WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH CONGRESS?
Follette, Sen. Robert M. La
What Shall We Do With Congress? By SEN ROBERT M. LA FOLLETTE, Jr. EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first of two articles of Sen. La Follette, who is chairman of the special Joint Congressional Committee...
...If criticism alone could make for perfection, Congress would by this time be one of the most perfect of all human institutions...
...The result is a woefully inadequate Congressional control over departmental expenditures and policies...
...Consequently there has been a growing tendency for Congress to turn to the Executive for guidance in drawing new legislation—not out of any lazy desire to avoid its responsibility, but rather out of conscientious effort to frame good legislation that will prove workable...
...A billion dollars every four days...
...Congress has never had a thorough-going reorganization since 1921...
...Monroney of Oklahoma...
...The parade of witnesses before each committee may be almost identical...
...McKellar of Tennessee, Sen...
...Maloney by his untimely death before the resolution was passed...
...IN the early days of the Republic the problems of government were simpler, because the economy of the nation was expanding and was to a, great extent self-propelling...
...Shipstead of Minnesota...
...13 and concluded on June 29...
...There are 48 standing committees of the House with about 950 committee seats for 435 members...
...To check on an administrative agency's appropriation after it is spent is a crude discipline at best—a negative approach, capable of crippling an agency and its offending program, but incapable of putting something positive and constructive in its place...
...I think there are only six members of the present Senate who have served continuously longer than I: Sen...
...But most of this criticism is not constructive...
...What is wrong with Congress ? There certainly is no dearth of volunteers to answer that question...
...IF the control of governmental policy is to remain with the people's elected representatives, as the framers of the Constitution intended it should, and not drift into the hands of a relatively irresponsible bureaucracy, Congress will have to streamline its organization...
...IT is my conviction that reorganization and consolidation of the Congressional committee structure is vital to an effective strengthening of the legislative branch of the government...
...It goes beyond that to the very organization of Congress...
...The rules of legislative or parliamentary procedure on the floor were specifically excluded from consideration...
...The Senate has 33 standing committees with 400 committee assignments for its 96 members...
...It springs from personal prejudice, political bias, and above all from an utter lack of knowledge of the workaday problems with which a great legislative body must deal...
...It is not uncommon, either, for committees to be meeting simultaneously with sessions of the Senate...
...The administrators of the Government are for the most part responsible to the Executive, and as a result the Executive's function in proposing and drawing new legislation has been tremendously enlarged...
...Considering the complexity of problems before Congress today, and taking account of the distractions which now beset Senators and Representatives, the quality of serious speeches in both Houses is amazingly high...
...The duties, powers, and prestige of the Federal Government, both in national and international affairs, have expanded tremendously...
...The Executive branch of the Government has expanded and reorganized several times to meet the new conditions...
...There is, to be sure, more trash—bad poetry, demagogic claptrap, and clotted nonsense—in the Record of the past 10 years than there was in the Annals of Congress from 1789 to 1799...
...The constantly growing body of Executive or ».d-ministrative law has become both a necessity to the operation of modern government and a threat to the constitutional function of Congress as the legislative, policymaking branch of the Government...
...As the function of government has become more and more technical, the administrative problems have become more significant in the formulation of legisla-• tion...
...During 1944 and early in this year we were spending at a rate of one-fourth of a billion dollars a day...
...Basically, the present weakness of Congress lies in its failure to meet this problem...
...Many of the major committees hold almost daily sessions for long periods at a time, so it frequently occurs that meetings conflict and that individual Senators must choose between two or more of their committees which are working on important legislation at the same time and on the same day...
...later an investigation showed that double that amount had been spent, with unused moneys shuffled aroilnd from other accounts...
...That is no longer true...
...This penny-wise, pound-foolish attitude of Congress has cost the taxpayers many times what it has saved them...
...There are too many committees now with uncertain and overlapping jurisdiction...
