Mr. SCHNEEBELI. Thank you very much.

Mrs. GRIFFITHS. Thank you very much for your very testimony.

Congressman Barber Conable of New York.

STATEMENT OF HON. BARBER B. CONABLE, A U.S. REPRESE FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK

Mr. CONABLE. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and memb committee.

In view of the lateness of the hour, I shall be mercifully I do not appear today to urge approval of any special tech gestions for recapturing our sense of priority and balan Congress.

I have sponsored the Findley proposal, House Resolution possible mechanism for doing this. I commend it to your but I am not unalterably bound to any single solution.

The members of this committee are more experienced th I am encouraged by the quality of earnestness which has cha your labors to date.

I know that you approach this subject with every intentio your experience in deliberate and realistic ways. I wish or phasize the sense of urgency many of us among your colle at this time. We have passed the point of no return.

Unless you can give us a plan which will essentially re budgetary processes to permit us to put it all together, Con cease being merely ineffective and will become a national stock.

This issue is sharpened, of course, by the daily confronts ported in the press between Congress and the President on a tional. institutional, and political level. But as in other confr the underlying significant dispute is one of policy.

Congress can express its policy views effectively only by view of the relative importance with all the other unmet ne ing our complex society. Unless we do more than identify th year after year, it is inevitable that the real priorities of Go will be established in the only other part of the Governmen of relative judgment, namely the executive branch.

The establishment of priorities as a Government functi properly vested there, but it must be done somewhere and to do it ourselves, the President ultimately has no choice but comparative importance to the various programs we have a to administer. He is required to do this, using the limited which we also provided him.

In short, I do not view this issue so much as a struggle be Executive and the legislative, as I do the more basic qu whether the legislative branch will perform its particular bility in Government. We cannot continue to ignore the overa of the separate program actions we take.

I realize that you are struggling only with the develop mechanism for putting it all together. The best techniqu world cannot make an effective governmental agency out of a tion that does not have the will to govern.

I personally think the American people want the Congress to be n important part of the Government, and once you have devised a echnique for the improving of our priority setting function, I believe he American people will insist upon our using it. It will be more ifficult to avoid the tough decisions of Government once the work of our committee has underscored the necessity of our doing more than onsidering each program in a vacuum.

Unless you are successful in promoting such an overall approach, I can see only a continuing erosion of our institutional capacity to unction as an effective part of the Government, a further atrophy of our governmental muscle and an increasing reliance on the executive branch as the real priority setter, however much we may disagree with the priorities it sets.

I wish to lend my encouragement to your work, to pledge my support to a reasonable mechanism for the establishment of legislative priorities and to repeat my feeling that this is the most urgent business Congress can undertake in terms of institutional reform.

Thank you.

Mrs. GRIFFITHS. I would like to thank you.

I think that is an excellent analysis of the exact problem and is a very thoughtful, well-considered statement.

Do you have some questions?

Mr. DAVIS. Somewhat different than the previous New York opinion that we received on these matters.

Mr. CONABLE. New York is a diverse State. There are many viewpoints there. We are proud of our diversity, among other things. Mr. DAVIS. I think it is a good pinpointing statement and very realistic.

Thank you.

Mr. SCHNEEBELI. I agree with you wholeheartedly that we passed the point of no return. I am amazed at the cynics in Congress who say we have been up this road before but we failed, and after experiencing futility also, we will come to the same conclusion. We can't possibly

come to the same conclusion.

I don't look forward to the day when I have to write my constituents and say that unfortunately we couldn't control our expenditures. The cynics who persist in this attitude certainly don't have the right concept of what the public demands.

I think you underscored this very properly as you always do.

Mr. CONABLE. We can't afford cynicism at this time. This is too serious an issue. My purpose in coming here today was to encourage you with your work.

Mr. SCHNEEBELL. I agree wholeheartedly.

Mrs. GRIFFITHS. That is wonderful. The real proof is that the problem 25 years ago was not the acute problem it is today.

They began with a situation that was totally unwieldy. I understand they had more than 100 members of the committee, which would have been almost a quarter of Congress working on it. They didn't have a chance when they began. But they didn't have the pressing problems and they didn't have the backing of really the rest of the country. I think the country is demanding it.

Mr. CONABLE. Madam Chairman, I think the urgency of this is the result of the proliferation of programs we have. We have so many

programs that it is virtually impossible for the individual men to assign any relative importance to them. They are all to worthy purposes.

I commend to your attention the valedictory press con Elliot Richardson when he left HEW. It was a fascinating of what is wrong and what an overpowering necessity we fa ting it all together somehow. Otherwise, we will continue national needs, propose a program for dealing with them thereafter demonstrate our lack of capacity to assign it a scale of importance with respect to all those myriad other that we have to consider.

