The CHAIRMAN. Senator Johnston, the chairman has no particular questions to ask you. I think you have rendered a service by coming before this committee and giving your views as chairman of the legislative committee having jurisdiction over the subject matter.

I think this plan is far more serious and dangerous than many people realize at the moment. It gives the opportunity; I cannot predict what will happen. I do not know. But it does give the opportunity for more politics, and unwholesome politics, to influence the appointment of, as you say, important public servants in every community in this Nation.

Now, to what extent that power would be abused, I cannot say. It might not be abused for a long time. But the time will come, in all probablity, when a tremendous abuse of that power might occur.

And my position is that it is the responsibility of the Congress not to provide the opportunity for such abuses as could occur if this plan went into effect. We have the initial responsibility not to so legislate, by reorganization plan or otherwise. We have the responsibility as elected representatives of the people, when we delegate power to the Executive or pass laws for the Executive to enforce, to place the necessary legal safeguards therein so as to prevent abuses, to protect the public interest, and to undertake to insure the efficienct execution of the laws that we pass.

Senator JOHNSTON. I would like to make this statement to the committee, too, in reference to Mississippi.

When my committee began getting complaints about what was going on in Mississippi, we held all appointments in the committee, and no postmasters were appointed in Mississippi during the Eighty-first Congress.

The CHAIRMAN. That is, until after you had a clean-up. You did not report them out favorably until the thing was cleaned up.

But you have no jurisdiction over the carriers and the clerks. You do not recommend confirmation of those groups. The Senate only confirms the postmasters now. But many appointments down there were made of clerks and of carriers, and the Senate had no jurisdiction over that.

Senator JOHNSTON. That is true.

Senator DwORSHAK. Without the right of confirmation with respect to any of those jobs involved in that Mississippi scandal, the Postmaster General might have made the appointments, and the appointees could have served without requiring confirmation?

Senator JOHNSTON. That is entirely correct, just as he can now in the fourth-class post offices. They do not come to us for confirmation. Senator DwORSHAK. That is all.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Johnston. We appreciate your testimony.

I may say for the record-it is in the record already-that Staff Memorandum No. 82-2-29, an excellent memorandum I think, has been placed in the hearings. It contains a discussion of the statute you cited, concerning the legality of the present practice whereby the Postmaster General requests the views of congressional advisers.

It seems that Mr. Murphy, then the Attorney General, made a ruling on the validity of that statute and the way it was operating, and held that it was proper under the statute to submit the names to Members of Congress for their recommendation.

I thank you very much, Senator.

Senator JOHNSTON. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Is Mr. Riley present? Will you come forward, please?

Mr. Riley, I see you have a prepared statement.

STATEMENT OF GEORGE D. RILEY, MEMBER, NATIONAL LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR

REORGANIZATION PLAN NOS. 2, 3, AND 4 OF 1952

Mr. RILEY. A brief prepared statement, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. All right. We are glad to have you.
Mr. RILEY. Thank you very much.

My name is George D. Riley. I am a member of the national legislative committee of the American Federation of Labor.

I am directed to appear in opposition to Reorganization Plan No. 2, a plan to shift authority for selection of postmasters completely into the hands of the Postmaster General.

Our position is taken in conformity with the action of all postal unions affiliated to the American Federation of Labor. The action of these unions is in opposition to the plan.

The reasons for our opposition are as follows:

1. The plan is vague and offers no improvement over the present system.

2. The Ramspeck-O'Mahoney Act of 1938 purportedly put postmasters under civil service. If it did there is no need for further legislation effecting the same purpose.

3. The practice of the Post Office Department is to put former postal inspectors all practically exclusively in high executive and administrative jobs.

4. There is no assurance that career operating postal employees will have recognition under this plan. This plane will clear the way further for the Postmaster General to pursue this practice in filling all postmasterships. At least senatorial confirmation has served as a brake for this policy.

5. Plan No. 2 is submitted at a time when it is almost impossible for the House to muster a constitutional majority on this proposal. The proponents apparently are taking their chances that the Senate likewise will be handicapped.

