aspects of the measure which clearly fall within their several jurisdictions. The bill shall not be voted upon by the Senate until each committee to which it has been referred has reported upon it."

Or

"(b) In any case in which two or more standing committees of the Senate claim jurisdiction of a bill or resolution, it shall be referred, unless the Senate orders otherwise, to a joint subcommittee appointed by the presiding officer of the Senate of members of the claimant standing committees. The subcommittee so appointed shall select its chairman from among its own members and, after considering the measure, shall report its recommendations to each of the standing committees from which its members were selected."

In the staffing of Congress

1. Expansion of professional staffs of standing committees: The standing committees of both Houses are now authorized (by sec. 202 (a) of the act) to appoint not more than four professional staff members. While some committees have not yet made full use of this authority, either because a smaller number of experts is sufficient for their current needs or because they have been unable to find qualified persons, other committees have found this limitation unduly restrictive. With the rising volume of the legislative and supervisory business of the committees of Congress, some provision for increased staff aid seems to be necessary in certain cases. Congress needs to develop its own unbiased, independent intelligence services more fully as an offset to the incomplete or slanted testimony of executive agencies and pressure groups. I suggest that each standing committee should be authorized to employ at least one staff specialist in each major subjectmaiter held within its jurisdiction.

2. Provision of administrative assistants to Congressmen: The Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress recommended "that each senatorial and congressional office be authorized to employ a high-caliber administrative assistant * * * to assume nonlegislative duties now interfering with the proper study and consideration of national legislation" by Members of Congress. Provision for such assistants to Senators was made in a supplemental act, but no provision was made for such aid to Representatives. Many of the busier and abler Congressmen have voiced the need of administrative assistants to help them handle constituent requests and departmental business.

3. Creation of an Office of Personnel Adviser to assist Members and committees with their personnel problems: In addition to their legislative duties and their services to constituents, Members of Congress are burdened with the task of interviewing and appointing a host of employees. More than 2,200 positions in Members' offices and on the staffs of congressional committees have to be filled by the Members themselves. The standing committees of Congress currently employ about 550 clerks and professional persons. In addition, there are about 1,145 clerks to Representatives and 726 clerks to Senators to be appointed every 2 years. Although some employees continue to serve through successive Congresses, there is a heavy turn-over in legislative employment and much shifting about of personnel between Members' and committees' offices. Moreover, many more persons apply for jobs on Capitol Hill than are actually employed. result, much of the time of Senators and Representatives and committee chairmen is consumed in interviewing job seekers, scanning their credentials, and screening their applications-time that Members can ill afford to spare from their other duties.

As a

It is essential, however, that well-qualified persons be employed to assist the Members and committees of Congress. For upon the quality of the legislative staff depends in large part the efficiency of Congress as an institution and the capacity of its committees and membership to keep abreast of their rising work load. With the expansion of the public business and the growing demands on our National Legislature, the extent of its reliance upon the underlying professional, administrative, and clerical staff of Congress is generally recognized.

Moreover, present personnel practices in the legislative branch are so varied and haphazard that there is little security of tenure or equality of treatment among congressional employees. Employees are hired by 531 Members without any uniform standards of employment and often without full regard to rights of tenure. Promotions and pay increases can be obtained only by changing jobs or by enacting special legislation. These conditions impair the development of 4 Report of the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, Senate Report No. 1011, 79th Cong., 2d sess., p. 15.

the legislative staff and handicap the development of a modern personnel system for the Congress.

Under all these circumstances there is growing recognition on both sides of the Capitol of the need of some central clearinghouse to assist in handling personnel problems. Congress needs a personnel adviser who could relieve it of these time-consuming and harassing chores. Such a personnel adviser would be responsible for the initial interviewing and screening of job applicants. He would gradually build up a roster or slate of personnel qualified for appointment to places in committee offices. When a committee had a vacancy to fill, it could turn to the Adviser for suggestions and recommendations of persons competent to do the work involved. Chairmen would inform the adviser of their personnel needs and he would select from his roster one or more persons for their consideration whom he thought competent to fill the job.

