there is another thing in this document, speaking about what the obligation of the President is-this is from section 3 of article 2.

He shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

Also, article 2, section 1, says:

Before he enters on the execution of his office he shall take the following oath and affirmation: I do so solemnly swear or affirm I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United Sates and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Thank you very much; you have a very fine statement.
Mr. KOCH. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Senator CHILES. Mr. Chairman, I think our next witness is going to be Senator Fulbright who we are notifying now and he will be down. I wonder, as I recall that letter as it was read to the caucus, there was something in the last page about for convenience that the leadership could get in touch with them or something in working any of these details out. I wonder maybe we should see if Senator Mansfield could be of help in arranging a proper time. Maybe we just haven't given enough notice.

Senator ERVIN. In the letter to the caucus, the Secretary emphasized that

*** we recognize that there are over 300 committees in the Congress. Most committee chairmen have been cooperative and reasonable in scheduling witnesses. As majority leader of the Senate your continuing assistance in recognizing the scheduling and desires of the officials is needed to assure that sufficient notice of hearing is provided. All the witnesses can be fully responsive to the needs of of the Congress if they are given aid in avoiding schedule problems for the Executive and Legislative Branches.

Senator CHILES. I know that neither you, Mr. Chairman, nor I want to inconvenience any of these officials and I just wonder maybe we should try to find out what would be a convenient time for them to come so we could arrange our schedule so we could be here. I would certainly be willing to.

Senator ERVIN. Well, I don't know. There may be some good excuse for this. I don't know what it is.

I would direct Counsel to write a letter to the Secretary of Agriculture and tell him we are particularly desirous of having him appear and give us the legal authority by which these programs that are under the supervision of the Department of Agriculture have been terminated and under which the funds have been withheld.

I also want to ask Counsel for the committee to investigate the power of this committee to subpena a Cabinet officer.

Senator CHILES. I wonder, Mr. Chairman, can we also make a request to Mr. Ruckelshaus, if we find a convenient time for him, because I would like to know whether he has been instructed not to appear before a committee or maybe it is we haven't had a convenient time. Maybe we ought to try to actually write him, too.

Senator ERVIN. Well, I wish when I practice law that they couldn't have any witnesses except the ones I approved to testify against my clients. [Laughter.]

And I really don't recognize the power of the Executive to determine what witnesses a congressional committee should have. I think every official of the Government is under obligation. Even the Chief Justice said by way of dicta in the Erhenburgh case, we could even subpena

the President. I wouldn't want to go that far, but certainly that could be true. Everybody else is subject to the requirement of testifying. The President is quoted as saying at a press conference:

I would simply say the general attitude I have is to be as liberal as possible in terms of making people available to testify before the Congress, and we are not going to use Executive Privilege as a shield for considerations that may be embarrassing to us, but that doesn't really deserve Executive Privilege.

Senator CHILES. Our next witness will be the Honorable Senator Fulbright of Arkansas who we are delighted to have come before this committee and give us the benefit of his thinking on this subject.

STATEMENT OF HON. J. W. FULBRIGHT, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF ARKANSAS

Senator FULBRIGHT. Mr. Chairman, I am sorry to detain you. waiting for word when you were ready for me.

I was

I

Senator CHILES. Our schedule has been a little upset today. Senator FULBRIGHT. I was originally told 11 o'clock. But anyway, appreciate very much your giving me the opportunity to testify. Senator CHILES. We are delighted that you decided to present yourself to the committee.

Senator FULBRIGHT. Mr. Chairman and members, I am pleased to have the opportunity to appear before you today. I believe the subject of the hearing is one of extreme importance and I want to commend the chairman especially and also the acting chairman for continuing leadership in this area.

Last October, the Congress passed a supplemental appropriations bill which included $9.1 million for the National Railroad Passenger Corporation-Amtrak. Of these funds, $4.1 million was to be utilized for a route which would provide service to Mexico on a route through Arkansas. This would have been the first passenger service in Arkansas since the establishment of Amtrak.

However, we have since been informed that the Office of Management and Budget has "permanently impounded" the funds for this service.

I cite this simply as the most recent example, the clearest cut impoundment that I am aware of.