Mrs. GRIFFITHS. Nothing exemplifies this better than th study we are engaged it.

Mr. CONABLE. I think that is very important, too, what you on that.

Mrs. GRIFFITHS. Ten different committees are passing ou They don't call it that. They call it rehousing America, givin to veterans, doing this and that, getting rid of our slums. In truth, it is all welfare. It is now the largest expenditure Government.

Thank you very much.

We stand adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 12 m. the committee was adjourned.]

IMPROVING CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET CONTROL

FRIDAY, MARCH 9, 1973

U.S. CONGRESS,

JOINT STUDY COMMITTEE ON BUDGET CONTROL,

Washington, D.C.

in room

The Joint Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., 114, the Dirksen Building, Hon. Jamie L. Whitten presiding. Present: Representatives Whitten (presiding), Davis, and Senator Fulbright.

Chairman WHITTEN. The committee will come to order.

We have first today, a longtime public servant of both sides of the Congress, the Senate and the House, one of our outstanding Members, Claude Pepper, of Florida. We are proud to have you appear.

STATEMENT OF HON. CLAUDE PEPPER, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA

Mr. PEPPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. I am grateful for the opportunity to appear here before you this morning on this very critical matter with which you are concerned, and which confronts our country today. It is a subject that reminds me of something attributed to the distinguished Senator after whom this building is named, the distinguished Senator from Illinois, Mr. Dirksen.

They tell the story that on one occasion Senator Dirksen in Illinois had a big button on his coat lapel that had the letters "IAK" and some fellow addressing the Senator one day at a public meeting said, "Senator, what is that button you have there with those letters 'IAK' on it?" and Senator Dirksen replied, "That means I am confused," and the man looked at the Senator and studied it a minute, and said, "You don't spell confused with a K," and he said "That is how confused I am." I think contrary to what appears to have been the expression of some of the scholars who perhaps testified before this committee recently, that there is a constitutional crisis involved in this controversy. I have been looking back lately over various materials from the Library of Congress having to do with the fashioning of our Constitution and I can't find anywhere in any of the papers relative to that historic event where there was any controversy or serious debate over what the role of the Executive was to be in carrying out the laws of the Congress.

Imagine the shock that would have come to those men who were framing the Constitution if somebody had raised the possibility that in spite of their providing that all of the legislative power, not part

of it, was invested in the legislature and the Executive pow in the President, that the President could elect to deter laws he would carry out, the degree to which we would laws enacted by the Congress, the manner in which he w and the like, and the instances in which he would totally te repudiate the laws enacted by the Congress, some of which and consummated into law.

The references are very meager. They simply say, of Executive's duty would be to carry out the law and they m clear in at least three instances in the constitution. In artic said the Executive power should be invested in the Presi United States. It is easy to see the Executive's power: to exe out, administer, discharge, not determine what the laws He does that in another capacity, by making recommenda what the content of the law that he shall execute shall be.

The next thing in the Constitution is the taking of the o President. It is well to remind ourselves that the constitut required to be taken by the President is that, I do solemnl affirm that I will faithfully-not with mental reservations ambiguity, not with duplicity, not with deceptiveness, not to hamstring the authority of the Congress-I will faithful faith, with good faith, honestly, execute the laws enacted by gress, as construed by the Court.

Senator FULBRIGHT. And support the Constitution too, is Mr. PEPPER. I was just coming to that.

And the next thing to the best of my ability, preserve, pi defend the constitution. And a part of that Constitution, of all legislative powers shall be invested in the Congress of t States.

Now the President takes that oath when he enters upo formance of his duty. The President that we have recently an oath. He didn't tell the people in his inauguration addre front of the Capitol in January. "Fellow Americans: I wa know that while I am taking this oath, Mr. Chief Justice, I serious reservations about some aspects of this matter. Ar to tell all of you right now before I complete this oath, I am to do all of these things that Congress said."

There would have been consternation among all of the the country: "What is the matter with the President; we ne this before."

Now, in section III of article II, it refers to the President from time to time give to the Congress information of th the Union and recommend to their consideration measures a judge necessary and expedient.

That is the constitutional provision under which the Presi recommend to the Congress legislation that the body tha legislative authority shall promulgate.

He has ample opportunity, therefore, to advise with the to argue with them, either directly, personally, or to ap their heads to public opinion or to send them a formal recomm as to what the contents of legislation should be.

But there it seems to me his authority ends, because a littl

section III of article II come these most significent words