...The Congress has been struggling along, working harder than ever, with an organization and appropriations entirely inadequate to enable it to discharge its responsibilities in the complex economic environment of this age...
...Since that time, the final report and recommendations of the Committee have been in preparation...
...And even before I was elected to the Senate I had observed the Congress for a number of years as secretary to my father...
...Congress appropriated about 40 million dollars for this project...
...As many as three and four committees may be studying different aspects of the same problem simultaneously...
...Members of the House and Senate, students of government, and others interested in the more efficient and effective functioning of the policy-making body of our Federal Government have made diverse and interesting recommendations to that end...
...However, I wish to emphasize that my views in this article represent my own suggestions and should not be interpreted to foreshadow the Committee recommendations...
...From Publius to Pegler it has been a favorite target for the disgruntled, the disappointed, the intellectual snobs, and the doubters of democracy alike...
...The vast resources of the frontier opened by Government to exploitation and use offered great opportunities to those individuals who were threatened with oppression from capitalistic excesses...
...A typical example of what I mean concerns the Army's Pentagon Building in Washington...
...In addition, there are usually five or more special committees on the House side...
...Wheeler of Montana, and Sen...
...This was a reorganization resolution sponsored by the late Sen...
...There are many critics who would have the public believe that the average Congressman is a pusillanimous ignoramus who looks under the bed every night to see if there is a voter there waiting to lop off his political head on election day...
...This may sometimes have a beneficial effect in jogging a government department into some much-needed action— but it is hardly an efficient manner in which to proceed...
...Capper of Kansas, Sen...
...THE problem of reorganization of Congress has been the subject of study, investigation, and articles in the publications of the nation for a number of years...
...Think of it...
...Glass of Virginia, Sen...
...As most readers of The Progressive know, I have had the privilege of serving Wisconsin in the United States Senate for a good many years...
...The legislative process accordingly was more leisurely...
...The general public interested in following the activities of Congress has a stake in committee reorganization too...
...Maloney of Connecticut and Rep...
...Its success in exposing administrative errors already committed and preventing others, 'through constructive recommendations embodied in its periodic reports, together with the ever-present possibility of exposure and censure, has been spectacular...
...Obviously, there is no economy for the taxpayer when the agency which is responsible for control of the purse strings fails to exercise sufficient supervision to insure that the money it appropriates is spent properly and wisely...
...Department officials may be called to the Capitol Hill to testify and repeat again and again what may already be recorded in the hearings of other committees...
...The Committee opened public hearings on Mar...
...The overlapping jurisdiction of present committees is- wasteful and inefficient...
...A successful government must be able not only to formulate broad policies but also to apply them fairly in the individual case...
...In all, 39 public and 4 executive sessions were held...
...Monroney was designated vice-chairman...
...The weaknesses of this technique in the long run are that it is not sufficiently continuous and that it is not applied to all phases of the Government's program...
...IT is always easy to attribute the shortcomings of Congress to the fact that it no longer has men of the caliber of Clay, Calhoun, and Webster among its members...
...A bill which has passed the House is now pending in the Senate .to grant the President sweeping powers for another reorganization of the Executive branch of the Federal Government...
...George of Georgia, Sen...
...The phrase delegating to the President or some one of his recognized agents the power to "issue such regulations and orders as he may deem necessary or proper in order to carry out the purposes and provisions of this act" is now one of the indispensable and most significant portions of most policy legislation adopted by Congress...
...Yet, that is where such legislation goes, following original precedents...
...It is almost breath-taking to consider the Government in terms of recent war spending...
...At the same time it will have to devise new instrumentalities and methods which will afford a positive, constructive liaison and high-policy relationship with the administrative arm of the National Government...
...More serious is the lack of legislative coordination that may result from divided jurisdiction...
...However, the deficiencies of Congressional activity are not due only to lack of sufficient appropriations...
...La Follette, who is chairman of the special Joint Congressional Committee now preparing its program for the modernization of Congress, The second article will, appear next week...
