What are the Chairman's rights in that regard?

Mr. KAPLOWITZ. The Chairman has no rights, but what is done in practice is that the staff-we have a staff organization, Director of Investigations, which would include a study of this kind, and it would be up to that top-level staff organization to assign the necessary staff to make this study.

Sometimes the Commission or an individual Commissioner might think that certain members of the staff are most suited to lead this kind of a study and so they might discuss this.

What is troublesome is, as you progress with the study, the staff doesn't know who is boss and I heard, many, many times, a complaint made: Well, Commissioner so-and-so said he would like to have certain information and such a thing developed, and this goes over a period-not only this present Commission. This goes over a period of time when I was a general counsel to the Commission for a great many years, and a member of the staff, and I remember often wondering, "Who do you report to?"

It was very difficult for me, when I was General Counsel, to know who to report to, and I made it a rule to report to the Chairman. I said, it is up to the Chairman. Let him worry about the other Commissioners. I am not going to go marching in to six different Commissioners' offices and relate to each one of them some particular item of information or job I had or assignment that I am going to make. I think maybe I tried to answer your question, sir. Mr. REUSS. Let me phrase it with a little more precision.

Under the present procedures, without the reorganization plan, let us suppose the Commission votes by 3-to-2 vote, to take a look at the most-favored-nation treatment, and let us suppose the Chairman happened to be in the minority and was outvoted on that general decision, and let us suppose the Chairman-without reference to the present Chairman, of course being a Chairman possessed of those unfortunate qualifications that Mr. Holifield just described, including deviousness, tried to sabotage this investigation by assigning no staff to it, and so on.

What would happen under the Commission as it is now constituted? Mr. KAPLOWITZ. At the present time, the Chairman is not the one that assigns staff. This has been one of the most jealously guarded rights of a six-headed Commission throughout my whole experience. Everyone is suspicious of the other. One says, if you are going to have the right to assign staff, we would like to be sure that we pick the man that we think ought to be assigned to the staff.

I am excluding all of my colleagues here. They have all my love and we get along fine.

This is based on long experience, and my own experience as a staff member. I observed this going on in the Commission where the whole question about who is going to say who is what, as to the staff; who is going to do the work; who is going to be in charge of it; this is always troublesome. But right now

Mr. REUSS. May I ask this.

Granted the can of worms attribute of the Commission, the way it operates

Mr. HOLIFIELD. The frustration of unrequited love.

Mr. REUSS. Granted that if in the model that I put of the mostfavored-nations investigation, if a member of the Commission, favor

ing such an investigation and having voted for it, feels that the personnel assignment and the general attention being paid by the Commission staff to this problem is inadequate, am I not right in my understanding that he may then, at the next Commission meeting, move with whatever appropriately worded solution, saying that whereas only one person of the staff is being put on this study, and whereas this is a mighty important study, now, therefore be it resolved, that no less than eight staff members be put on it.

If he can get a majority to vote in favor of that, that will be done. Is that not so?

Mr. KAPLOWITZ. While it would not necessarily take that formal kind of procedure, there is no question that if a single Commissioner was dissatisfied with the way the study was being made or the number of people being assigned to the study, and so on, he would bring it up and have opportunity to bring it to the attention of the Commission. It would then be discussed; we would fight a few rounds; and ultimately, we might come out with a decision that we will agree to add another economist to the study, in which case, someone else, as I recall, this is based on past actual experience, someone else will say, "Well, there are too darn many economists on this thing. We ought to counter that. So if you are going to put on another economist we ought to have another industry analyst assigned to this job." Mr. REUSS. But at any rate, under the present procedure, the will of the majority of the committee as expressed by the ultimate in a vote, will govern. Is that so?

Mr. KAPLOWITZ. There is no question about that.

Mr. REUSS. Now, if this reorganization plan goes into effect and if we repeat this model, namely, a decision by the majority vote of the Commission to investigate the most-favored-nation treatment, and if later on, it is felt by members of the Commission who voted in favor of that study, that the Chairman is being uncooperative in his assigning insufficient staff to that study, it is then open to those members favoring the study at the next meeting of the Commission, to vote as a matter of general Commission policy, to instruct the Chairman to augment the number of staff now placed on that assignment. Is that not so, and if it is so, as I believe it to be so, from reading this reorganization plan, does it not mean that an obstructive Chairman acquires in the ultimate no additional powers under this reorganization that he doesn't already possess?