The CHAIRMAN. I will say that up until now the Senate is handicapped in considering these plans, because, this being an election year, so many are away and have to be away that it is not easy even to get a quorum at times in the Senate.

Mr. RILEY. Certainly the proponents of the plan have taken a post position on this; at least, they have the inside track or appear to have. 6. The Bureau of the Budget, the Hoover Commission and the Postmaster General have said that a reorganization plan is an impracticable method for accomplishing what the Department through the White House now is attempting.

This, of course, has been brought out by your able staff, and I would like to add my own accolade and kudo to the remarks that have been stated on that work.

7. The Postmaster General has pointedly informed all postal employees that they must be on his "team."

That is a matter of record, Mr. Chairman.

When postmasterships are shifted to unilateral action, it will be no problem understanding that with such personal political machine, as contrasted with semipolitical, all postmasters personally must be beholden to the Postmaster General. Is this the kind of reform the Hoover Commission, the national administration, and the Congress are ready to embrace?

The CHAIRMAN. A number of witnesses testifying in support of these plans on behalf of the administration, have complained that if a Congressman or Senator recommended somebody for an appointive position there would be a divided allegiance and a divided loyalty. He probably would be more loyal, they think, to the Congressman or Senator who recommended him, and therefore he could not feel the obligation as strongly as he should to be loyal to the appointing power.

Now, this would simply mean, as you have pointed out, that they would have to be completely loyal and subservient, so to speak, maybe even politically-it could mean that to the Postmaster General or to the administration in power.

Mr. RILEY. Well, you can go one step further, Mr. Chairman, and say that if you happen to be a Senator of the minority faith, I don't think he gets a great deal of consideration even today.

That puts the whole thing right back to the State committee in the State concerned. So that I don't see that this plan would offer any improvement whatsoever.

Continuing that point No. 7, with such a personal machine of nearly 22,000, any man so minded could win any and all elections, Hatch Act or no Hatch Act.

And, Mr. Chairman, as for plans 3 and 4, we have no objections to offer to either.

I would like to make some informal observations. One has to do with the comment in your staff report on page 8, where the Library of Congress, American Law Section, of the Legislative Reference Service, is quoted, pointing out that in all the years, in the last 20 years, to quote the letter in part:

We have examined all reorganization plans submitted under the acts of 1932, 1933, 1939, 1945, and 1949, without finding any instance in which the entire plan comprised merely a change in the method of appointment of personnel from appointment by the President with Senate confirmation to appointment by the head of a department or agency.

Now, the lesson I draw from that observation, Mr. Chairman, is that there has been no great interest on the part of the executive branch or the Post Office Department in any plan purporting to do the same sort of thing which they say plan No. 2 would do. Now, as a quickie device here on the home stretch of the Congress in an election year, when many of our minds are trained in opposite directions or in other directions, we are confronted with this plan all of a sudden.

Why a plan such as this, with thec loud over the legality of it, is submitted, and why the President has permitted himself to be the man to submit this thing, I think raises considerable question.

·

I think somebody who is in better position to answer that question should come up with it.

Now, further on the general subject of reorganization, if you refer to the Government manual, the current issue, 1951 and 1952, in appendix A occurring on page 585, you will find there a list of reorganizations, mergers, abolitions, and transfers of Government functions since 1933, and that is early in 1933, which would take in the Credit Act, which would take in the Economy Act. As I recall, merely thinking from memory here, I am pretty sure that the Economy Act carried provision for the Executive to submit arbitrarily, of his own direction, reorganization plans and abolitions and transfers and

mergers.

Now, Mr. Hoover, as I recall, was the President at that time. He was the Chairman of this Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government. Even Mr. Hoover in those days didn't seem to have enough interest in this proposition to do anything about it himself. The same holds true for Mr. Roosevelt. And so we come down to the point where I find the first reorganization effected. under such powers did not come about until perhaps 9 or 10 years later. So that I think there is a great deal of the element of good faith involved in this thing.