In recent years we have witnessed the growth of a lexicon of terms such as executive privilege, executive agreement, permanent impoundment, delayed disbursements, suspended allocations, reprogramed funds all of which imply a superiority of the power of the executive branch over the legislative, and none of which are mentioned in the Constitution.

In the past, I have testified before the Subcommittee on Separation of Powers on the subject of Executive privilege, July 1971, and Executive agreements, April 1972. I hope that we are making some progress toward restricting the use of these devices which have served to limit the ability of Congress to exercise its constitutional role and responsibility.

Now we confront the problem of impoundment, which goes to the very heart of congressional power-the power to appropriate. It is imperative that Congress reassert itself in this field where the execu

tive branch is acting with increasing disregard for constitutional congressional authority.

I am pleased to be a cosponsor with you, Mr. Chairman, of S. 378, the Impoundment Control bill, which would be an important step in reasserting congressional power. Likewise, I have joined with you and others in the friend-of-the-court brief in the U.S. Eighth Circuit. Court of Appeals challenging the President's power to impound Federal Highway Trust Fund moneys.

The impoundment of highway funds is one of the better-known examples among a vast array of programs being seriously cut or facing death-by-impoundment at the hands of this administration. Many of these programs are of major importance to the people of Arkansas.

It became apparent early in the life of this administration that the heavy use of impoundment was likely to lead to a confrontation with Congress, for this was not the modest withholding of funds practiced by prior administrations, largely on a temporary basis. True, the administration began by using such terminology as "funds being held in reserve" or "temporarily deferred" for the purpose of "orderly financial management."

I believe all of us would be willing to concede that from time to time there is justification for temporarily holding up funds so that they can be released on an orderly basis and not have an undue effect of the

economy.

However, that is not what is under consideration here. The concepts of "funds being held in reserve" or "temporarily deferred" have given way to permanent impoundment, and, whether called "permanent" or not, this is really the thrust of the administration's actions in many areas to permanently withhold funds.

Impoundment, in the operational sense, has come to mean the denial of funds which exceed the President's budget requests or which are appropriated for programs the President does not support.

Through the device of impoundment, the President has moved to make his budget an inviolable document from which the Congress must not vary. But there is nothing sacrosanct about the Presidential budget. It is, in fact, no more than a request or a proposed blueprint for Congress to consider. Just as a client is not bound to accept everything an architect proposes, Congress can modify the blueprint in line with its views of national priorities. But in the case of President Nixon, if Congress makes changes in the blueprint which he submits, he proceeds to build according to his own plans regardless of congressional action. If Congress is going to fulfill its constitutional functions and to operate as a separate, coequal branch of Government, we cannot continue to allow the President to use impoundment to impose policy. To do so would be to subvert the explicit constitutional authority of the Congress.

The heart of this matter, Mr. Chairman, is whither a collective judgment of elected representatives in the long run serve the interests of the people better than the individual judgment of the President.

You have heard a great deal in recent years of strict construction of the Constitution. Much has been said by this administration about the necessity of returning to the spirit and the letter of the Constitution. It seems to me this departure on the part of this Administration is as

flagrant a departure from the Constitution as any that I can think of because it is a denial of the very essence of the democratic system.

It may be that the complexities of modern society are such that the Congress cannot deal with it and the President in his press conference as reported in the New York Times of February 1, seems to me to be suggesting this-That he no longer has any confidence in the collective judgment of the Congress, and he states his views in categorical terms.

For the record, at this point, I would like to quote from the President-I assume it is a correct verbatim report of his statement yesterday.

The Constitutional right for the President of the United States to impound funds and that is not to spend money, when the spending of money would mean either increasing prices or increasing taxes for all the people, that right is absolutely clear.

The problem we have here is basically that the Congress wants responsibility, they want to share responsibility. Believe me, it would be pleasant to have more sharing of responsibility by the Congress. But if you are going to have responsibility you have to be responsible and this Congress and some of the more thoughtful members of Congress, and that includes most of the leadership, in the very good give and take we had the other day-this Congress has not been responsible on money. We simply had this?

Then I will skip one sentence and read another sentence.