Mr. KAPLOWITZ. I am sure that is so, Congressman Reuss, and I agree. I think that it was said here several times this morning, that a Commission that was not satisfied with the way the Chairman was operating, could gang up on him and pretty well put him out of commission.

I think under this plan, this could be possible.

Mr. CULLITON. Mr. Reuss, if I follow your argument, I would think that you have demonstrated the plan is unnecessary. It is not going to have any effect one way or the other, because we will keep on doing what we are doing; but I am a little disturbed by

Mr. HOLIFIELD. I would like to stop you right there again, if I may. You say it is unnecessary as far as the setting of major policies is concerned. I agree with you, but can you say it is unnecessary, by putting your centralizing authority for what I would call the day-to-day organization of the work of the Commission, the allocation of work and

the centralization of authority over the housekeeping, the routine functions of the Commission?

Mr. CULLITON. My point, Mr. Holifield, is that with an agency in which over 90 percent of its expenditures is concerned with people and well over half of the staff are professional people, the so-called routine, housekeeping functions are not a burden and allocation of resources is intimately tied into the substantive work of the Commission and cannot be separated.

Mr. REUSS. I would first say, we endorse your right and obligations to appear here and give us your views very frankly, and I am glad you are doing it because that is precisely what we want.

Having defended to the end your right to dissent, I am not yet persuaded that it is such an either/or proposition as you say, Mr. Culliton. You say in effect, in your original statement just a moment ago, that since the reorganization plan still leaves the ultimate decision as to policy with the majority of the Commission, it therefore doesn't do very much. I would, based on my own experience, say that I am not persuaded by that argument. What this reorganization plan seems to do is to place primary initiating responsibility and power in the Chairman, but then in effect says that he can be overruled by a majority of this Commission at any time they don't like what he has done. In some of our congressional committees which, like the Tariff Commission, are not administrative committees, they are thought and action committees, just like your Commission is, we reformists have achieved what seems to me to be a pretty good reform, in that we have tended to vest overall reviewing power in the committee as a whole, or a majority of the committee, but then said the chairman is the man we look to for action and direction and we expect him to act and direct. Therefore, I am just unconvinced that the reorganization plan is as meaningless as you suggest.

It seems to me it would centralize responsibility in the Chairman and if things don't get done, then the President knows who did not do them. Mr. CULLITON. Mr. Reuss, I, too, appreciate the opportunity to present it and I intended not to be argumentative. I just wanted to present a point of view but I am a little disturbed by the tendency to argue from extremes.

When we come right down to it, this is a group at the moment of five people who are working together pretty well, and we have the interest of the agency at heart. So the system sort of takes a background.

Now, controlling an obstreperous chairman is not something you should definitely plan for.

What I am trying to say is the way to get the most contribution to the welfare of the Commission, from willing and able Commissioners, is to have our present system, and to continue to work on these problems as we have, rather than impose a new system which is based upon the professional manager's approach of throwing up his arms about all the routine things we have to do, which is not true of the Tariff Commission.

Mr. KAPLOWITZ. I would like to speak to that for a moment, Mr. Chairman.

I have been Chairman for a little over a year; a member of the Commission for a little over a year; and Mr. Culliton indicated that his

term is expiring—I don't know, in another year or so. Mine expires in June the middle of June. No one has promised that if I fight for this plan, I will be reappointed.

I am thinking in terms of the overall needs-just what Commissioner Culliton, what we are all really thinking about. Let's see how we can make the Tariff Commission do a better job.

I am not a management expert. I don't have nearly the learning that Commissioner Culliton or Commissioner Fenn-I say that in no derogatory sense-have in management. I don't even understand a lot of the terms that are involved, but I am interested in what the other of my colleagues are interested in, and that is getting the Commission's real work done.

Now, I think that we have been spending an inordinate amount of time on just the kind of things that this plan tends to deal with.

Now, Commissioner Culliton says that it is not so much that it takes up so much of our time. I want the Commission to do more in the substantive area than it has been doing. I am not satisfied with the job that it has been doing.

The Committee on Finance is going to make a study-it has promised that it is going to include the role of the Tariff Commission. I expect something to come from that kind of a study, that is going to say, Mr. Tariff Commission, you have not been doing enough. Get busy, and don't spend your time deciding whether a grade 5 clerk should be appointed, and have six votes on it, and then you have a divided vote, and you come out with nobody being hired; but spend your time on the real work.

Of course, we all look at ourselves in a little different light.