...The committee was deprived of the services of Sen...
...Who would guess, for example, that TVA legislation would be considered by the Military Affairs Committee on the House side and by the Agriculture and Forestry Committee on the Senate side...
...The true aim of government should be to serve the individual...
...Testimony was heard from 102 witnesses, including 14 Senators and 31 Representatives...
...When divided jurisdiction occurs, as perhaps might occur between the Senate Finance Committee and the Banking and Currency Committee on, say, a tax policy involving prices, there are no good means of coordinating the legislation except by referring it successively to both or all committees concerned, which is occasionally done but is usually very time-consuming...
...The special investigative committee technique, currently exemplified by the Truman-Mead Committee of the Senate, is one significant advance in the direction of such a relationship between the legislative and executive branches...
...The problems themselves were more general, except for the tariff...
...In addition, there are usually about 10 special committees so that it is not uncommon for a Senator to serve on six or seven committees simultaneously...
...It set up a bi-partisan committee of six members from each branch of Congress, with instructions "to make a full and complete study of the organization and operation of Congress . . . with a view toward . . . enabling it better to meet its responsibilities under the Constitution...
...Except for questions of tariff, monetary policy, internal improvements, and public lands, the Federal Government was left free to devote its energies to matters more strictly political...
...As I look back on these many years of close association with the Congress, I am amazed that the kaleidoscope of national affairs has changed so rapidly...
...At present, it takes a Congressional expert to know in what committee a particular kind of legislation will be given consideration...
...Consequently it was possible to draw legislation, as the separation of powers theory of the Constitution assumes, to provide in advance for most contingencies...
...But even when those eminent statesmen were alive Alexis de Tocqueville, writing upon his visit to the United States, complained: "The race of American statesmen has evidently dwindled most remarkably in the course of the last 50 years...
...In 1925 when I was elected to the Senate, the anrntal appropriations were less than four billion dollars...
...IT is ironical that the Congress should be so generous in providing adequate staff for the Executive arm of the Government and yet be so penurious in staffing itself with experts...
...The great economic depression of the 1930's and the recent war activities both thrust abnormally large responsibilities on the Government...
...The same situation prevails on the House side...
...We expect to submit our report to the Congress in the very near future...
...Yet after studying the operations of the first Congresses of the United States and the operations of the Seventy-sixth Congress, I am convinced that for disinterestedness, absence of corruption, and concern with the public good, the present body is of higher order...
...This type of criticism lumps th3 sins of Congress under the head of personal ignorance and political timidity...
...For example, on a subject relating to certain rights of veterans, as many as four committees in the Senate may have some jurisdiction: the Finance Committee, which handles the bulk of veterans legislation, the Military Affairs Committee, the Naval Affairs Committee, or even the Civil Service Committee...
...My own personal feeling is that the Senate could work more efficiently with 10 or 12 committees and the House with 15 or 20...
...Those to whom the simplicity of this analysis appeals would do well to ponder a statement coming from the eminent American historian, Charles A. Beard : "As a more than casual student of the Congressional Record, I venture this opinion: It is possible to pick out of the Record for the past 10 years addresses (not orations) which, for breadth of knowledge, technical skill, analytical acumen, close reasoning, and dignified presentation, compare favorably with similar utterances, made in the preceding century by the so-called great orators...
...With this growing emphasis upon the day-to-day application of laws, the policy-making functions of government are drifting away from the point at which the laws were passed...
...When the Committee was organized late in February of this year, I was named as chairman and Rep...
...In 1943 I introduced a bill on the subject, but Congress did not act until early this year when it passed the so-called Maloney-Monroney concurrent resolution...
...Even without these major events, the long-term trend of government has been in the direction of more government service, assistance, protection, and regulation...
...Social security, rural electrification, housing, aids for agriculture, highways, airports, and public works—these are but a few of the problems that the Federal Government has dealt with in recent years...
Vol. 9 • December 1945 • No. 48