As has been pointed out, and well so, functions, and not persons and jobs, are the pawns in this game of reorganization. Yet we have these ringers brought in on us all of a sudden, and we find we are working with jobs and persons and not functions and not abolitions and not even substitutions.

Nor does this plan have the good faith of using that expression or that device of substitution.

There has been some discussion here before you on the Hatch Act. The Hatch Act, of course, deals with administrative jobs. I see nothing in this plan, and nothing in law, which would prohibit the Postmaster General from designating those jobs no longer as administrative jobs but as executive or policy-making jobs, policy making in each locality which would take them far above into the stratosphere above and away from the Hatch Act.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you think that is a possibility under this plan? Mr. RILEY. I offer it as some thinking in that direction. I say it is entitled to be explored. By just a stroke of the pen or a verbal order or any other way I can see in my mind's eye and to my own satisfaction where the Postmaster General can do just that.

Further, I think that this plan constitutes a rank abuse of the term "civil service." Civil service has been taking a beating for many years. Anything you wanted to do or anything you didn't want to do, you could use civil service as an excuse for doing it or not doing it. If you go back to the time when the act of 1938 was under discussion, the conference report on that, you will find a great deal of praise for the upcoming act at that time. I referred to it awhile ago as the Ramspeck-O'Mahoney Act, and that is what it is. The proponents of that bill said that that was going to end all of our difficulties and we were just going to have perfume spread all over us, and we would smell very sweet, because we would have a perfect system.

Now, that is the system we have today. If that system is not perfect, or if it is not good, the Congress thought it was. The proponents.

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thought it was. If that is civil service, if that be civil service, then what is this plan all about?

My own observation is that this is a personal-patronage plan, nothing more and nothing less.

The CHAIRMAN. Instead of permitting patronage to be distributed, as it is now, under existing law, it concentrates it all in the Postmaster General or the party in power.

Mr. RILEY. You are bringing it all down to one corner of the table, where nobody can have a say except one man.

The CHAIRMAN. That is your view of the plan.

Mr. RILEY. Yes. I make the further forecast, Mr. Chairman, that within 5 years after this plan goes through, if it does go through, the Congress will be trying to unwind this thing and bring some sense out of it.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Monroney?

Senator MONRONEY. I find it a little hard to go along with you on the idea that the plan that we now have is a real civil-service plan, when a sitting Congressman from that district can say definitely which one of the top three, veterans' preference considered, is going to be postmaster. I do not think that is real civil service.

Mr. RILEY. Senator, please do not construe my testimony as saying that is real civil service. I say if it is; and the proponents say it is. I do not endorse that whatsoever.

However, I have been on Capitol Hill the better part of 20 years, and I believe I know good from bad. I get credit for that, anyway.

Senator MONRONEY. You think the present system is worse than the system before?

Mr. RILEY. I am not endorsing the present system. I am saying that this plan is not offering anything better than what you have.

I will say this much, Mr. Chairman, that if you will give proper recognition to postal employees in the career service, and allow them to become postmasters, instead of this constant appointment of the policemen of the department, better known as the postal inspectors, then I think you will begin to have a civil service.

Senator MONRONEY. Well, I do not know of any inspector that has been made a postmaster in any of the first-class offices. I may be misinformed, but I know that is the case in Oklahoma.

Mr. RILEY. You have one right across the Capitol Plaza here. Mr. North is a postal inspector. You have them throughout the service. Senator MONRONEY. I do not think you ought to rule out the postal inspectors.

Mr. RILEY. I didn't say rule them out.

Senator MONRONEY. You named one. Who are some of the others in first-class offices?

I only know Oklahoma. I do not believe there is a single postal inspector that is serving in any of the hundreds of post offices in the State of Oklahoma.

Mr. RILEY. Well, I used to live in Oklahoma, and I think that Oklahoma gets some very good people in public service. I don't know. It has been some years since I lived there, Senator, so I can't speak. You have better information than I have.

But I can say this much, that the higher echelon, the high brass of the Post Office Department, is stacked, packed, and really filled up