In departmental liaison and supervision

1. Implementation of the oversight function of standing committees: Section 136 of the act directs "each standing committee of the Senate and the House of Representatives" to "exercise continuous watchfulness of the execution by the administrative agencies concerned of any laws" within its jurisdiction. To make this direction effective, all standing committees should be adequately staffed with investigators to (a) maintain a continuous review of the administration of the laws in their respective fields, (b) determine if any agency is exceeding or abusing powers duly granted to it, (c) ascertain where and why an agency is unable to carry out the intent of the law, and (d) where necessary recommend corrective legislation. This oversight task is too big for any one committee of either House. That is why it has been divided up among the legislative committees of both Chambers. In many cases their existing staffs have been preoccupied with their legislative duties. Some staff expansion may be necessary to assist these committees in reviewing executive performance. Such review "should be aimed not at making sensational revelations or capturing headlines but at correcting promptly and without fanfare any tendencies of executive agencies to exceed their proper authority or to fail to administer laws in accordance with the will of Congress." 5

2. Such review might well include periodic question periods at which agency officials would appear before the committee, informing it of their problems and receiving complaints of agency shortcomings. The old Public Buildings and Grounds Committee of the House and the present House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee have used this device with noteworthy success.

3. Maintenance of departmental liaison offices at the Capitol: Several downtown departments now maintain such offices on Capitol Hill, staffed with people who devote their full time to liaison work between their agencies and Congress. This practice has proved to be a great convenience to Members and might well be extended to other Federal agencies."

4. Creation of a joint Legislative-Executive Council: This suggestion, originally recommended by the La Follette-Monroney committee, proposes to bridge the gap at the top level between Congress and the Executive by setting up a joint body composed, on the legislative side, of the majority policy committees of the Senate and House (when it establishes one), and, on the executive side, of the President and his Cabinet. The case for the joint council was put as follows:

"In order to narrow the widening gap between the executive and the legislative branches, we recommend that the Senate and House majority policy committees serve also on a formal council to meet at regular intervals with the Executive and with such members of his Cabinet as may be desirable, to consult and collaborate in the formulation and carrying out of national policy and to improve relationships between the two branches of the Government.

"Improved understanding of each other's problems will be promoted by consultation before legislation is introduced to carry out pledged party promises and on matters of high administration policy. By giving congressional leaders a part in the formulation of policy, instead of calling upon them to enact programs prepared without their participation, better cooperation can be obtained.

"It would also be desirable, we think, to include the minority policy committee from time to time in these joint conferences on broad questions of foreign and domestic policy as a further means of promoting mutual understanding and harmony between the Legislature and the Executive.

Voorhis, op. cit., p. 314.

See George B. Galloway, op. cit.. p. 227.

"The Legislative-Executive Council also would enable Congress to approach more directly the solution of difficulties and complaints resulting from administrative action. Formalizing the relationships between these two great branches of the Government, we believe, will improve and strengthen the performance of each." 7

In planning the legislative program

1. Creation of party policy committees: Such policy committees in both Houses might well be composed of the presiding officer, the majority (or minority) leader, and the chairmen (or ranking minority members) of important committees with a view to the coordination of their legislative proposals. They should meet at regular intervals to consider the important problems facing the Nation, to formulate a national legislative program designed to meet those problems, and to schedule floor consideration of the appropriate measures. Members of Congress might well be permitted to appear at policy committee meetings to present their case for important bills. The function of these policy committees is to take an over-all view not only of the Nation's immediate problems but also of its long-run future needs. The central task of any national legislature is to determine the national legislative program. There is danger of losing sight of the forest for the trees. In its consideration of problems of national income, production, and full employment, the Joint Committee on the Economic Report has the potential of becoming the over-all policy committee of both Houses on the domestic economic front.

In controlling Federal expenditures

1. Improvement of budgetary policy and procedure: The efforts of Congress throughout most of its history to control expenditures have, in large measure, been frustrated. On the one hand, Congress itself has permitted transfers between appropriations, authorized the unlimited use of departmental receipts, and set up credit corporations with separate budgets. On the other hand, the executive has mingled appropriations, brought forward and backward unexpended and anticipated balances, incurred coercive deficiencies, and otherwise escaped the rigors of congressional control.8

With a gross public debt of $256,000,000,000 and with annual Federal budgets running around $40,000,000,000, a widespread public demand arose after the war that Congress strengthen its control over the public purse. A whole battery of devices for obtaining more effective performance of its fiscal function was offered by experts who testified during 1945 before the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress. After long study the joint committee made a series of recommendations in its final report for strengthening fiscal control. It recommended the adoption of annual Federal budget totals by Congress, better organization and staffing of the Appropriations Committees, service audits by the Comptroller General, and a ban on the reappropriation of unexpended balances and the transfer of appropriations. Most of these fiscal recommendations were approved by Congress in enacting the Legislative Reorganization Act (secs. 138, 139, 205, 206). The most important and controversial of these fiscal provisions is that which calls for the adoption of a legislative budget. Under this provision, after the President submits his annual budget of estimated receipts and disbursements, the four revenue and appropriations committees of the two Houses of Congress, acting jointly, are to prepare a legislative budget for the next fiscal year. The committees are to present their recommended budget, including estimates of total receipts and expenditures, to the two Houses for adoption by February 15. When adopted, this budget is to serve as a guide to congressional action on appropriations and taxes.

