RECIPE FOR A REJUVENATED CONGRESS

...The second necessity is for the development of ways and means whereby the Congress can continuously check upon and review the action of executive agencies which are given the task of carrying out laws passed by Congress...

...This second function is that of seeing that the laws passed by Congress are carried out in accordance with its own intent...

...At long last it appears that both the Congress and the people of the nation are awake to the fact that if the Congress is to perform its proper constitutional function in this day, it must necessarily equip itself adequately to do that job...

...In the field of expenditure of public money, something in addition to this is probably necessary...

...In the second place our national legislature, or Congress, must accept responsibility for a new function which is part and parcel of the type of government which world events have inexorably brought upon us today...

...It will be quiet, under-cover resistance...

...The time has passed when it is sufficient for a Congressional committee to frame legislation and se-cure its passage by the House and Senate...

...Furthermore, this would establish a continuous relationship between executive agencies and the committees of Congress which would go a very long way indeed toward breaking down misunderstanding and lack of cooperation between the legislative and executive branches of Government...

...I appreciate very deeply having been asked to write this article for The Progressive for I know that the readers of this magazine are among the best informed of American citizens and among the most active...

...Powerful Pressures Ahead There must be a staff of people on the payroll of Congress and responsible to nobody but the Congress, who will not only get the information that Congress requests, but who will anticipate the course of necessary legislative action and be prepared ahead of time to bring before the committees of Congress this information and analysis...

...In all too many cases those events stem from action in the financial centers of the nation...

...There will be very powerful resistance against any of these changes both within and out of Congress...

...I think it is no exaggeration to say that-the future of constitutional government and of the basic liberty of the American people depends upon two things being done by the Cougress for the Congress...

...For at present committees of Congress are dependent almost exclusively upon either the testimony of Government executive departments or the testimony of pressure groups for the information which they necessarily must have in the framing of legislation...

...Important as these things no doubt are, it is my conviction that the two matters which I have already suggested are of even greater importance...

...At present the Appropriations Committees of the House and Senate must act almost exclusively upon the basis of the ex parte testimony of the very people who are going to expend the money...

...Such a staffing of the committees is one of the things most necessary if the Congress is to be able to do its job...

...Therefore the Congress must have a legislative program of its own sufficiently realistic and comprehensive really to meet the national needs and problems...

...The future of democratic government in the whole world depends in large part on what happens to democratic government in the United States...

...Were we to lift our sights several hundred per cent concerning the possibilities inherent in the Legislative Reference Service, grant that Service sufficient, appropriations so...

...My proposal therefore is that the Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress be expanded into a true legislative staff of the Congress...

...I earnestly hope that this article of mine is only one of maiiy which will appear in the columns of The Progressive a.nd in the columns of other papers until such time as the Congress of the United States has taken all measures necessary to enable it to deal adequately with the complex and difficult problems which confront our nation "and thus to secure the future position of the Congress as a' branch of our government at least co-equal with the executive...

...Furthermore, heads of departments and agencies testify only in the manner approved by the Bureau of the Budget and are forbidden to even speak of the importance of certain types of work unless the Budget Bureau gives them permission to do so...

...It will not be- the kind of resistance that is easy to deal with...

...Every single American citizen, therefore, has a direct personal interest in the moves now under way in Congress to strengthen the hand and improve the functioning of that body...

...To be sure Congress should seek the advice and counsel of other branches of Government and groups of citizens and it is a constitutional prerogative of the President to recommend legislation to the Congress...

...The task of government is many times more complex than it was even a short 50 years ago and it touches the everyday lives of citizens far more intimately...

...Equally important, they were the times when due to an abundance of free land and unexploited natural resources there actually was an opportunity for people who found themselves economically distressed or unemployed in the older settled portions of the country, to move to new areas and build through their own efforts both their economic and political freedom and independence...

...The first of these is for the Congress to furnish itself with adequate, independent, complete, factual information bearing upon all types of legislation which Congress may be called upon to consider and all types of national public policy problems...

