You realize that S. 545 introduced prior to that time by Senator Thye does seek to do away with it, has the sole objective of eliminating it?

Mr. OECHSLE. Yes; he did introduce it.

Senator SPARKMAN. While we are on it, let me talk to you a little bit about that Loan Policy Board, and I think we will understand each other's position. I opposed this in the beginning. In fact, I opposed it on the floor of the Senate, because I have felt all along that the Small Business Administration ought to be an independent agency in fact as well as in name. That was true with the Small Defense Plants Corporation, and I felt that it ought to be true with the Small Business Administration. I never have felt that with a Loan Policy Board, or whatever it is, with the power that those members have over it, we would have actually an independent agency.

Mr. OECHSLE. I think Wendell Barnes testified to the effect that he is not dominated by his present Loan Policy Board.

Now, while I am deputy to Mr. Mueller, our assistant secretary, it just so happens that I have been here for 4 years and I have attended practically every Loan Policy Board of the Administration since SBA was set up. And my own personal view of what has taken place in those Loan Policy Boards over the past 4 years has been that it works very similar to the manner in which you would work a bank. After all, you are loaning funds; over $250 million have been loaned by that organization.

And frankly, I personally would not want to be the administrator of an organization that did not have some kind of a group that was eminently qualified to consult with it on matters of loan policy.

And my personal experience over the past 4 years is that the Board has worked 100 percent with Wendell Barnes and he has so testified, and I think we can be proud of the job that has been done by the Small Business Administration.

Senator SPARKMAN. With reference to Mr. Barnes' testimony, he also testified then that he was opposed to making this a permanent organization. But later, somebody changed their mind, the Bureau of the Budget or the Policy Board or somebody, and Mr. Barnes came back and advocated making it a permanent agency.

Senator CAPEHART. Would the Senator yield?

Do we have any testimony, or does the staff have any testimonydo we have a single letter indicating that the present Loan Policy Board has not worked satisfactorily? Do we have any testimony whatsoever, any letters or any information, that the Board as presently constituted has not worked satisfactorily?

Senator SPARKMAN. Well, I do not know. Senator Thye one day, in testimony before I believe that was before the Select Committee on Small Business, Mr. Barnes was there, Senator Thye made some very strong and stern statements in the committee with reference both to Mr. Barnes' stand on permanency, and also on this question of the Loan Policy Board.

Senator CAPEHART. Will the Senator yield?

Were these Senator Thye's personal opinions, or were they based úpon facts, based upon experiences?

Senator SPARKMAN. I am sure it was based upon experience. Senator Thye is the ranking minority member of the Small Business

Committee. He has served as chairman of the committee. He is one of the most active and able members of the committee, and certainly has the interest of small business at heart.

Senator CAPEHART. There is no question about that, and I am not questioning the remarks of the Senator from Minnesota. I just asked the question because in my own office, my own mail, my own observations I have had no complaints whatsoever. I attended many of these hearings, and honestly I cannot remember anybody testifying that there was any weakness in the present Loan Board policy.

Senator SPARKMAN. Let me ask Mr. Oechsle this question: Who is the representative of the Department of Commerce on the advisory board?

Mr. OECHSLE. Secretary Weeks, and he delegates Assistant Secretary Mueller of Domestic Affairs to represent him.

Senator SPARKMAN. Is that Frederick H. Mueller?

Mr. OECHSLE. Frederick H. Mueller.

Senator SPARKMAN. When Mr. Mueller was testifying before the House Banking and Currency Committee, he testified in favor of making the Small Business Administration a permanent agency. He said:

Because we feel it is an agency, to begin with, representing the segment of our economy that is in the public eye constantly, and possibly by having it as a separate agency it receives the attention that it is felt in some hands it would not receive if it were part of another department.

Then he said this-and here is the significant part:

I might say I personally feel, and I want to go on record here, although I have stated we are in favor of giving this permanent status, that there should be only one government department in business, because I do not recognize personally any distinction between what is good in the economy for business is not just as good for small business as it is for big business or medium-sized business.

