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Show Congressional Machinery Is Slated for Overhauling Bulk of Complaints Against the Legislative Branch Are Inconsistent, but Committee Setup Needs Revision. By BAUKILAGE New Analyst and Commentator. WNU Service, Union Trust Building Washington, I). C. II la an old American custom to tulte a pot-shot at conyress whenever when-ever something goes wron and nobody no-body else is handy to blame, no natter whether the trouble i dust-storms, dust-storms, sun-spots, jaundice or just plain grouch. You may recall that this feeling reached an unhappy high In the la-mous la-mous "bundles - tor - congressmen" campaign of 1942. Some practical jokers in Seattle seized on the civil service retirement bill which made all government employees, including includ-ing members of congress, eligible for pensions, as an excuse to start the horseplay. By the time the silly season arrived, everyone with an overdose of prickly heat was taking it out In one way cr another on the poor legislators. That was very funny to everybody every-body except the recipients of the bundles and a few thoughtful people who know that the greatest great-est danger to a democratic government gov-ernment is lack of confidence in tho parliamentary body. They knew, too, that most of the sins of congress are due to the fact that some of the congressional methods established by the founding fathers have grown out of date. As one congressman put it to me the other day: "We can't be expected ex-pected to handle billion-dollar budgets bud-gets with a penny-ante setup." In July, 19-13, Senator Lafollette (Progressive) of Wisconsin introduced intro-duced a plan for the reorganization of the committee structure of the senate. This year the senate approved ap-proved the appointment of a joint committee on organization of both houses. The Smith committee in the house, Senator Maloney and Representative Repre-sentative Monroney and others carried car-ried on, until today the chances seem bright for consideration by the 79th congress of a plan to streamline the machinery of the government's govern-ment's legislative branch. In addition, a committee of lawyers has just completed a four-year four-year study on the reorganization of congress, the results of which have found favor in congressional circles. I think it apropos at this point to offer two quotations, one from the works of the historian Charles Beard, mentioned by Senator LaFol-lette LaFol-lette in an article he wrote on the subject, and another from the article arti-cle itself. This is what historian Beard said: "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 the breadth of knowledge, technical skill, analytical acumen, close reasoning and dignified presentation, pres-entation, compare favorably with similar utterances made in the preceding pre-ceding century by the so-called great orators." LaFollette, subscribing to this opinion, adds frankly, "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 on the annals an-nals of congress from 1789 to 1799." (Aye, aye!) The senator reminds us, however, of the extremely complex quality of the problems which congress has to face today and the distractions to which the members are subjected, sub-jected, and then, comparing the congress con-gress about which he is writing (the 76th) with the first congresses, he says he is convinced "that for disinterestedness, dis-interestedness, absence of corruption, corrup-tion, and concern with the public good, the present body is of a higher high-er order." And that is a sentiment which, in the humble opinion of this writer, is substantiated by the majority of objective students of the two bodies. All Democratic Institutions Suffer During Wartime The present legislators, if they wished to be as tritely exasperating as many civilian slackers in this cur time of national stress, could answer some of their critics with a shrug and a reminder that "there is a war on." When a war is on the toughest fibered of democratic institutions in-stitutions suffer. The Inconsistency of the bulk of the complaints against the legisla- ; . f : -' ' I a . '- K S 'A- ... ' tive branch of the government in the last two years can be seen when It is realized that the two most popular popu-lar charges offered were either that congress was a "rubber stamp" or that it was "obstructionist," "obstruc-tionist," which adds up to a contradiction. con-tradiction. Because of the fact that the growth of the country has demanded de-manded an increase in the body of administrative and executive law, congress is forced to delegate more power and more functions to the administrative ad-ministrative branch. To overcome over-come this trend in so far as possible will be one of the efforts ef-forts of the reorganization, of which I will speak in a moment. mo-ment. Meanwhile, it is interesting interest-ing to note that Senator LaFollette LaFol-lette himself called attention to the accomplishment of the Truman Tru-man investigating committee in exposing executive errors already al-ready committed and in preventing pre-venting others by the mere threat of "ever present exposure and censure." The one field in which congress can greatly increase its efficiency and in se doing, not only checking willful aggression of the administrative administra-tive and executive branches but rendering ren-dering a real assistance to them and to the whole nation, is in a reorganization re-organization of the committees and their methods. Congress at present 6 not equipped to offer sufficient constructive con-structive help in the writing of legislation and therefore, frequently, frequent-ly, the last word goes, by default, to the interested government agency, or that particular pressure group armed with the technical information in-formation necessary to bolster its case. Representative Smith of Virginia, in the report of his committee to investigate in-vestigate executive agencies, brings out this point, as others have. The report says: "Today a large percentage of the most important legislation is . . . painstakingly drafted by the very executive officials who are intended to be the recipients of the powers which the legislation delegates. Furthermore, the same officials are generally the only expert and fully informed witnesses to testify before the legislative committees of the congress having jurisdiction over the proposed bills. If there are opposing witnesses they do not, as a rule, represent congress or the people generally but rather some special group." Expert Knowledge Needed on Many Bills That does not mean that there ari. not men in congress who know as much and more than many of the persons appearing before them in favor of, or in opposition to, a particular par-ticular bill. But even a senator can't be all things to all men. Then there are the well-heeled lobby groups with their technical experts. What can a committee with a limited lim-ited appropriation do in competition with a private group with funds to hire the best legal or technical brains in the country to present its case? How can a member of a congressional con-gressional committee be expected to know as much about a subject as a member of a government department depart-ment who spends his whole time on the particular subject involved? Fortunately, the situation is curable. One answer is greater specialization on the part of the members of congress. This can be accomplished by cutting down the number of committees pon which a member is allowed to serve. In the house (with Its larger membership) a member can concentrate on a single committee's com-mittee's work. In the senate, I know of one case where a ' senator found that all six committees com-mittees on which he served were scheduled to meet at the same time on the same day. Another solution for the problem would be provision for employment of non-political experts, both temporary tem-porary and permanent, to advise committees on purely technical matters. mat-ters. This arrangement now exists but in such a limited degree that it is hardly effective. |