies to the publication of our pamphlet, Major Legislative Actions. This publication gives an overall picture of what Congress is doing. Copies are supplies to the offices of each House Member and each Senator. I also gave Dr. Galloway some of those copies to distribute. A new edition of that will be out next week.

The CHAIRMAN. How often is that published?

Mr. LEMAY. It depends on how fast the legislative program is changing. We try to get it out each month or 6 weeks, somewhere on that schedule, or when the Congress recesses briefly, as for Easter, or any interruption or recess, we try to round up the activities to that time and issue a revised edition.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. You may proceed.

Mr. LEMAY. Mr. Chairman, in your letter inviting me here, you asked that I make

any suggestions you may care to offer with a view to strengthening the work of your Office in the performance of its valuable functions.

On that score you have put me in rather a fragile circumstance. The House has set up a staff to do a job it wants done, and Speaker Rayburn appointed me to head that staff. I believe you will agree that it would be improper for me to propose to a Senate committee any changes in the functions or operations of a staff agency that the House has established.

I can say, however, that the Office of Coordinator of Information is performing a valuable function in aiding the Members to meet their responsibilities in handling legislation and in answering questions raised by their constituents.

Of course, the area and quality of this function could be increased by a larger appropriation that would provide a larger staff, but I am not urging an increased appropriation for this office until we have exhausted every means of improving our efficiency with the staff and tools we now have. Our own contribution to the efficiency of the legislative processes is measured by the efficiency in our own Office, and that is now where we are putting stress.

Let me say that the large credit for the efficiency of this Office should go to my predecessors as Coordinator, the late Mr. J. F. Frederick Richardson and Mr. Cecil Dickson, and to the excellent staff that works in his office.

Mr. Chairman, we have special problems in the House that you in the Senate may not be aware of. House Members have no administrative assistants; there are no majority and minority policy committees such as serve the Senators, and the House Members operate with smaller staffs than do the Senators. Moreover, each 2 years there usually are a number of new Members in the House, and they and their inexperienced staffs need a place to turn to for aid in developing contacts that help them establish smoothly functioning offices. In these respects, the Office of Coordinator of Information fits into particular needs of the House that are not problems among Senators.

However, there are many occasions when Senators or their staffs find our Office useful, in answering various inquiries, and we help them.

In this connection, I might point out that there now are 29 Members of the Senate who formerly served in the House, and some of them are accustomed to using the services of our Office and they continue to call upon us.

Mr. Chairman, if you are interested in any generalized suggestion from me, I will say to you that I am a newspaperman and, professionally, next to truth, simplicity is the virtue I put most store by. I believe your committee, from its studies, would do a wonderful thing for Congress if you would hammer at simplicity at every turn. It is my opinion that most can be accomplished in this respect at the standing committee level.

I have wondered on many occasions whether the Members, in the House and Senate, have had sufficient opportunity for a thorough understanding of legislation on which they must cast their votes.

Because of the heavy duties of their offices, they cannot always sit through hours and hours of debate, and many must depend, for their understanding, on the report of the committee that presents a particular piece of legislation for floor action. While some committees do an excellent job of explaining the legislation at hand, some of the committee reports are set forth in such technical language they are extremely difficult to understand. I must say that as a newspaperman there have been occasions when I could not get what a bill was about by reading the committee report.

Nothing, in my opinion, would aid the Members of the House and Senate more than, at the outset of each committee report, there be published a simple, clear, and concise statement of what a bill seeks to do in language such as a good, impartial newspaperman would use in his account of the legislation.

Senator MCCARTHY. May I interrupt you to say that I think that that is an excellent idea.

Mr. LEMAY. Thank you.

Senator MCCARTHY. You are to be congratulated.

Mr. LEMAY. Thank you.

This statement then could be followed by whatever the committee wanted to say about the need and virtues of such legislative actionand then a minority statement if anybody wanted to write one.

That, Mr. Chairman, is about all I have to say, except this:

I accepted the responsibility of Coordinator of Information, at Speaker Rayburn's request, out of some sort of idealism that I would be able to accomplish something in the field that is the subject of your studies here today.