And then, later on, he said:

I would say that it has become more or less of a public issue, and that there is, for some unknown reason, a feeling that there is a difference between small business and large business, that there is an inherent difference between the two. With that I disagree, but I say that in the public mind, because of the constant, shall we say-I don't like to use the word "harping"-but the constant talk about the problems of small business has created in the public mind a feeling that there is some inherent difference. All big business started small. Now, that is the political gimmick which probably requires that we have an administration that is giving their attention to the problems so-called, of socalled small business.

That is a statement from a member of the policy board, who sits on it, stating policy for an agency he does not believe in, and he

says so.

First he said there ought to be just one department and that is the Commerce Department, of course. And by the way, Mr. Oechsle, let me say this

Mr. OECHSLE. He did not say he did not believe in the Small Business Administration.

Senator SPARKMAN. No, but he said all of it ought to be in one department. I do not mean to say he said it in so many words, but I do not see how anybody can read that without getting a very definite belief that Mr. Mueller does not believe inherently in a Small Business Administration.

Mr. OECHSLE. I think

Senator SPARKMAN. And, of course, when we sought to set this up originally, the Department of Commerce was against it, not just in this administration but in previous administrations.

Mr. OECHSLE. I think what Mr. Mueller was referring to and he made this as a personal observation-was that he does not like this division, so-called, in the business community, any more than the legal profession would want to be referred to as the small lawyers versus the big lawyers, or a farmer would want to be referred to as a small farmer versus a large farmer.

Yesterday I looked through Webster's Dictionary and looked at the definition of the word "small" and after I finished reading it, I got the shivers.

Now, there are a lot of businessmen that start in business-maybe they only employ one man, but when they start on Main Street and start a store and invest their capital, they are businessmen. They like to be referred to as businessmen.

Now, this division of having a Small Business Administrationand again I am speaking personally, for myself-eventually you hear talk, and I have seen articles in the U. S. News & World Report that there should be a Small Farm Administration to help the poor small farmer.

Senator SPARKMAN. We have that.

Mr. OECHSLE. As an independent agency, outside of the Department of Agriculture.

Then, following that through, you could have a Small Mining Administration outside of Interior to take care of the small miners as compared to the large miners. It is purely a matter of division.

I like to be known as a businessman. I do not care if I have two people working for me, or a thousand people. I am a businessman when I start in business and invest my own funds. That is the free enterprise system. That, in my judgment, is what has made this country good and great.

When my 2 brothers and I started in 1919 and closed down an old blacksmith shop and went into the welding business, there were just 3 of us, but we were businessmen. We did not consider we were small-business men. We have since grown into a fairly sizable organization with two sizable plants in Philadelphia. I just started my sonin-law in business in 1948. He now has 50 people working for him. He does not like to be referred to as a small-business man. He is a businessman.

I think that is what Mr. Mueller had in mind.

And, furthermore, he probably had in mind that if we are going to have this constant division within Government to take care of this particular group versus that particular group, the first thing you know, this thing can spread all over to a ridiculous degree, to the point where we will have a House and Senate, one to represent the rich and one to represent the poor.

Senator SPARKMAN. I do not think there is any likelihood of that. Mr. OECHSLE. I would hope not.

Senator SPARK MAN. That is reductio ad absurdum.

Mr. ОECHSLE. Is that Latin?

Senator SPARKMAN. You do not speak Latin?

Mr. OECHSLE. No; I am sorry.

Senator CAPEHART. I think what Mr. Mueller was talking about there is that he wants to have a small-business agency as we have at the moment, to loan money to small business, but beyond that, it ought to be part and parcel of the regular governmental business agency, "hich is the Department of Commerce, and not try to separate the two. Senator SPARKMAN. We differ on that, and the Congress differs. The Congress has, on at least two different occasions, set it up as an independent agency, the Small Defense Plants Corporation and the Small Business Administration.

But it seems to me that Mr. Mueller here is saying that we ought not to have any such agency.

