We may protest that loss to some effect. If there was any one thin that the Founding Fathers feared above everything else it was th unchecked power of the Chief Executive and I think they felt the had written into the Constitution safeguards against that. But we wi ultimately reclaim our prerogatives only if we develop the capacity t exercise them well. The recommendations which you make may prov decsive on whether we reclaim our powers effectively.

The unanimity of at least your temporary recommendations raise the question of why you may succeed when so many reform effort of the past have failed.

I think that a unique combination of talent and circumstances ha aided your efforts.

First, you have been able to operate on a nonpartisan basis.

The present crisis is generally perceived in political terms. Wh shall rule, the Democratic Congress or the Republican President So, it is reassuring that this committee has not approached the issu in those terms.

The unique mandate you were given has enabled you to escape tha partisan trap. As you note in your report, your task is concerned wit the procedures for dealing with the modern budget, rather than it substance. Today, though the substance of the budget may divide son Republicans and Democrats in Congress, the need for reform does no Second, I think it is helpful to the reform effort that the part which rules the White House does not command in Congress. Whil the need for reform may exist, it is not as clearly perceived whe the President as his party's leader also leads a majority on Capito Hill.

And third, the hot and cold war tensions of more than 30 year are finally abating. The coming of peace in Vietnam, the emergin detente with China, and the progress in negotiations with the Sovie Union, all render unnecessary the expanded authority which Pres dents have claimed and Congress has granted in the last 30 years. And I sense that members of both sides of the aisle have become as war of the bureaucrats as they became weary of the war.

In that context you have solved many of the most difficult challenge laid before you. Eight of your proposals would for the first time subjec the Congress to the same elementary discipline with which the averag family balances its budget.

Mr. Chairman, in my prepared statement, which I would like t have printed in its entirety in the record———

Chairman WHITTEN. We certainly wish you to do that. At the sam time, we don't wish to restrict you here.

Senator MCGOVERN. All right.

I would like to highlight a few points orally, if I may.

An enforceable budget ceiling, adopted early each session with re erence to fiscal, economic, and monetary factors, would help us insur that the price of Federal programs is not paid by inflation-ravage dollars or unemployed workers.

Tying the powers to spend to the responsibility to tax would hel force Government to live within its means.

Uniting the revenue and expenditure jurisdiction now scattere among 13 committees in each' House would enable us to exercise ou fiscal authority responsibly.

for an authorization to precede an appropriation by 1 d with a 3- to 5-year evaluation of the effect of existing ed legislation, will enable us to replace our patchwork th solid planning.

posal for periodic review of budget authority and actual s will enable us to know the effects of our efforts.

ing legislative spending subject to the same restraints iations will keep us from doing through the back door nnot do through the front door.

your call for permanent legislative committees in each erform the key budget functions has yet to run the course ing committees. But the number of leading members from ittees who sit on this body suggests to me that even the ful Members of a weakened Congress have come to realize ave very little power. Perhaps this realization has contribspirit of reform now so widely felt in Congress.

mmend this committee for this important beginning, and hese hearings in which you have opened up the excellent s of your Interim Report to other Members of the Congress. spirit, I would like to spotlight some additional issues which ill have a critical bearing on your work.

is essential that we develop an effective response to the matExecutive impoundments if we are to regain the ability to priorities.

claims that impoundment was invented by this administrawhat the White House has done recently is to escalate imit into a form of legislation-an item veto which enables the ouse to select which laws it will enforce and which laws it

e.

ents have requested authority of that kind from the Congress s times in our history, and it has always been denied. Now it ly been taken.

k members of this committee will agree that the country ot be governed by the thesis-announced most recently by a te House aide on the ABC program "Issues and Answers" kend-that the President "knows better" than the Congress ending priorities are concerned.

Constitution does not permit that doctrine, for it embraces ine principle of Montesquieu, "There can be no liberty where lative and executive powers are united." The framers were causeparate those powers, to avoid placing in the hands of any the full force of government.

this, Mr. Chairman, in the same nonpartisan spirit which has rized the work of this committee. The same concerns may echoed by a Republican Senator under a future Democratic stration, unless we resolve this issue now.

or all our sakes, Republican and Democrat alike, we must connd effectively set aside that view; we must insure that prowe adopt in legislation and the President signs into law cannot arded at the whim of the White House. I suspect, Mr. Chairat unless your final recommendations deal effectively with imment, you may see the susbtance of your other reforms undone process.

Second, I am convinced that we must enhance our own capacity to construct these massive Federal budgets and to examine their results. We need our own congressional office of management and budget if the Congress is to be on equal footing with the White House in dealing with the size and complexity of total Federal spending every

year.

It is of interest to note in this context that the way the budget is now prepared reverses the procedures used during most of our experienceas a nation.

It wasn't until 1921 that the Congress even provided for a budget bureau and then it was regarded until comparatively recent times more as an instrument of the Congress than an instrument of the executive branch of the Government.

Prior to President Taft in 1910, no President even sought to have an extensive role in the preparation of the budget. Up until 1820, in fact, Congress had merely made its own estimates of the funds needed by the executive agencies and then appropriated accordingly.

Beginning in that year, Congress required the Secretaries of the Navy and War to submit an annual statement of their financial needs and unexpended balances-statements which went directly from the Cabinet offices to the Congress. That process was gradually expanded to other agencies.

The first "budget system" was adopted by Congress in 1921. in the Budget and Accounting Act of that year, which created the Bureau of the Budget. That is when the President officially entered the picture, and it is when President Harding submitted the first "Presidential budget." Even then, the Budget Bureau, although part of the executive branch, was perceived as a servant of the Congress and was responsive to its needs. The Hoover Commission reports of 1949 and 1955 and their legislative progeny had a similar intent-to facilitate, not frustrate, congressional authority.