The first attempt to apply the legislative-budget provisions of the act failed in 1947. Although the Joint Budget Committee brought in its budget resolution which was adopted by the House, and by the Senate with amendments, it became deadlocked in conference and died there. The conferees were unable to agree upon the division of the expected surplus between tax reduction and debt retirement. The Senate Majority Policy Committee in a report prepared by its able staff director, Mr. George Smith, has stated that the legislative-budget effort failed in 1947 because: (1) The time allowed for preparation of the budget was too short even if Congress had been fully organized; (2) Congress was not ade

7 Report of the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, pp. 13-14.

Lucius Wilmerding, Jr., The Spending Power: A History of the Efforts of Congress to Control Expenditures (1943). pp. 193-195. See its printed hearings, expecially testimony of Carter W. Atkins and Fred A. Fairchild. 10 Senate Report No. 1011, 79th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 18-23.

quately staffed to do the job; (3) the budgeting process conflicts with the established appropriating process; and (4) existing Federal accounting practices make it impossible accurately to estimate expenditures on an annual basis.

Although there is general agreement upon the desirability of the chief objective sought by the legislative-budget scheme, i. e., greater over-all control of fiscal policy by Congress, the mechanics of the plan must be modified to make it workable. Any ceiling on expenditures that might be recommended by the Joint Budget Committee by February 15, only 5 or 6 weeks after submission of the executive budget, would under existing conditions be a random arbitrary "shot in the dark," a picking of figures out of thin air. Any intelligent calculation of the proposed celing would have to be based upon detailed studies of departmental needs and estimates which would take many months and a large legislative staff. If Congress desires to retain the legislative-budget scheme, I suggest that the following changes in present practice and procedure will need to be made if it is to be effective: (a) a large staff of budget analysts skilled in the scrutiny of agency estimates will have to be employed by the Joint Budget Committee; or (b) the dead line for the introduction of the concurrent budget resolution will have to be postponed until toward the end of the regular session; (c) all the general appropriation bills must be consolidated in an omnibus appropriation bill along the lines proposed by Senators Byrd and Butler (S. Con. Res. 6) and unanimously approved by the Senate Rules Committee on June 25, 1947; or (d) two omnibus bills could be prepared, one for national defense and one for civil functions, along the lines proposed by Marcellus C. Sheild, former chief clerk of the House Appropriations Committee: or (e) the Budget Committee could recommend separate ceilings for each general appropriation bill which the subcommittees on appropriations could allocate in turn among their agencies and activities: (f) the House Appropriations Committee should be required to transmit its finished bills to the Budget Committee for review before reporting them to the House, and the Budget Committee would then submit its over-all recommendations to the Congress to be considered in connection with the omnibus bill (or bills); (g) the Senate Committee on Appropriations should hold its initial hearings concurrently or jointly with the House Appropriations Committee in order to avoid undue delay in the enactment of the supply measures; and (h) Congress should appropriate annually only the funds needed for actual cash pay ments within the fiscal year and ban all carry-overs of appropriations from one year to another so as to equate appropriations and expenditures in the law. These changes would meet the difficulties pointed out by Mr. George Smith in his above-quoted analysis of the reasons for the failure of the legislative-budget provisions of the act in 1947.11

It is worth noting here that a legislative budget has been endorsed in principle by spokesmen for the United States Chamber of Commerce, the National Planning Association, the Citizens National Committee and its 33 affiliated State taxpayers associations, and by the Committee for Economic Development. In a statement on Taxes and the Budget last November, the Committee for Economic Development said in part.:

"The most important feature of the act * * * is that it recognizes the need for a congressional fiscal program as distinguished from a series of unrelated fiscal actions. This act and the Employment Act of 1946 gave us for the first time congressional mechanisms that begin to approach adequacy for formulating and executing a congressional budget. These mechanisms need to be strengthened and improved. Particularly, responsibility needs to be centered upon the majority party to adopt a legislative budget and to follow it in appropriations and tax legislation. But at least a start has been made toward the development of new congressional machinery that can make possible an integrated congressional fiscal policy."1 12

Aside from the improvements in procedure that are needed to make any fiscal policy work, the CED statement also recommended three changes in budgetary policy which merit congressional consideration:

(1) The budget used by the President and the Congress in decisions on total receipts and expenditures should be the consolidated cash budget rather than the administrative budget.