And then there is his reference to so-called problems. I do not find anything in this report about so-called problems. These people, members of the President's Cabinet, were discussing real problems and they called them real problems. But Mr. Mueller, who is the representative of the Commerce Department on the policy board, speaks of them as so-called problems of so-called small business.

You do not find a word in this report about so-called problems or so-called small business. They call it small business.

Mr. OECHSLE. It may interest you

Senator SPARKMAN. And then they referred to real, genuine problems, that they said they were willing for this Government to absorb a loss of $700 million in order to reach.

Mr. OECHSLE. It may interest you to know, Senator Sparkman, that Secretary Mueller represents Secretary Weeks on the Cabinet Committee for Small Business, and was instrumental in making several of the recommendations that are in that Cabinet committee report, one of which was the right of small business to depreciate used equipment up to the amount of $50,000 a year.

He is a small-business man. He formerly headed the Mueller Furniture Co. of Grand Rapids that has about 125 employees.

Senator SPARKMAN. I suppose it would not be fair to ask you why the Administration did not approve of my bill I tried to get through to give to all business the right to rapidly amortize the amounts involved in the purchase of used equipment.

Mr. OECHSLE. I would not know.

Senator SPARKMAN. Just 2 years after we extended that right to the purchase of new equipment.

Those are some of the things I cannot understand in this field which we are talking about, doing something to give badly needed help to small business.

Senator CAPEHART. You are not necessarily going to give it to them by divorcing it from the Department of Commerce. In fact, that itself will not do it.

Senator SPARKMAN. It is not a part of the Department of Commerce now. Commerce has tried at every turn of the road to get it, and again not just in this administration but in previous administrations. I understand the position and I have a great deal of sympathy with it. I just do not believe that it is for the common good.

Mr. OECHSLE. I think you will agree that the predecessor agency, the Smaller War Plants Agency, was set up as a wartime agency, and

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this is the first peacetime agency for small-business administration to be set up independently.

Senator SPARKMAN. The Small Defense Plants Corporation was set up during the Korean war.

Mr. OECHSLE. That is right.

Senator SPARKMAN. The Smaller War Plants Corporation was a wartime agency, pure and simple.

Mr. OECHSLE. That is right.

Senator SPARKMAN. And the SBA was more or less a conversion of the SDPC.

Mr. OECHSLE. That is right.

Senator SPARKMAN. I notice in the President's Cabinet Committee recommendations-I will not take the time to take up these various recommendations, but I think it would do us all good to refresh our recollection once in a while to see about those promises that were held out last fall and see if we could do something toward bringing them into action.

But one thing I wanted to ask you about is this—in the President's letter, it says:

The Committee is to have the continuing assignment of making specific recommendations to me for administrative actions and, where necessary, for additional legislation to strengthen the economic position of small businesses.

The President did not say "so-called small businesses."
Mr. ОECHSLE. No.

Senator SPARKMAN. He called it right out what it was

to strengthen the economic position of small businesses and to foster their sound development.

I realize this is not your responsibility, but I wonder if you can tell us what is being done toward carrying forward that statement. Do you know?

Mr. OECHSLE. Well, I attend many of these Cabinet Committee meetings on small business, and they are in the 4 years I have been down here I have never attended a Government committee that has worked as hard as the Cabinet Committee on Small Business.

Senator SPARKMAN. You understand I gave it high praise from the very beginning.

Mr. OECHSLE. It would start at 2 o'clock in the afternoon and wind up at 7 or so at night. And there is a great amount of work that has gone into that by the various representatives of the different Government agencies.

But you must remember this one basic fact, that a number of the recommendations that were made would have the effect of some type of tax relief in one way or another, and in light of the present budget situation in this session of Congress, the Treasury Department, I believe, has the feeling that if taxes are going to be relieved for some particular segment of the economy, this is not the time to do it until they can have an opportunity to look over the results of this budget situation and find out what is going to be left, and then possibly in the next Congress or the next session of this present Congress, determine what of these recommendations that have been made by the Cabinet Committee could be enacted into legislation.