But that perception has been sharply altered in the 1960's and early 1970's. It is plain that the Office of Management and Budget has evolved as a priorities-and-political arm of the White House, with a single lovalty to the President.

Over the 10 months or more while the Presidential budget is being prepared its various parts are held more closely from the Congress than the most sensitive military secrets of the Pentagon.

Under Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon the ability of the executive branch to deal with the budget has grown in proportion to the budget itself.

There are now some 7.500 full-time specialists in the executive branch, and thousands more who supplement those efforts in preparing individual budgets. The executive branch has some 6.000 computers. a substantial part of which are used to prepare the budget. OMB has 709 employees who systematically review the budget as a whole, both as to income and spending, using modern systems analysis. And all of these resources are applied over a period of 10 months or more. Yet because OMB now responds exclusively to the White House, Congress is back almost where we were in the 1920's.

The General Accounting Office gives us more oversight capabilities, but it is not designed to either prepare or react to the budget as a whole. While most professional staff members on Capitol Hill probably have

to do with the budget, the combined House and Senate Apns Committees where the detailed work is done have but 65 pers. The Congress itself, exclusive of the General Accounthas only three computer systems. And the entire process-if er completed on time-would have to be finished in 5 months

r just one large Government function. The Department of as 4,960 people working in the budget administration oc1 series. The combined staff of the House and Senate Armed Committees and the House and Senate Appropriations Comnd the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees y 68, and much of their work is duplicative.

et that any member of those committees and subcommittees y admit that large parts of the budget must be taken on simbecause there is not time or the resources available to examine epth.

1 the Congress considered a $5 billion budget. Today we are ng budget recommendations of over $269 billion. We just o it responsibly with the resources we have. And I think the have limited our own resources, while expanding those of the e, has contributed as much or more than any other factor to ne in legislative power.

e disputes the right of the White House to have the necessary 3 to develop its own priorities and deal effctively with the g Federal bureaucracy. But certainly those resources should ide the Congress from what was originally its sole domain. t restore a proper balance; and the best way to do that is to Congress an equal ability to develop its own budget plans uate White House proposals.

eed not match the full resources of the executive branch speor specialist or computer for computer. But a congressional ould have a sufficient professional staff of trained accountants, sts, and systems analysts, supported by modern technology, to alternatives and to serve the needs of each Member of

S.

t to stress that such a congressional agency should have comd year-round access to the data base and the budget recomons at the agency level within the executive branch. I frankly is absurd that our work on the budget must wait until all the isions have been made at the White House, and that we must l the pressures of time as well as magnitude as we struggle to efore the new fiscal year begins.

is not, after all, a contest in which one branch should be seekelement of surprise over the other. I think we would all be to forgo the suspense every January when the President's is finally unveiled, in favor of a more rational process designed serve the public.

eet this objective, your legislation could require, for example, ministration data be fed into our computers and that the results analysis be made available on a periodic basis. This is consistent e Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970, which calls for a ment-wide compatible data processing system. It could be exinexpensively to include remote access computer terminals in ngressional office.

A congressional OMB could be principal technical vehicle for the planning and informational needs of our proposed Budget Committee. It could develop detailed alternatives in each area, to broaden the choices available to the committee and the Congress as a whole. I hope you will give this idea your most careful consideration.

My last suggestion is that vou consider an interim procedure under which we can apply the fruits of your labor to the fiscal year 1974 budget the President has proposed.

It seems clear that the procedures you recommend cannot be fully implemented before the end of the present fiscal year, only 31% months away. Yet the President has proposed to radically alter the role of Government in our society for years to come, by casting off many of the programs of prior administrations and by redirecting substantial Federal efforts to local government.

The term "fait accompli" has been used within the administration to describe their strategy. They expect Congress to remain incapable this year of dealing effectively with the budget. They hope to get their program through before your reforms can be implemented.

Many of us in Congress disagree with those proposals on many grounds. However, I am confident that all of us can agree that both sides should receive the fair hearing which due process guarantees even the condemned. Under the present circumstances that fair hearing is not possible.

We may have the votes to say no but we don't have the resources to compete with the mass of data contained in the budget or supporting doenments scattered in files throughout Washington. In the end the collision course we are on can profit no one and only further discredit Government in the eyes of the American people.

Therefore, I suggest a middle course until your recommendations can be fully implemented. We should defer major new Federal initiatives until they can be evaluated in accordance with the criteria set forth in your report. In the meantime, we could fund existing programs at current levels by means of continuing resolutions. I recognize some cuts will be necessary to meet increases in mandatory spending, if the budget is to be kent within noninflationary limits. However, I think agreement on such an overall strategy would soon result in an accentable compromise, similar to the military and foreign aid cuts last session. In conclusion, let me commend once again the progress this committee has made on its difficult and complex assignment.

The confrontation between Congress and the Exectuive serves neither branch, and it serves the public least of all. It is a route toward paralysis of the National Government with each side saving no to the other in growing dollar amounts, leaving neither branch able to respond positively to the needs of the American people. Unless we find a solution, each branch will continue to cancel out the efforts of the other.

You have recognized that the ultimate resolution of this dispute depends upon the structure of the Congress as much as upon the words of the Constitution. And for that reason, while more dramatic efforts may be undertaken, the methodical work of this committee will have by far the most to do with whether our democratic system will succeed or fall in the years ahead.