I was, no doubt, appointed to the Tariff Commission because someone had some idea that I was an expert in tariff areas. I think that Commissioners Culliton and Fenn are especially expert in the field of management, whatever it means.

But this does not mean that when Mr. Culliton's term is ended, and if he doesn't get reappointed—I am sure he would be, but I mean, let's suppose it doesn't happen-we might get a new Commissioner who knows nothing whatsoever about management and who then would not feel so aggrieved at being excluded from participation in the routine, everyday things that go on in the Commission. Speaking for myself personally, I don't want these additional burdens. They are just headaches, but I believe that the Congress passed an act in 1949 which almost ordered the President-it did not just give him authority but it almost commanded him to look over the various agencies and to submit or transmit to the Congress plans for reorganization looking to improvement in efficiencies, and so on. This is Congress' will. It is not the will of the President. This is Congress' will and when the President, after due study, including-in this case, I am sure, the Bureau of the Budget has had available the results of this Robinson report, as it is called has decided that it is appropriate for the Commission that it could improve its efficiency if a plan like this were applied to the Commission, I say I am all for it because it is the only thing that I have seen that seems to point in the direction of saying that spells out in black and white-this is the way we are going to run the Commission.

Now, I know that we can talk from now to doomsday about all these generalities; how we should run the Commission what studies

we should make, but we are not going to make any headway if we are bogged down in endless administrative chores.

That is all I have to say.

Mr. REUSS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman BLATNIK. Time is against us. The House is in session. We may come to agreement with members of the committee to continue to hear Commissioner Fenn whose testimony is essentially along the same lines as Commissioner Culliton, only in more detail, so the trend of thought will conform to the issues.

Mr. Fenn, your entire statement will be included in the record at this point.

(The prepared statement referred to follows:)

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DAN H. FENN, JR., COMMISSIONER, U.S. TARIFF

COMMISSION

Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, I am not in favor of the reorganization plan for the Tariff Commission because I believe that it does not meet our basic problems and may, in fact, serve to divert our attention from them while creating new difficulties of its own. In addition, I am concerned that, under some circumstances, it could diminish the Commission's traditional independence and objectivity and thus lessen its value to the Congress and to the President.

In opening this statement, I repeat the caveats which many others from sister agencies have used before in commenting on similar plans. Like them, my concern is not with our current Chairman. When Paul Kaplowitz was sworn in over a year ago, I said: "If the President had personally created a man for the chairmanship of the Commission, he couldn't conceivably have done better. For Kap brings back to the Commission a unique combination of qualities to be found nowhere else in the country.' This has been an even more congenial, more productive period for all of us than I envisioned on that occasion. Further, I hope that my views are not unduly colored by my own role on the Commission. My personal relationship with the Chairman is such that I would expect to be able to make a contribution in the future regardless of the formal organizational structure under which we operate.

Thus, my anxiety goes to the plan itself, as it relates to our particular agency, and to the impact it may have when other chairmen and other commissioners succeed those of us who now hold these offices.

I have said that the proposed plan does not meet what I see to be our principal problems in the management area. By "management" I do not mean routine housekeeping such as the purchase of supplies, the maintenance of the building. or routine personnel actions-keeping the water cold in the bubblers and hot in the boilers. These present few problems for us now and take up little Commission time. I shall have some comments on those matters in a moment. Rather, I am referring to our more basic managerial responsibilities. In a letter to Senator McClellan back in 1950 as printed in the "Hearings Before the Committee on Expenditures, U.S. Senate, 81st Congress, Second Session," Frederick J. Lawton, then Director of the Bureau of the Budget, stated that the Hoover Commission was concerned by "a lack of basic planning which would provide a more effective development of policies and objectives" in the regulatory agencies and, he might have added, a lack of systematic attention to the organization and allocation of resources to carry out those objectives once established. Because we are not a regulatory agency, but rather are oriented toward research and factfinding, the statement applies particularly to us.

Let me clarify what I mean with some examples. The Tariff Commission has a very broad charter to investigate, on its own motion, the field of commercial policy and the impact of international trade on the domestic economy. Some Commissioners have felt that the greatest contribution the Commission could make in the 1960's would be to make use of our group of professional experts to launch such studies; others feel that the Commission should be, essentially, a passive agency, waiting until we are called upon before we undertake any study. I do not comment on the merits of the two positions. The point, rather. is that this is a fundamental question of the role and function of the Commission at this moment of time and, as such, is a prime management decision.