...But it is the basic function of the Congress to conceive legislation and no bill should be enacted into law unless it bears the definite imprint of the work of the national legislature upon it...

...Thus two or three birds would be killed with this one stone...

...And as I hope I have made clear, the vigor of democratic government, as well as the security of the individual citizen, his constitutional rights and liberties, depend upon the strength and effectiveness of the national legislative body...

...A New Committee Function In order, however, for a national legislature, such as the American Congress to do its job effectively it is not sufficient for it simply to say "no" to executive proposals with which it does not agree...

...The Legislative Reference Service is a body which throughout the years has performed with'a bare minimum of scanty appropriations, an outstanding scientific job of furnishing information to those few members of Congress who have been wise enough to use it...

...That principle is that no executive agency can derive power except from two sources—first, the Constitution of the nation, and.second, from specific action of the Congress...

...The reforms which I have briefly outlined in this article are embodied in a bill which I introduced on the first day of the 79th Congress...

...Therefore the Appropriations Committees of the House and Senate should be equipped with an adequate staff of investigators so that they could maintain a constant check upon the expenditure of money appropriated by Congress...

...The first task of our Congress is to be the source of legislation and of law...

...that it could be staffed with top-grade research people in every field of public policy and legislative action, and develop a close and direct relationship between the Legislative Reference Service and the committees of the Congress, we would have gone a very long way toward making available the independent sources of information which Congress must have...

...Governmental policy may make all the difference between inflation, deflation, or healthy stability in the purchasing power of our money and all the difference between prosperity and full employment on the one hand and destitution and unemployment on the other...

...Much stress has been placed upon the importance of streamlining the committee structure of Congress and upon developing if possible some better method than the seniority system for the selection of committee chairmen...

...Decline Of Democracy Today, however, the welfare of the people of our nation and the chance for life of coming generations depend primarily upon the actions of our Government...

...They also depend directly upon the vigor and effectiveness of the national legislature which is always the citadel of those liberties and by far the most direct contact of the people with their government...

...Those were the days in the last century before the invention of modern weapons of war, when America really could live her own life relatively undisturbed by the troubles of the rest of the world...

...Recipe For A Rejuvenated Congress By JERRY VOORHIS THERE was a time in the history of the United States when the actions of our Government made little difference in the life of the average citizen...

...Finally, were the standing committees to undertake this all-important function they would inevitably find it necessary to have an adequate staff to do this work...

...In the other field which I have stressed as basically important, namely, that of having the Congress maintain continuous check on grants of power made by it, I believe that all of the regular standing committees of the House and Senate should perform a new function...

...For constitutional government is indeed undermined whenever we stray in the slightest degree away from one fundamental principle...

...In the days of the free land frontier a national administration which presumed to take away the basic liberties of the people would only have been laughed at...

...Today we must face the cold, hard fact that it would be possible, if a national administration chose to do so, to affect vitally those fundamental liberties...

...Particularly is this important when grants of power are made to executive agencies...

...In addition to this it is evidently necessary today...

...In every nation of the world where democratic government has been lost the basic cause has been that the national legislature in that nation declined in prestige and lost its ability to cope with the problems of that nation...

...Today millions of people may be thrown out of employment or see the selling price of their farm crops driven to ruinously low levels by events over which they cannot possibly have any control...

...Individual liberty and the constitutional rights of the common citizen are intimately bound up with democratic government...

...This would not only enable the Appropriations Committees, and through them the Congress itself, to pass independent judgment on the amount of appropriations really needed by executive departments and to effect substantial economies in certain instances, but it would also make it possible for the Congress to discover those cases where important public work may be neglected because the Bureau of the Budget has not seen fit to approve an adequate appropriation for carrying it on...

...It can only be overcome if throughout the length and breadth of the land there is developed a public opinion so strong and insistent that it cannot be gainsaid...

...that those same committees carry on a continuous review of the work of executive agencies to see that that work is carried out in accordance with the intent of Congress as expressed in legislation, that the constitutional rights and immunities of citizens are not violated, and that grants of power, are properly used rather than exceeded or abused...