(2) Estimates of revenue yield from existing or recommended taxes should be based on a high-employment national income, rather than upon a forecast or arbitrarily selected national income.

11 For a full and competent discussion of this whole problem, see L. B. Wheildon, Legislative Budget Making, Editorial Research Reports, Jan. 6, 1948.

12 Taxes and the Budget: A Program for Prosperity in a Free Economy. A statement on national policy by the Research and Policy Committee of the Committee for Economic Development. November 1947, p. 28, processed edition.

(3) In deciding upon the relation between total receipts and total expenditures the President and the Congress should follow a standard, i. e., that the consolidated cash budget should show a moderate surplus at an agreed high-employment level of national income.13

2. Enforcement of section 139 of the act: This section directed the two appropriations committees to develop "a standard appropriation classification schedule," forbade reappropriation of unobligated balances of appropriations after existing time limits had expired, and instructed the appropriations committees to make studies directed toward the reduction of so-called permanent appropriations and the limitation of "free" funds available to Government agencies (from sale of property, services, etc.) without benefit of appropriation. None of these provisions has been effectively carried out to date.

In reducing the work load

1. Home rule for the District of Columbia: Self-government for the city of Washington was recommended by the La Follette-Monroney committee as one way of reducing the work load on Congress. Approximately 3,000 congressional man-hours were consumed in group meetings by Members of the House on District legislation in the first regular session of the Eightieth Congress. Identical home-rule bills (S. 1968 and H. R. 4902) were introduced in both Houses on January 12, 1948, incorporating recommendations made by a subcommittee of the House District Committee after careful study. It is hoped that these bills will be approved during the current session. Congress ought not to be burdened with local legislation at a time when great issues of peace and reconstruction are pressing upon its attention.

2. Ban on introduction of all private claims and immigration bills: I am informed by the Office of the Legislative Counsel that there would be no constitutional objection to a ban upon the introduction of all private claims and immigration bills, which now clog the Judiciary calendars, and to delegating the adjudication of such cases to administrative officers, provided Congress gives them a clear standard to go by. Such a ban would plug the loopholes in section 131 of the act.

In floor procedure

1. Installation of electric voting machines on the floor of both Houses for roll calls and quorum votes: Representative Kefauver estimates that in the past 3 years the House alone required one entire legislative month in each year just for roll calls. And that the Senate consumed 60 percent as much.14 The simple remedy for this waste of time is to record votes electrically, as 11 State legislatures now do.

2. Stagger Chamber sessions and committee meetings on alternate week days: This arrangement would go far to solve the no-quorum problem and to improve attendance at committee meetings and on the floor.

3. Limitation of debate in the Senate: This question was raised anew in the last session by the all-night filibuster to delay a vote on overriding the President's veto of labor legislation, and again by obstruction against investigating Attorney General Clark's action in the Kansas City voting frauds. Since 1917, by the process of cloture, it has been possible for a two-thirds majority on the next day following presentation of a petition signed by at least 16 Members-to limit each Senator to 1 hour of discussion. In that period of 30 years, cloture has been brought to a vote 20 times but has been adopted in only 4 instances. Of the 16 cloture petitions which failed, only 3 gained the support of a simple majoriy of the total Senate membership.

The Legislative Reorganization Act is silent on this subject, in part because the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress was precluded by its terms of reference from recommending any changes in floor procedure. Persuasive arguments are made, however, that the majority should rule and that filibusters interfere with legislative efficiency. Experience abroad and in the State legislatures indicates that debate can be limited without undesirable results.

Four resolutions were introduced in the last session to limit Senate debate and hearings on them were held by the Senate Committee on Rules. Its report (No. 87, 80th Cong., 1st sess.) recommended no substantial change in the existing rule. I venture to suggest that the present rule XXII be amended to provide for cloture by majority vote instead of two-thirds. It is believed that this would be a desirable innovation if it can be moved only after a reasonable time for free

13 Ibid., p. 29.

14 Estes Kefauver and Jack Levin, A Twentieth Century Congress (1947), ch. 5. See also Galloway, op. cit., p. 80.