In my long experience as a newspaperman, on Capitol Hill, I have seen the complexity of our time build new, intricate, and heavy encumbrances upon the individual Members of Congress. I am anxious to make any small contribution that I might, toward an easing of these burdens, and I deem it a privilege and honor to have been invited to cooperate with your committee in such a purpose.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. LeMay, as chairman, I want to thank you especially for this fine statement.

Mr. LEMAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. And I want to say that it is gratifying when you folks come in here, you and Mr. Perley, heading these important functions of the Congress, and tell us that you are trying to economize

by improving the efficiency in your office, rather than adding to the staff and creating additional expense. You are setting a fine example, certainly, for other agencies of the Government, and it is very commendable that you are doing so.

Mr. LEMAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. I think this Office of Coordinator of Information is very important. I am sure that my office uses it sometimes. I think it is an absolute necessity today, with Government having grown so big, and our duties and our workload having become so heavy. I don't see how we could either keep informed ourselves or give out proper and accurate information to our constituents who require those

services.

I want to thank you for your testimony, giving us the benefit of your experiences.

Do you have any questions, Senator Schoeppel?
Senator SCHOEPPEL. No questions.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator McCarthy?
Senator MCCARTHY. No questions.
The CHAIRMAN. Senator Dworshak?
Senator DwORSHAK. No questions.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you again, Mr. LeMay.
Now we will hear from you, Senator Flanders.

STATEMENT OF HON. RALPH E. FLANDERS, A UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF VERMONT

Senator FLANDERS. There has been a suggestion, Mr. Chairman, that I might appear before you in connection with my bill S. 633, which relates to the compensation of employees of the Senate and House of Representatives.

I think all of us have had an experience which annoys us perhaps more in the first few weeks of our assumption of office than it does later, of finding that our employees have a base salary, which means very little, because on that we impose 2, 3, or 4 percentage increases that have been put on at various times, and we come out with an odd figure which is liable to be in fractions of a cent. I have had to make a table for my own use, wherein I looked down the column of base salaries, and then have to look over here to see what the real salary is. Now, that seems to be a sort of a foolish process, and in talking it over I have found that Mr. Oco Thompson was even more disgusted with that unnecessary translation of theoretical and imaginary salary into a real one than I was.

That being the case, I introduced this simple bill for having the real salary as the base salary, so that you had to make no calculations, and I had to provide no table.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator, will you permit us to have printed in the record at the conclusion of your remarks a copy of the bill?

Senator FLANDERS. I will have a copy of the bill, and I will also have a typewritten explanation, which you may use, or you may refer to my offhand remarks, as you please.

Now, the bill is going to give, it is estimated, an additional cost of about $54,000 a year. This cost is brought about by the increase in salary for approximately 1,800 persons, in order to make their annual

salaries a multiple of $60, as the bill requires. The only extra cost to make their actual salaries a multiple of $60, so that it may be more easily calculated and divided.

The CHAIRMAN. In other words, it will reduce no salaries, and it will raise a few?

Senator FLANDERS. That is right; there will be no reductions, and it will raise some few a little, some along toward the maximum of $60. Otherwise it does not call for any increase in cost whatsoever. The purpose of the bill is to convert the salaries of legislative employees to a new scale of base salaries equivalent to the present gross salaries. The first section repeals the provisions of the 1945, 1946, 1948, and 1949 acts providing for the payment of additional compensation to legislative employees. Section 2 increases the present base rate of each employee in service on the effective date of the bill by an amount sufficient to provide him with the same salary as his gross salary prior to such effective date. Section 3 increases specific annual rates and minimum and maximum annual rates to their present gross figures.

At present Senators may rearrange basic salaries of employees in their offices in multiples of $60 per year. This provision will apply to base salaries fixed after the effective date of the bill. Gross salaries of present employees, however, do not fall into multiples of $60, since they are combinations of base pay in multiples of $60 plus additional compensation. Section 4 therefore provides for increasing the basic salaries provided for in sections 2 and 3 to the extent necessary to make them multiples of $60. This will, of course, result in increases for present employees in amounts not exceeding $60 for any employee, and will raise the maximum salary from $10,846 per annum to $10,860 per annum.