The point is the Congress has to decide does it want to raise taxes in order to spend more or does it want to cut as the President is trying to cut. The difficulty, of course, and I have been a Member of Congress, is that the Congress represents special interests.

The implication is that the President does not represent special interests.

And it goes on.

I would ask, if it has not been put in, that the entire passage there entitled "Section 13 on Impoundment of Funds" be included in the record. It is very relevant, addresses the issue very clearly. It is the clearest statement I have seen by this or any other President on this subject.

Senator CHILES. Without objection, it will be included in the record. (Section 13 from the news article follows:)

EXTRACT FROM, "TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRESIDENT'S NEWS CONFERENCE ON FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC MATTERS," NEW YORK TIMES, FEB. 1, 1973

13. IMPOUNDMENT OF FUNDS

Q. Mr. President, how do you respond to criticism that your impoundment of funds abrogates power or authority that the constitution gave to Congress?

A. The same way that Jefferson did, and Jackson did and Truman did. When I came in on this, Mr. Mollenhoff-he is one of the few old-timers around here who will remember it-you remember when Senator Symington, who has now turned the other way on this, but you remember when we were talking about the 70-group Air Force. You remember that on that case I voted as a Congressman to override President Truman's veto. I think it was 70-wing or 70-group Air Force, where we insisted on a 70-group Air Force and he said the budget would only provide for 48.

Despite the fact that the Congress spoke not just as the leaders spoke to me the other day, but by veto, overwhelming in both Houses, President Truman impounded the money. He did not spend it. And he had a right to. The constitutional right for the President of the United States to impound funds and that is not to spend money, when the spending of money would mean either

increasing prices or increasing taxes for all the people, that right is absolutely clear.

The problem we have here is basically that the Congress wants responsibility, they want to share responsibility. Believe me, it would be pleasant to have more sharing of responsibility by the Congress. But if you are going to have responsibility, you have to be responsible, and this Congress-and some of the more thoughtful members of Congress and that includes most of the leadership, in the very good give-and-take we had the other day-this Congress has not been responsible on money. We simply had this.

There is a clear choice. We either cut spending or raise taxes, and I made a little check before the leaders' meeting. I checked on the campaigns of everybody who had run for office across this country, Democrat and Republican. I didn't find one member of Congress, liberal or conservative, who had campaigned on the plaform of raising taxes in order that we could spend more.

The point is that the Congress has to decide does it want to raise taxes in order to spend more, or does it want to cut, as the President is trying to cut. The difficulty, of course, and I have been a member of Congress, is that the Congress represents special interests.

Senator FULBRIGHT. I think it is good for the record to show that. Senator ERVIN. I would suggest two books that should be in the White House to read. One is the Constitution of the United States and the other is Dale Carnegie's book on "How to Win Friends and Influence People."

Senator FULBRIGHT. That is an excellent suggestion.

If the President really has no confidence in the judgment of the Congress he ought to propose a constitutional amendment and say just what he is saying here, that the Congress no longer represents the country it represents special interest, therefore, we abolish the right of Congress to determine policy.

Senator ERVIN. Aren't the Members of the Senate and the Members of the House elected by exactly the same people that elected the President?

Senator FULBRIGHT. That is my impression.

Senator ERVIN. And the President says in substance there when the people vote to elect both the President and Members of Congress, that they act responsibly only in voting for the President, and irresponsibly in voting for Congress.

That is very complimentary, isn't it?

Senator FULBRIGHT. Mr. Chairman many of the issues involved here were debated last October when the Senate considered the $250 billion spending ceiling. The Senate refused to give the President the authority to exercise an item veto which would have been implicit in such legislation. Now, however, the President has proceeded, through impoundment, to exercise a power not granted him and one that distorts the balance of power between the two branches.

The President would be in a better position on this issue if he were willing to see cuts made across the board. But he wants to decide where the cuts are to be made. When he proposed the spending ceiling the President refused to say where he would make cuts if the ceiling was approved. But many of us knew where such cuts would comenot in military spending, which dominates the Federal budget, but in social and educational programs. Our fears have been borne out by the President's impoundment actions and his proposed budget for fiscal 1974.

As Prof. Harvey Mansfield of Columbia University told your subcommittee in 1971, Mr. Chairman, under this administration impound