Section 5 (a) is intended simply to make absolutely clear that section 2 does not "freeze" salary rates at present levels. In any case in which the Member of Congress or other officer authorized to fix rates of compensation so desires he may increase or decrease the new basic rate established by section 2.

Section 5 (b) makes clear that the bill does not fix any salary at a rate in excess of $10,860 per annum. It also provides that no person having authority to fix salaries may fix the compensation of any employee at an annual rate in excess of $10,860 unless specifically authorized by law. If, however, a committee has heretofore been given authority to exceed the ceiling provisions in fixing rates of compensation of its employees, the bill would not take away that authority. Section 6 provides for increasing the rate of compensation for piece workers in the Senate folding room to $2 per thousand, which approximates the amount that results from adding to the present base compensation of these employees the various amounts of additional compensation provided by earlier pay-increase statutes.

Present allowances for clerical assistance in Senators' offices are based upon present base-pay scales. Since a base salary of $60 per annum on the present scale results in a gross salary of $429, conversion of present allowances on the basis of the maximum payrolls permitted by them would result in unreasonably high figures. Section 7 therefore provides an allowance for each Senator from each of the four classes of States equal to the highest present payroll of any Senator

from that class of States, determined after rounding out each salary in the payroll to a multiple of $60.

Section 8 provides for a minimum salary of $480. At present the minimum that can be fixed is $429. Section 8 also expresses the maximum salaries in Senators' offices in terms of the new base scale.

Section 9 provides for an effective date.

In inquiring as to the state of this bill in the Post Office and Civil Service Committee, I learned that there are some members, at least, who are considering putting it as an amendment to a salary bill which is under present consideration.

The only objection, Mr. Chairman, that I can possibly see to this bill is that there might be some reason of which I cannot conceive the purpose, for concealing the salaries of our employees here in the Capitol. If so, a more excellent device for concealment could scarcely have been devised than our present scheme. But I think we had better come out in the open and use real wages instead of imaginary ones.

Unless there are other questions, that is all I have to say. (S. 633 is as follows:)

[S. 633, 82d Cong., 1st sess.]

A BILL Relating to the compensation of employees of the Senate and the House of Representatives

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That (a) sections 501 and 502 of the Federal Employees' Pay Act of 1945, as amended, are hereby repealed.

(b) Section 301 of the Postal Rate Revisión and Federal Employees Salary Act of 1948 is amended by striking out "section 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6" and inserting in lieu thereof "section 2, 3, 4, or 6".

(c) The first two paragraphs under the heading "Increased Pay for Legislative Employees" in the Second Supplemental Appropriation Act, 1950, are hereby repealed.

SEC. 2. The annual rate of basic compensation of each officer or employee who, immediately prior to the effective date of this Act, was subject to any provision repealed by the first section of this Act is hereby increased by an amount equal to the rate of additional compensation which, but for the first section of this Act, would be payable to such officer or employee under the provisions so repealed.

SEC. 3. In any case in which a specific annual rate or a minimum or maximum annual rate of basic compensation has heretofore been fixed by statute or resolution of either House with respect to a position which, immediately prior to the effective date of this Act, was subject to any provision repealed by the first section of this Act, such rate is hereby increased by an amount equal to the rate of additional compensation which, but for the first section of this Act, would be payable under the provisions so repealed to an officer or employee receiving such specific, minimum, or maximum rate.

SEC. 4. In any case in which an annual rate of basic compensation determined under section 2 or 3 is not a multiple of $60, such rate shall be increased to the extent necessary to make it a multiple of $60.

SEC. 5. (a) Nothing contained in section 2 shall be construed (1) to restrict in any way the authority of any person empowered to fix rates of basic compensation of officers or employees whose rates are increased by this Act to increase or decrease such rates, or (2) to apply to any rate of basic compensation that is established or changed after the effective date of this Act.

(b) Nothing contained in this Act shall be construed to fix the basic compensation of any officer or employee of the Senate or House of Representatives, of any committee of either such House, or of any joint committee of the two Houses at a rate in excess of $10,860 per annum. No person having authority to fix the compensation of any such officer or employee shall fix such compensation at a rate in excess of $10,860 per annum, unless authority has been heretofore or is hereafter granted by law to fix such compensation at rates in excess of such amount.